Giorgio Vasari’s Adoration of the Shepherds had been housed in the museum’s Elvehjem building since the museum opened as the Elvehjem Art Center in 1970. But it had to be moved to prepare for a two-year exterior renovation project that’s now underway.

“Since we were moving it, we decided it would be a good time to replace the frame,” said Chazen Chief Curator Katherine Alcauskas. “We didn’t think the old frame presented the work in its best light. It was not entirely period-appropriate, and we wanted the artwork to really shine.”

Shine it does: the custom-designed frame was executed in a minimalist Renaissance style by Rhonda Feinman Custom Frames of New York, one of the few shops in the United States specializing in period-correct gold-leaf frames for large works. Generous support for the frame was provided by the Ida and William Rosenthal Foundation with special thanks to Catherine and Robert Brawer.

The work

Vasari painted Adoration of the Shepherds 452 years ago on an arch-topped, two-inch-thick wood panel of several joined planks, altogether measuring nearly six by 12 feet. Originally commissioned by the nuns of Santo Stefano in Pane, Italy, the painting was displayed in the parish church for centuries before passing through a number of owners, including Napoleon’s half-uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch. Heirs of art dealer Henry Reinhardt and 32 UW–Madison alumni donated the work to the university in 1923. The work is among only a few by Vasari in the United States and is even more rare because it’s an altarpiece.

The work’s age and construction means it must be handled with extreme care. Renaissance artisans built the painting panel by joining wooden planks at the edges with dowels, butterfly joints, and glue. Because of its construction and age, the work lost paint over the centuries at the joints, as the planks swelled and contracted due to temperature and humidity fluctuations. These had been repaired in prior conservation campaigns but remained fragile.

For most of its time on campus, Adoration of the Shepherds hung in a stair landing of the State Historical Library, a building with poor climate control. In 1969, a library renovation project forced the work to be placed in temporary storage in Bascom Hall. In the summer of 1970, museum officials brought two conservators from Boston to campus to restore the painting, one of at least a half-dozen documented restoration efforts over the years. When UW–Madison finally opened the Elvehjem Art Center as a home for its art collection in 1970, the altarpiece was one of the center’s first exhibitions.

The move

Alcauskas said she was hired at the Chazen in part to help drive a museum-wide rethinking and reinstallation of its permanent collection. She had already been thinking about a better place for “Adoration” in that context. “I thought it would make sense to move that painting to the Chazen building because the ceiling is a little higher. In the Elvehjem, it just seemed so squished in,” she said.

Plans to move the several-hundred-pound artwork started in February 2022, when Chazen leaders first realized the Elvehjem building would need to be emptied for the extensive renovation project. Adoration of the Shepherds was among nearly 900 works to be relocated.

Kate Wanberg, the Chazen’s exhibition and collection project manager, said the Vasari was one of the few artworks she hadn’t moved in her long tenure at the museum. “We didn’t really have good documentation on how the frame was originally attached to the wall. It just felt intimidating. I thought ‘oh no, what are we going to do? Is the glue going to hold up? How stable is everything?’”

The Chazen contracted with the Midwest Art Conservation Center of Minneapolis to analyze the work’s mounting and stability, to confirm that it would need to be moved, and inform plans for the move itself. It then contracted with Materials & Methods, an art handling and rigging company, to further assess and execute the move.

Moving the Vasari was a carefully orchestrated two-day process in October. Chazen prep team staff worked with staff from Methods & Materials to strategize, remove the existing frame, prepare the painting, and customize a dolly and carrying cradle used for transport.

Once the painting was detached from the wall, the movers and Chazen staff lifted it off its base in a series of short moves before setting it into the cradle, which was pitched at an angle on a four-wheel dolly. With Chazen staff members following, three movers handled the dolly, wheeling it steadily through the museum from Gallery 2 to Gallery 16, while a fourth served as spotter, scanning for low ceilings and floor imperfections.

Everyone got very quiet at a tight spot on the bridge between the Elvehjem and Chazen buildings. “There was an inch and a half clearance,” one of the movers quipped with bravado as it cleared the space, to laughter from observers.

