Ringling by Weeks David C

Author:Weeks, David C. [Weeks, David C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 1993-04-04T05:00:00+00:00

The great bronze doors of the William Astor home, New York. Ringling purchased the doors for the front entrance to his art museum. American Art Association auction catalog, April 1926.

The documentation of the two salons remains incomplete. The Astor mansion was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, known for his ostentatious taste. The southwest regency salon—richest of all in the great house—contained walls, mirrors, and over-door painted canvases provided by Jules Allard et Fils of Paris and New York. The marble fireplace was sold separately but the leaf-scrolled over-mantel mirror with “J.J.A.” medallion cresting was included. The walls were finished in cream lacquer, embellished with gilded molding, hand-carved rococo medallions, and festoons of flowers and trailing ribbons. Each panel was further decorated with festooned shell motifs, strap carving, and trophies of arrows.35 The arrows, echoing the Rothschild symbol of bunched arrows, are an example of efforts to emulate what had become known as “le gout Rothschild.”36

The southeast salon was paneled in dark oak with parcel gilt decoration, a gilded molding, and hand-carved shell, leaf scroll, and floral ornament. The room was originally Colonel J. J. Astor’s dining room. When Astor renovated in 1910 and added a new marble-walled dining room, the original became a library. The eighteenth-century Dutch arcadian scenic canvases on the wall panels were removed, and the walls were hung with tapestries and portraits.37 When the room was installed at the museum, Ringling had the canvases remounted on all the panels. Although he bought an oval ceiling painting from a third salon, Ringling never had it installed in the museum.38

Ringling emerged from the Astor sale as probably the most successful buyer, and without question the biggest spender. Although he had not abandoned his plan for the Ritz Carlton, he was starting to think of transferring some of his hopes, and his art objects, from the keys to the mainland and his planned memorial. He went once more to Europe that summer of 1926, buying more columns and fragments, though he must have known that the Ritz Carlton was destined to become a huge, ungainly liability that could not be saved. While in Genoa he found a small Rubens, Head of a Monk (now considered studio work), and Fra Bartolomeo’s Holy Family and the Infant Saint John (now ascribed to Mario Albertinelli with little of Bartolomeo’s work).

On his return journey Ringling stopped again in London. There he bought an important work, Francesco Granacci’s The Assumption of the Virgin. The Virgin, borne aloft by angels, lowers the Santissima Cintola (“sacred sash”) to the hand of Saint Thomas, who is one of a number of saints and apostles at the tomb.39 The Granacci held special interest because Giorgio Vasari, a Florentine biographer who sometimes made doubtful assertions, describes and praises the picture at length, suggesting that Granacci’s friend and colleague Michelangelo perhaps had a hand in the kneeling figure of St. Thomas. Both artists were pupils of Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Vasari’s suggestion carries a measure of plausibility, though he cites no evidence other than the quality of the work.

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