At the Frick the two legs of a challenging relation: monumentality and dynamics in the Hill’s collection
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- Attributed to Maso Finiguerra (Florence, 1426–64) “Hercules and Antaeus” (detail), cast ca. 1460 Brass H: 25.2 cm Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill Maggie Nimkin Photography
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- Giambologna (Douai, ca.1529–1608, Florence) “Astronomy”, cast early 1570s Bronze H: 38.8 cm Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill Maggie Nimkin Photography
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- Lucio Fontana (Rosario, 1899–1968, Varese) “Crocifisso” (“Christ on the Cross”), 1950–52 Glazed terracotta 49.8 x 31.4 x 12.7 cm Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill © Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan Photo: Michael Bodycomb
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- Cy Twombly (Lexington, Virginia, 1928–2011, Rome) “Untitled”, 1959 Oil paint, wax crayon, and lead pencil on canvas 97.5 x 136.5 cm Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill ©Cy Twombly Foundation Photo: Michael Bodycomb
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- Installation view at The Frick Collection showing Adriaen de Vries’s, “Bacchic Man Wearing a Grotesque Mask” with Ed Ruscha’s, “Seventeenth Century”, © Ed Ruscha, from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; photo: Michael Bodycomb
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- Installation view at The Frick Collection showing Adriaen de Vries’s, “Bacchic Man Wearing a Grotesque Mask” with Cy Twombly’s, “Untitled”, 1959, ©Cy Twombly Foundation, both works from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; photo: Michael Bodycomb
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- Installation view at The Frick Collection showing Giuseppe Piamontini’s “Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III on Horseback” with Cy Twombly’s “Untitled” (detail), “Chalkboard” series, 1970, ©Cy Twombly Foundation, both works from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; photo: Michael Bodycomb
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- Installation view at The Frick Collection showing Adriaen de Vries’s, Bacchic Man Wearing a Grotesque Mask and Giuseppe Piamontini’s “Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III on Horseback” with Ed Ruscha’s, “Seventeenth Century”, © Ed Ruscha, both works from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill; photo: Michael Bodycomb
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- Installation view showing a pairing in the Frick’s Cabinet gallery: Alessandro Algardi’s Cristo Vivo (“The Living Christ on the Cross”), juxtaposed with Lucio Fontana’s Crocifisso (“Christ on the Cross”), © Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan; photo: Michael Bodycomb
The collection of Janine and J. Tomilson Hill is generally known for the many masterpieces of art from the second half of the 20th century it preserves. But thanks to the exhibition opened two days ago at the Frick Collection (Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection, until june 15th), the attention that the current powerful vice-president of the Blackstone group and his wife have for bronze statuettes produced from the Renaissance to the Baroque period is finally unearthed; with the advise of Pat Wengraf the couple have collected works by famous artists such as Andrea Riccio, Giambologna, Adriaen de Vries, or lesser-known ones, like Caspar Gras and Hans Reichle.
Details about the collection are provided by FT’s art expert Susan Moore, who probably had the chance to visit the collector’s house. But from our point of view the engaging key of the exhibition is of course the relationship between ancient and contemporary art that seems to be based on two legs. The first one, sharply pointed out by Moore, is monumentality (even in small scale). The second one is an aesthetic category too: dynamics.
The topic of “dynamic” can be perfectly grasped in the dialogue between the “Bacchic man wearing a grotesque mask” by Adrien de Vries and Cy Twombly’s “Untitled” from 1959 (as seen in the image). The four accumulations of lines on the canvas describing a semi circle on the left side perfectly reflect the bronze’s head, left arm and legs, going through a kind of tension, or rigidity. Moreover, if you look carefully, the Twombly’s seem to map the glares of light on the lucid surface of the sculpture.
A dialogue of the same kind is set between the “Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III on horseback” by Giuseppe Piamontini and another untiled work by Twombly that, in this case, provides a perfect “psychological” background for this too relaxed nose-up of the penultimate Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany.
January 31, 2014
