Photographs of sculpture: Greek slave’s ‘complex polyphony’, 1847 - 1877

This article explores some of the representations, iterations, and appearances of Hiram Powers’s Greek Slave in London in the decades after its first exhibition in 1845, years in which a variety of new ‘engines of the fine arts’ were fuelling a widening market for art objects of all kinds, and popular culture could turn statues into celebrities appearing everywhere — exhibitions, photographers’ studios, newspapers, tableau-vivant shows, even confectionery shops. The article’s focus is on how sculpture was used in the reception and understanding of photography as a new medium of reproduction, and how the materiality of specific photographic ‘objects’ — daguerreotypes, paper prints, and stereographs — interacted with that of sculpture to affect the viewer, at a time when sculptural objects themselves blurred the boundaries between original and reproduction. The article ends with an analysis of stereoscopic cards of Greek Slave, as the first photographic reproductions that could really compete with wood engravings and statuettes in the dissemination and circulation of statues, arguing for their pleasurable interactivity as key to their success

The Greek slave and photography in Britain

This essay explores some of the photographs of Hiram Powers’s Greek Slave sculpture taken and/or circulated in Britain in the nineteenth century. The statue’s popularity at the time makes it an effective case study through which to evaluate the early successes and failures of photography as a means of reproducing works of sculpture in the years before photographs could be efficiently printed in books and magazines through halftone reprographic techniques. As a visual essay, this piece invites the reader to look at the photographs as such—to focus on their materiality as objects made from various combinations of silver, metal, paper, leather, and card. In discussing the particular qualities of photographs in the form of daguerreotypes, calotypes, and stereoscopic slides, we will also see how these techniques allow for an experience that cannot be fully conveyed by their later reproductions

Spectrum of mutations in Italian patients with familial hypercholesterolemia: New results from the LIPIGEN study

Background Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is an autosomal dominant disease characterized by elevated plasma levels of LDL-cholesterol that confers an increased risk of premature atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Early identification and treatment of FH patients can improve prognosis and reduce the burden of cardiovascular mortality. Aim of this study was to perform the mutational analysis of FH patients identified through a collaboration of 20 Lipid Clinics in Italy (LIPIGEN Study). Methods We recruited 1592 individuals with a clinical diagnosis of definite or probable FH according to the Dutch Lipid Clinic Network criteria. We performed a parallel sequencing of the major candidate genes for monogenic hypercholesterolemia (LDLR, APOB, PCSK9, APOE, LDLRAP1, STAP1). Results A total of 213 variants were detected in 1076 subjects. About 90% of them had a pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants. More than 94% of patients carried pathogenic variants in LDLR gene, 27 of which were novel. Pathogenic variants in APOB and PCSK9 were exceedingly rare. We found 4 true homozygotes and 5 putative compound heterozygotes for pathogenic variants in LDLR gene, as well as 5 double heterozygotes for LDLR/APOB pathogenic variants. Two patients were homozygous for pathogenic variants in LDLRAP1 gene resulting in autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia. One patient was found to be heterozygous for the ApoE variant p.(Leu167del), known to confer an FH phenotype. Conclusions This study shows the molecular characteristics of the FH patients identified in Italy over the last two years. Full phenotypic characterization of these patients and cascade screening of family members is now in progress

Familial hypercholesterolemia: The Italian Atherosclerosis Society Network (LIPIGEN)

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Primary dyslipidemias are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by abnormal levels of circulating lipoproteins. Among them, familial hypercholesterolemia is the most common lipid disorder that predisposes for premature cardiovascular disease. We set up an Italian nationwide network aimed at facilitating the clinical and genetic diagnosis of genetic dyslipidemias named LIPIGEN (LIpid TransPort Disorders Italian GEnetic Network). METHODS: Observational, multicenter, retrospective and prospective study involving about 40 Italian clinical centers. Genetic testing of the appropriate candidate genes at one of six molecular diagnostic laboratories serving as nationwide DNA diagnostic centers. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: From 2012 to October 2016, available biochemical and clinical information of 3480 subjects with familial hypercholesterolemia identified according to the Dutch Lipid Clinic Network (DLCN) score were included in the database and genetic analysis was performed in 97.8% of subjects, with a mutation detection rate of 92.0% in patients with DLCN score 656. The establishment of the LIPIGEN network will have important effects on clinical management and it will improve the overall identification and treatment of primary dyslipidemias in Italy