Wanberg said the clearance was less of a worry because they’d already done measurements. “I was worried the rolling would open up gaps between the panels and crack the paint surface. I was like, ‘please don’t crack the paint. Please don’t crack the paint,” she said. Once in Gallery 16, movers hoisted the Vasari from the cradle and inched it on to its new pedestal.

Midwest Art Conservation Center staff returned to assess the work after the move and found that the painting’s surface was completely intact. “It is considerably more stable than we anticipated,” Wanberg said. “It doesn’t mean it’s not fragile, but it is stable.”

The frame

Realizing the Vasari’s new home in the Chazen building meant it would be closer to contemporary works, curatorial staff researched Renaissance-period frame styles that were less ornate. Working with the framing installer, The Conservation Center of Chicago, they reviewed several cross-section samples of the frames, complete with gold leaf finish, where a challenge presented itself.

Frames finished in gold leaf typically have a tinted clay underlayer known as the bole. Often the bole is a hue of red, but Chazen staff thought the samples with a red bole clashed with the painting’s warm color palette. The solution: the frame’s inner molding was finished with a neutral black bole, providing enough separation from the red bole of the rest of the frame. The frame was designed with a step element at its base to hint at the artwork’s origin as an altarpiece.

The fragility and size of the work meant it was impractical to ship it to the frame builder, as is common with smaller works. So the frame was designed and built “blind”–that is, completely from detailed measurements, without having access to the artwork.

On March 20, staff from The Conservation Center brought the brilliant frame to the Chazen and installed it, with support from Chazen preparation staff. It was a painstaking, hours-long process of raising the 150-pound frame, inching it closer and closer to the painting until it touched, noticing gaps, marking and taking measurements, lowering it back to the floor, and shaving the frame’s back and inset with cold chisels and hammers.

Scott Dietrich, senior conservation framer, and Suz Evans, conservation picture framer, carved and shaved the inside of the frame where it touched the painting and checked the fit repeatedly. The painting’s uneven, slightly warped plane made the process challenging. Power tools might have been more efficient, but maybe too efficient, Dietrich said. “You could maybe use a router, but one slip with that and you’re done.” Artisans using hand tools and generating piles of curly shavings seemed fitting for the framing of a late Renaissance work.

With the frame’s back sculpted to perfectly match the painting’s contours, Chazen staff raised the frame, inched it to its final resting place against the panel, and secured it. Adoration of the Shepherds now resides in the Chazen’s Gallery 16, which presents other gold-framed Renaissance-era works against walls of deep blue-green.

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Martyl (American, 1917–2013), Santa Fe Snow (Los Alamos), n.d., oil on hardboard, 19 7/8 x 26 in., Bequest of Alexander and Henrietta W. Hollaender, 1991.636

Since we are already experiencing snow in Madison, here is a snowy painting from the Chazen collection. Martyl Schweig Langsdorf painted this modernist scene of snow in Los Alamos, New Mexico, probably in the 1960s. Martyl accompanied her husband, the physicist Alexander Langsdorf, on many of his travels. Los Alamos was the site of a classified research laboratory built as part of the Manhattan Project and this painting may represent part of the lab or “secret city” built to house scientists and their families.

Alexander worked for the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear bomb. He was one of the scientists who petitioned the president asking him not to use the bomb against Japan, fearing its destructive powers.

Martyl is probably best known for creating the Doomsday Clock image for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947. The Doomsday Clock remains a symbol that warns the public how close humans are to destroying the world through dangerous technologies.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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Charles Sprague Pearce (American,1851-1914), The Shawl, ca. 1895-1900, oil on canvas, 81 x 42 in., Art Collections Fund and Elvehjem Museum of Art Membership Fund purchase, 1985.2.

