Despite the central importance of connoisseurship in the rarefied world of art collecting, it occupies an uncomfortable position in modern scholarship. On the one hand, the concept retains a significant role in the study of art and the care of public and private collections when it is linked with art appreciation, qualities visible to the attuned eye, or the processes of attribution and authentication. On the other hand, the last century has seen connoisseurship
marginalized in academic discourse: it is often associated with amateurism, social elitism, status-display, and intellectual mystification. The present collection of essays enters
this breach and--by adopting a broad, interdisciplinary approach--considers connoisseurship afresh, investigating its practice in both familiar and unexpected places. Essays on the role of connoisseurship in Western art history appear alongside innovative, global perspectives on Chinese numismatics and walnut collecting, wine and coffee expertise, the market for geological specimens, and the parallels between Morellian connoisseurship and modern forensics. These essays resonate with one another
in surprising ways and create new dialogues about connoisseurship's meaning and application, demonstrating that its practice can be both intuitive and scientific.
Despite the central importance of connoisseurship in the rarefied world of art collecting, it occupies an uncomfortable position in modern scholarship. On the one hand, the concept retains a significant role in the study of art and the care of public and private collections when it is linked with art appreciation, qualities visible to the attuned eye, or the processes of attribution and authentication. On the other hand, the last century has seen connoisseurship
marginalized in academic discourse: it is often associated with amateurism, social elitism, status-display, and intellectual mystification. The present collection of essays enters
this breach and--by adopting a broad, interdisciplinary approach--considers connoisseurship afresh, investigating its practice in both familiar and unexpected places. Essays on the role of connoisseurship in Western art history appear alongside innovative, global perspectives on Chinese numismatics and walnut collecting, wine and coffee expertise, the market for geological specimens, and the parallels between Morellian connoisseurship and modern forensics. These essays resonate with one another
in surprising ways and create new dialogues about connoisseurship's meaning and application, demonstrating that its practice can be both intuitive and scientific.
1. Introduction, Peter Stewart and Christina M. Anderson
Between science and art
2. Beazley, Daubert, and the Burden of Proof, Peter Stewart
3. The Scientific Approach to Collecting: Private Coin Collections
in Qing Dynasty China, Lyce Jankowski
4. Connoisseurs, Scientists and the Mineral Kingdom, Monica Price
and Mike Rumsey
Professionals, amateurs, and the market
5. Elite and Popular Connoisseurship at the Louvre c. 1848-1870,
Tom Stammers
6. Wilhelm von Bode's Technical Art History: The 1909-1912
Investigation of the Bust of Flora Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci,
Matthew Hayes
Cultural connoisseurship and the senses
7. "The Stock of a Connoisseur?": The Development and
Commercialization of Wine Connoisseurship in the Long Nineteenth
Century, Graham Harding
8. Connoisseur Consumer and Specialty Coffee, Ronan Torres
Quintão
9. On Touching: Connoisseurship of Literati Walnuts in Beijing,
I-Yi Hsieh
Index
Christina M. Anderson is the Daphne Jackson Principal Research
Fellow in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at
University College London. She is the author of The Flemish
Merchant of Venice: Daniel Nijs and the Sale of the Gonzaga Art
Collection.
Peter Stewart is Professor of Ancient Art and Director of the
Classical Art Research Centre at the University of Oxford, where he
is responsible for the Beazley Archive. His publications include
Statues in Roman Society, The Social History of Roman Art, and A
Catalogue of the Sculpture Collection at Wilton House.
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