The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment by Christopher M. S. Johns

Abstract

The Visual Culture of Enlightenment. By Christopher M. S. Johns. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2015. Pp. xxii, 413. $89.95. ISBN 978-0-271-06208-2.)Among the discrete Enlightenments now abounding, the Catholic Enlightenment is one descriptive that commands widespread recognition and endorse- ment. The effort that Christopher Johns has put here into depicting its visual culture can only enhance its currency. As one might have suspected from his previous publications, Johns is actually dealing exclusively with Rome and the papacy between the mid-1720s and the 1760s so that his subject matter is more confined than the title suggests. He can, however, be forgiven that omission after producing a sumpuously illustrated volume that convincingly ties in his art object examples with those wider trends within the Church that constitute the Enlightenment: Christocentric, antibaroque, intellectually open, and socially aware. In chapter 2 Johns points out the declining supernatural presence in the paintings commissioned to glorify new saints (what Johns wittily calls the sanctification industry, p. 82); visions were outre, good works the mark of true holiness, with the supernatural elements in imagery downplayed in favor of social utility. Benedict XIV (1740- 58), the enlightened pontiff par excellence, created only five new saints in his long reign. One of them, St. Camillus de Lellis, was painted by his favorite artist, Pierre Subleyras, and the portrait was presented to him by the Camillian order. He is shown amid hospital patients, aiding the helpless.This was a papacy proud of its cultural inheritance and hanging on to it when foreign buyers wanted to buy much of it up. During the 1730s Clement XII issued anti-export decrees, restored the Arch of Constantine, and opened the Capitoline Museum in the Palazzo Nuovo (with the Albani Collection as its centerpiece) to the public and young artists. The museum was largely paid for by the re-establishment of the lottery in 1732. In chapter 4 Johns considers the museum's expansion in subsequent decades, with Benedict XIV again emerging foremost as a pope at the center of many artistic and patronage networks, most of them converging on his retreat in the Quirinal gardens where the Caffeaus, his garden casino and coffee house, became a foremost place of homosocial exchange in the city. Benedict's predecessor, Clement XII, had, in his own right, set the pace as a patron. …