Happy birthday to Charles Sprague Pearce, who was born on this day in 1851. Pearce is the artist of “The Shawl,” one of my favorite American paintings in the Chazen collection. “The Shawl” represents the artist’s wife, Antonia, and it was exhibited at the Universal Exposition of 1900 in Paris. The US State Department sponsored the American art display and chose artworks by leading American artists that they believed represented the best of American character and civilization. Pearce was an expatriate living in France. Antonia was French and had been one of his art students before their marriage. Pearce depicted his wife as a sophisticated woman with a confident attitude. I personally am drawn to her assertiveness and assured pose, hardly the image of a quiet, reserved woman like many of the other paintings of women exhibited in the American display at the Exposition.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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William Beechey (English, 1753–1839), Portrait of Sir Thomas Littledale of Rotterdam (1744–1809), before 1797, oil on canvas, 30 ¼ x 25 in., University Fund purchase, 67.10.1.

Lately, I have been spending a lot of time working on the upcoming re:mancipation exhibition, which opens in February. When you visit the exhibition, you will see a number of familiar artworks that are typically displayed in the same permanent collection gallery as Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Group. Hopefully, you will view these works in a new light after seeing re:mancipation.

One of these works is the portrait of Sir Thomas Littledale, which has been in the Chazen’s collection since 1967. Like most of the other portrait subjects in the gallery, Littledale benefited from slavery. Littledale was born into a merchant family in Whitehaven, an English port city with strong ties to the American colonies. Many of his relatives were slave traders and involved in the West Indies trade.

Littledale established a successful merchant house in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He was particularly prominent in the tobacco trade, importing tobacco from Virginia and Maryland where it was cultivated on plantations by enslaved laborers.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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Frans Jansz. Post (Dutch, ca. 1612–1680), Village of Olinda, Brazil, ca. 1660, oil on canvas, 32 ½ x 51 ½ in., gift of Charles R. Crane, 13.1.16

One of the paintings that interests me most in the Chazen collection is Village of Olinda, Brazil by the Dutch artist Frans Jansz. Post. In 1636, Post traveled to the Dutch colony of northeast Brazil in the entourage of its governor, Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen. The artists and naturalists who traveled with Maurits were commissioned to document the landscapes, plants, animals, and daily life. In the foreground of the painting, Post included highly detailed depictions of plants and animals, including an anteater, satisfying the Dutch interest in the foreign flora and fauna. In fact, botanists have identified all the plants represented in the painting.

The plants and animals serve as a foreground framing device, or repoussoir, intended to lead the viewer’s eye into the composition. Here, the viewer is guided to see the village of Olinda populated by groups of enslaved Africans, most of whom seem to be enjoying leisure time. Olinda was a center of sugarcane production, which involved backbreaking labor to harvest and process the sugarcane for export. Enslaved Africans, forcibly brought to Brazil by European traders, labored on the plantations and mills. However, there is no trace of hard labor in this scene. Instead, the enslaved figures nearly become a part of the landscape as they dance and walk, lacking the individual features that characterize the plants and animals in the foreground. Their presence is therefore “naturalized” as Post portrays Brazil as a peaceful, bountiful colony. It is important to think about how aesthetically pleasing paintings and landscapes like this one contributed to the European and Euro-American rationalization for slavery and the slave trade.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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John Steuart Curry (American, 1897–1946), An All-American (Forward Pass), 1941, mixed media on canvas mounted to hardboard, 41 x 31 in., gift of Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, transfer from the Wisconsin Athletics Department, 2013.8.

It’s football season! John Steuart Curry, UW-Madison’s first artist-in-residence, painted this composition, originally titled Forward Pass, for Abbott Laboratories to use as a magazine cover in 1941. Badger football player David Schreiner was the model for the primary figure. He is represented catching a forward pass near the goal line during a football game at Camp Randall. Curry was a sports fan himself, and he captured the energy of a football game, including the mass of spectators who are just a blur in the stands.

Schreiner was a two-time All-American and played for Wisconsin during the 1940, 1941, and 1942 seasons. He led the team to an 8-1-1 record in 1942 (defeating the no. 1 ranked Ohio State 17-7) and was a 1943 draft choice of the Detroit Lions. Instead of joining the NFL, Schreiner enlisted in the marines and was killed in action in 1945 during World War II.

