Project Details
Projekt
Connoisseurship. The history and the methodical redefining of drawing research based on the Dutch collection of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar
Subject Area
Art History
Analytical Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Term
from 2018 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398348379
The research project "Connoiseurship Today" has set itself the goal of placing style-critical dealings with Old Master drawings involving innovative material-scientific, non-destructive methods of investigation on a new, methodologically solid foundation. Under investigation will be the stock of Dutch drawings possessed by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, whose extent (1,500 sheets) and character make it one of the most important such collections outside the Netherlands.The initial proposal (8 August 2017) envisioned a working period of three years. All the work steps planned for the granted support period of two years were successfully completed. In addition, initial results were presented at specialized conferences and will be published in specialized publications.At the end of the approved period on 31 October 2020, all 1,531 drawings will be registered in a project databank and scientifically specified by artist, technique, dating, and motif. For about 500 drawings, an extensive scholarly commentary together with the digital reproduction of all the drawings, the identified watermarks (660 WMK), and the complete documentation of the results of the natural-scientific investigations will be included in the databank. In parallel, two segments of the stock (the Rembrandt and the transfer drawings) will be used as examples of the interplay between art-historical/expertise analysis and material-scientific investigation. Further, at the “science site Weimar”, the emergence of art-historical expertise was reconstructed for the time from 1770 to 1832 (Goethe’s death) and for the phase from 1832 to 1870. Part of the focus theme "science site Weimar" is also the study, based on examples, of the significance that the extensive partial collection of landscapes had for Goethe’s own theoretical dealings with the history of landscape art. This study, too, is completed.The proposed support period of a further year will realize the work steps that the initial proposal projected for the third year, thereby bringing the project "Expertise Today" to its complete end. According to the initial proposal, the topical fields still to be addressed are: 1. Art-historical commentary on ca. 1,000 drawings; 2. reconstruction of the science site Weimar for the third period of 1870 to 1914; 3. material-technical examination of the group of colorized drawings from 1750 to 1830 and the Momper/Bril/Breughel group; 4. production of a criteria catalog for determining paper qualities; and 5. reconstruction of the collection of drawings that served as a presentation collection for Goethe’s own literary production. The project will be concluded in August 2021 with the conference "Kennerschaft heute: Die Hermeneutik des digitalen Bildes"/"Expertise Today: The Hermeneutics of the Digital Picture".
DFG Programme
Research Grants
