Not Your Average Joan

Above: Antonin Mercié (French, 1845-1916), Jeanne d'Arc, 1875-1900, The Art Institute of Chicago, George F. Harding Collection, 2014.653

One of the commonest questions I get about armor is whether women ever wore it. In general, the answer is no, but there was one very famous exception. When Joan of Arc set out with the French army to rescue the country from the English invaders, she was given a suit of armor that must have saved her life many times over—she was always in the thick of battle, and was seriously injured several times.

Many artists over the centuries have been drawn to the image of the armored Joan. This month, Antonin Mercié’s gilt bronze bust of the warrior saint joined our Knights! exhibition to remind us that even in the Middle Ages, a woman might become a hero.

Joan is on loan to us from The Art Institute of Chicago for a year. As it happens, this almost exactly how long her meteoric military career lasted before she was captured and sold to her English enemies—but not before she had turned the tide of the Hundred Years’ War.

Learn more about KNIGHTS!

- Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Curator of Arms & Armor and Medieval Art

The Real Helmutt is here!!!

Pictured above: Armor for a boar hound, 1942, in the style of the 1500s, 2014.84.2

Like most good things, it was worth the wait. Helmutt, the dog is once again wagging his tail and showing off his armor at the Worcester Art Museum. Based on an original in the Spanish Royal Armory, this armor for a hunting dog was crafted by Leonard Heinrich, armorer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Heinrich gave it to John Woodman Higgins in 1943, and for seven decades, Helmutt welcomed visitors to the Higgins Armory Museum.

Helmutt, the armor-wearing dog inspired WAM’s comic version of Helmutt and Helmutt’s House in Knights! Families can enjoy visiting the “real” Helmutt in the Lancaster Lobby, explore Helmutt’s House in Knights!, and then see how many more Helmutts they can find throughout the galleries.

Learn more about Helmutt!

- Marcia Lagerwey, Curator of Education

A Screen for the New Year

Above: Kano̅ School, Edo period (1615-1868), early to mid-17th century; Six-panel folding screen; mineral pigments, ink, and gold leaf on paper; Stoddard Acquisition Fund, 2012.97

Come celebrate the New Year at the Worcester Art Museum by taking in the beautiful 17th c. Japanese screen, entitled A Screen for the New Year: Pines and Plum Blossoms, now on view in the Japanese Gallery through May 3rd. The screen combines gold leaf with layers of delicately applied paint to create this sumptuous forest scene in subtle relief. If you look closely, you can even see individually painted pine needles!

In preparation for its display, I closely examined the surface of the screen to stabilize pinpoint areas of flaking or insecure paint. The screen is now in stable condition, and a delight to enjoy!

Read more about A Screen for the New Year: Pines and Plum Blossoms

 - Eliza Spaulding, Paper Conservator

"Bacchus" travels to Washington, DC and Florence, Italy

Above: The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus, c. 1490, Piero Di Cosimo, Italian, oil on panel, Museum purchase, 1937.76

As news spreads of Raphael’s Renaissance masterpiece, The Small Cowper Madonna, arriving at the Worcester Art Museum on loan from the National Gallery of Art, some may be interested to know that there is a related story of a Renaissance masterpiece temporarily departing from Worcester’s collection. The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus, the much loved and highly imaginative painting by Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522), will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, scheduled to run from February 1 – May 3 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition will then travel to the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy where it will be on display from June 23–September 27.

In preparation for this major exhibition that is being billed as a ‘once in a lifetime Piero di Cosimo retrospective’, I recently spent considerable time in the museum’s conservation department treating the painting to improve its appearance and ensure its safe travel. The treatment included selective removal of upper layers of synthetic varnish that had developed a hazy appearance since their application in 1971 and 1985. An underlying thin layer of natural resin varnish was left in place and a new conservation-grade varnish was applied in order to achieve the proper saturation and surface sheen. The treatment also included inpainting minor losses and past retouches that had discolored. By reducing the visual impact of the losses and discolored retouches, viewers can now appreciate more fully the illusion of depth, form, and clarity of detail achieved by the artist.

In addition to the conservation treatment, museum preparator Trevor Toney worked with the conservation department to equip the painting with a sealed climate chamber to ensure that proper preservation conditions be maintained throughout its travels. The appearance of this treasured and important painting is now much improved and the painting is certain to be a highlight while on exhibit at the NGA, the Uffizi, and again at WAM upon its return in the fall of 2015.

Learn more about The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus

- Philip Klausmeyer, Conservation Scientist and Paintings Conservator

access magazine redesign

We hope you enjoy the newly re-designed issue of access magazine. After seven issues over the course of two years, we thought it was time for a “re-fresh.”  Our aim was to create a more organized look that pushed collection and exhibition imagery to the foreground, while keeping the design contemporary and unobtrusive. We hope the design changes make access more accessible visually and informationally. 

The re-design includes:

• A table of contents 

• Improved legibility with a simpler grid structure

• More white space to make artwork from the collection really “pop”

• Reduced number of fonts, continuing to feature Arial (ubiquitous web font / referencing tech)

• An overall look and feel that is contemporary, yet timeless 

• A special, pull-out insert, which uses our new mascot, Helmutt, to engage kids and families in WAM exhibitions

Click here to view a digital copy of the Winter issue of access magazine

- Kim Noonan, Publication and Graphic Design Manager

Armormaking the way you never imagined it

I’m delighted to report that the Museum has just acquired a first-edition copy of Politura Armorum (Polishing Armor), plate 17 from the series Nova Reperta (Modern Discoveries), dating to the 1580s. The series celebrates inventions and other discoveries made after the fall of ancient Rome, and its contents range from windmills and gunpowder to oil painting and stirrups. The designs were created by Jan van der Straet, a Netherlander who relocated to Italy to design tapestries and wall-paintings for wealthy clients (who knew him by his Latinized name Johannes Stradanus). Stradanus kept his professional contacts in Antwerp, sending copies of his designs to colleagues who could render them as copperplate engravings for the mass market.

Today we imagine armor being made by a lone craftsman at his forge, but armormaking was actually an industrialized process by the 1500s. Polishing Armor shows water-powered grinding and polishing wheels, churning out mass-produced armor components for the ever-growing armies of the early modern age. The legend reads “Polishing Armor: Swords, axes, all the arms of war, are polished nowadays, but were not in Antiquity.” The print is one of surprisingly few realistic representations of the making of armor in the period, and therefore an excellent addition to the arms and armor of the Higgins collection.

- Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Curator of Arms & Armor and Medieval Art

New Acquisitions – 2014

This past calendar year was quite the whirlwind for the Registrar’s office. Most notably, we packed, catalogued and transferred about 2,000 objects from the John Woodman Higgins Collection. We also were kept busy with various loans associated with the Knights! exhibition and other gallery rotations. So the day to day operations of our department had to keep going throughout the Higgins Armory collection transfer!

It should not surprise anyone that aside from receiving the arms and armor collection, we had active acquisitions in our other curatorial departments of Contemporary, Asian and PDP.

Some of these objects are now on view, such as Andy Warhol’s Red Book #136 (2014.625) located in Gallery 321. This Red Book consists of twenty (20) Polaroid photographs taken around 1972 of individuals associated in the life of Andy Warhol. All of the prints are currently on display along with the actual Red Book.

 If you would like to see what else we acquired during the year 2014, we have created a collection to view online. In this online collection, all of the objects are displayed with images. Which ones are you most excited to see on display?

Click here view New Acquisitions – 2014

- Sarah Gillis Assistant Registrar, Image Management