Following Schreiner’s death, Curry suggested to Abbott Laboratories that they give the painting to the UW–Madison to hang in their new trophy room. The school, with Curry’s blessing, renamed the painting An All-American in honor of Schreiner. The painting was transferred to the Chazen Museum of Art in 2013 after it was rediscovered in storage.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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Carl G. Hill (American, b. Trinidad and Tobago, ca. 1911–1943), Untitled (CIO), 1937–1942, lithograph, 8 7/8 x 6 ¾ in. image, gift of David Prosser, 2021.45.45.

This ca. 1937–1942 lithograph by Carl G. Hill celebrates unions and their ability to bring workers together. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was an American labor organization founded in the 1930s that organized laborers by industry (rather than craft, which favored skilled workers and differentiated them from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the other major federation of unions).

The CIO grew rapidly during the Great Depression. Notably, the CIO included Black laborers in their organizing activity. The two men in this image are represented as noble figures with stylized features. The visible hand holding a tool highlighted in a way to create the letter “I” appears quite large, a reminder of the importance of manual labor.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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William Keith (American, b. Scotland, 1838-1911), “Mokelumne River, High Sierras,” ca. 1870s, oil on wood panel, 21 ¾ x 26 ½ in., gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Goodman, 1995.66.

Yet artist William Keith’s painting of the river from the 1870s reveals no human interference or signs of the ecological devastation in the region. Instead, the emphasis is on the vitality of the river and the majestic mountains in the distance. This scene would have pleased his California patrons, many of whom were involved in the railroad industry, which had benefited from the population surge of the Gold Rush and the subsequent national desire to build a transcontinental railroad. These railroad barons encouraged western settlement and tourism, leading to further environmental impacts in the region as Americans took trains into the mountains to see sights like the one pictured here.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Still Life: Flowering Branches in a Mason Jar, 1904, watercolor and graphite on paper mounted on wood pulp board, 20 ¼ x 14 1/8 in., gift of Hermine Sauthoff Davidson, 1981.29

Georgia O’Keeffe is best known for her vibrant, modernist paintings of New Mexico and enlarged flowers. However, this quiet but beautiful still life of flowering fruit branches is from very early in her artistic career.

O’Keeffe was born and raised in Sun Prairie and after her family moved to Virginia, she returned to visit her aunts in Madison during the summer. According to the donor, O’Keeffe gave this watercolor to the donor’s father, who worked at the local Moseley’s bookstore (formerly located on Mifflin Street) and displayed some of O’Keeffe’s paintings for sale.

Careful observers may notice that the signature on the front of the watercolor spells O’Keeffe’s name incorrectly. When the Chazen (formerly the Elvehjem Museum of Art) acquired the watercolor in 1981, O’Keeffe confirmed that she painted it but suggested that perhaps it was an early student work that was signed by a teacher, or perhaps someone in the bookstore or donor’s family signed it to record the artist.

—Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art

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Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797 -1858), Chronicle of Great Peace: Battle of Mochi and Sake, Buy More and More!(太平喜餅酒多多買), ca. 1845, color woodcut, bequest of John H. Van Vleck, 1980.2204a-c

Coke vs. Pepsi. Android vs. iPhone. Sake vs. mochi? I recently encountered this whimsical battle between sake (rice wine) and mochi (rice-paste cakes) by Utagawa Hiroshige, who is celebrated more often for his picturesque landscapes than for parodies of Japanese culture. In this color woodcut, however, sake barrels and bottles form a horde of samurai warriors clashing with an army of sweet confections in fancy packaging. The print’s title (in the top center yellow cartouche) includes a witty pun alluding to a famous martial epic of Japanese literature (Chronicle of the Great Peace) while also declaring a mochi and sake price war and encouraging viewers to “buy more and more!” The banners and labels scattered among the combatants advertise varieties of confectionary and famous brands of sake. Perhaps the “great peace” will come when buyers realize that good food and fine drink are best consumed together.

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#chazenworksonpaper #chazenprints #japaneseart #colorwoodcut #hiroshige #sake #mochi #vanvleckcurator #artprints

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