Photography and sculpture: a light touch

Book synopsis: Should sight trump the other four senses when experiencing and evaluating art? Art, History and the Senses: 1830 to the Present questions whether the authority of the visual in 'visual culture' should be deconstructed, and focuses on the roles of touch, taste, smell, and sound in the materiality of works of art. From the nineteenth century onward, notions of synaesthesia and the multi-sensorial were important to a series of art movements from Symbolism to Futurism and Installations. The essays in this collection evaluate works of art at specific moments in their history, and consider how senses other than the visual have (or have not) affected the works' meaning. The result is a re-evaluation of sensory knowledge and experience in the arts, encouraging a new level of engagement with ideas of style and form

Sculptural photographs from the Calotype to digital technologies

This is the first monographic study of the role played by sculpture at key moments in the history of photography. Over a handful of closely analysed case studies, spanning the life of photography from its inception to the present, this book shows how, as well as photogenic subject matter or commercial opportunity, sculpture has provided a model to conceptualize photography as an art of mechanical reproduction. Clearly and accessibly written with a rare attention to the significance of the materiality of the photograph – technical, visual and tactile – this book makes us look again at some well-known photographs from the history of photography, and rediscover some of the forgotten ‘greatest hits’ from the past

Photocollage, fun, and flirtations

Human heads on animal bodies, people in fanciful landscapes, faces that are deftly morphed into common household objects - these are among the Victorian experiments in photo collage seen and explained in this marvelous book. With sharp wit and dramatic shifts of scale, these images flouted the serious conventions of photography in the 1860s and 1870s. Often made by women for albums, they reveal the educated minds and accomplished hands of their makers, taking on the new theory of evolution, addressing the changing role of photography, and challenging the strict conventions of aristocratic society. Although these photo collages may seem wonderfully odd to us now, the authors argue that they are actually perfectly in keeping with the Victorian sensibility that embraced juxtaposition and variety. This delightful book, the first to examine comprehensively the little-known phenomenon of Victorian photo collage, presents imagery that has rarely - and, in many cases, never - been displayed or reproduced. Illuminating text provides a history of Victorian photo collage albums, identifies the common motifs found in them, and demonstrates the distinctly modern character of the medium, which paved the way for the future avant-garde potential of both photography and collage

Mrs Birkbeck's Album: The Hand-written and the Printed in Early Nineteenth-Century Feminine Culture

Mrs Birkbeck's Album, collected between 1825 and 1847 by the wife of the founder of the College, contains poems, songs and other texts, as well as drawings and watercolours by famous women and men of her time. Like the collections that aristocratic women were able to spread over galleries and libraries, the album formed and displayed her taste, showcasing her husband's reputation and the cultural and political circles in which the couple moved. Several contributors to her album also worked for annuals, fashionable publications associated with a debased, commercialised feminine culture. Unlike these mechanically produced pages, Mrs Birkbeck's album, marked by individual hands rather than by printing presses, is the result of gift exchanges, removed from the world of commodified culture, even as it partakes of its glamour. Recent publications have explored the emergence of women's magazines, but little consideration has been given to album making. In this paper I explore the social meanings of Mrs Birkbeck's interest in albums. To facilitate a close reading of its individual pages, I am working towards digitising the album, in collaboration with Birkbeck Library and the Vasari Lab in the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media

Sculpture, photograph, book: the sculptures of Picasso (1949)

Book synopsis: The photograph found a home in the book before it won for itself a place on the gallery wall. Only a few years after the birth of photography, the publication of Henry Fox Talbot's "The Pencil of Nature" heralded a new genre in the history of the book, one in which the photograph was the primary vehicle of expression and communication, or stood in equal if sometimes conflicted partnership with the written word. In this book, practicing photographers and writers across several fields of scholarship share a range of fresh approaches to reading the photobook, developing new ways of understanding how meaning is shaped by an image's interaction with its text and context and engaging with the visual, tactile and interactive experience of the photobook in all its dimensions. Through close studies of individual works, the photobook from fetishised objet d'art to cheaply-printed booklet is explored and its unique creative and cultural contributions celebrated

Elizabeth Thompson and ‘Patsy’ Cornwallis West as Carte-de-visite celebrities

This essay places Elizabeth Thompson's (later Lady Butler, 1846–1933) sensational success at the 1874 Royal Academy exhibition, and the negotiations over the sale of copyrights of her work, in the context of an art world being reconfigured by the commercialisation and the commodification of images, including those by and of women. It shows how photography – in particular, carte-de-visite portraits of artists – played an important role in this burgeoning market, and in the new laws required to regulate it. It uses the later example of Mary (‘Patsy’) Cornwallis West (née Fitzpatrick, 1858–1920) to illuminate Thompson's unease at being photographed; the confusion concerning copyright laws and the sale of photographic portraits to the public; and the ambivalent fascination of the time with photographs of women celebrities as ‘professional beauties’