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Columbia University				
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Fred Knubel, Director of Public Information
FOR USE UPON RECEIPT
September 23, 1996

Raphael's English Legacy in Columbia Exhibition


"Apostles in England: Sir James Thornhill and the Legacy of Raphael's Tapestry Cartoons"

October 16 - December 21, 1996. Wed. - Sat. 1 to 5 P.M. Free Admission

Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, Broadway and 116th Street, New York City. Information: 212-854-7288.


Note to editors: black & white and color photographs of works in this exhibition are available by calling 212-854-5573 or -7288.

Raphael's seven large gouache paintings, called cartoons, that weavers used in creating tapestries for the Sistine Chapel nearly 500 years ago exerted enormous influence on the development of painting in England in the 18th century. These paintings depicting the Acts of the Apostles were the only examples of High Renaissance painting on a grand scale in England at the time, and they became models for British artistic production for much of the century.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University will open a major exhibition October 16 focusing on copies of the cartoons painted between 1729 and 1731 by Sir James Thornhill, England's foremost history painter. Thornhill's painted copies, together with a variety of engraved versions, were pivotal in the development of the "British School." Approximately 90 works - paintings, drawings, prints, and an important English tapestry lent by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine - are in the exhibition.

"As an extension of Thornhill's early efforts to formalize the training of British artists, these copies play an important part in the prelude to the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768," said Arline Meyer, professor of art history at Ohio State University and the curator of the exhibition. The intention was also political: to bolster England's position in relation to France by showing that the very best of Raphael was lodged on British soil. The exhibition also addresses issues about the use and reuse of the past and about the art of copying as a reproductive as well as a creative process. Of particular interest are the compelling human expressions depicted by Raphael that English artists, Hogarth among them, appropriated and transformed, creating a distinctly British graphic repertoire of emotions.

Columbia's set of Thornhill paintings are being publicly exhibited for the first time. The new attention to these works in New York coincides with the reinstallation of the restored Raphael cartoons at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where they have resided since 1865.

Professor Meyer, who earned the Ph.D. from Columbia in art history and later taught in the department, is also the author of the exhibition's 112-page illustrated catalogue. The project has been supported, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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