James Gillray (1757-1815), The Fall of Icarus, April 20, 1807. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.01485. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown ’95. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/9p290943w

Have you ever taken a pad of paper or an extra pen from your office? When Lord Temple, later Buckingham*, left office in 1807, he was accused of taking with him large quantities of stationery. What might be a minor infraction was highlighted and repeated by caricaturists over many years so whenever you saw a picture of Buckingham, he was usually carrying a hoard of paper and pens.

In the print above, The Fall of Icarus, we see Lord Temple, winged and naked, attempting to fly after his father but like Icarus, his wings are disintegrating. The dropping feathers are shaped like quill pens and splattered with red sealing wax. We anticipate him landing on a stake of public opinion, inscribed “Stake out of Public-Hedge!” George III, as the sun, is looking severely down at Temple, causing the wax of Temple’s wings to melt. In the lower right, a servant hands off packages inscribed ‘Stationary Office’, with paper and bundles of pens.

‘In former days the Poet sings,
An Artist skill’d and rare
Of Wax and Feathers form’d his Wings
And made a famous pair –
With which from Precipice or Tower
From Hill or highest Trees,
When work’d by his mechanic power
He could descend with ease, –
Why T-p-e then wants such a store
You surely ask in vain? –
A moment of reflection more
Will make the matter plain,
With Plumes & Wax, & such like things
In quantities not small
He tries to make a pair of Wings
To ease his sudden Fall! – ‘

*Richard Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (1776-1839), also known as Lord Temple, also known as Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos Grenville; also known as Buckingham. Elder son of George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st marquess of Buckingham. Not to be confused with George Nugent Temple Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham (1753-1813), son of the prime minister George Grenville, succeeded his uncle Richard Temple as third Earl Temple and prefixed the names Nugent-Temple to his surname; created Marquess of Buckingham.

Here are a few more prints scolding Temple (Buckingham) for stealing stationery:

Detail
James Gillray (1757-1815), Overthrow of the Republican-Babel, May 1, 1809. Hand colored etching. British Museum

The Tower of Babel is here represented by bundles of documents tied by tricolour ribbon, culminating in the allegations of Mrs. Clarke against the Duke of York. …The ladder is the Broad-Bottom Ladder of Ambition [coalition formed between Charles James Fox and Lord North]. Temple has broken the lower rungs and lies on his back, his legs in the air. He has dropped large stacks of Foolscap [what we call legal size] paper for Broad Bottom and Stationary from the Paymasters For Attacks on Ministry, with pens, sealing-wax, … Dorothy George adds: “Temple did not belong to the extreme wing of the Whigs, represented by Whitbread and Folkestone, though he was a supporter of Wardle. His presence may be due to the canard about his pilfering of stationery…”

Attributed to Charles Williams (active 1796-1830), The Fall of the Temple; – of Rome, April 20, 1807. Hand colored etching. British Museum.

Here we see Lord Temple with a bloody nose, scrambling to collect the bales of stationery, pens, sealing wax, scissors, ink pots and other writing materials he dropped. He says; “God and Innocency Defend and Guard us!!”– Buckingham Richd. III.

Samuel De Wilde (1751–1832), [All the Talents Dismissed], February 1, 1808. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection.

John Bull (George III), has risen from his chair of state to overthrow Grenville’s Ministry, while the new Ministers are grouped on the left Behind and above him, Britannia sits enthroned, flanked by pillars; she holds her shield and angrily points with her staff at the ex-Ministers, who are also assailed by missiles. …. In the foreground on the extreme right. Temple crouches over a pile of stationery and pens.

By the way, if you look closely at the Gillray print “The Fall of Icarus” at the top, you will notice that the date at the bottom is slightly smeared. For many years, the main sources of information about Gillray listed it as April 28, 1807 but contemporary research has corrected that to read April 20, 1807.

The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist: with the story of his life and times / edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A. F.S.A. (London: Chatto and Windus, [1873]). Graphic Arts Collection Oversize Rowlandson 989.2q

Mercurius Pre Ceteris Huic Fauste Emporiis Illustro = I, Mercury, Shine favorably on this market that surpasses all others

Jacopo de’ Barbari (ca. 1460/70–before 1516), View of Venice, 1500. Published in Venice by Anton Kolb. Woodcut from six blocks on six sheets of paper. 153.35 x 300.04 cm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_Venice#/media/File:Clevelandart_1949.565.jpg

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/111219/view-of-venice-jacopo-de-barbari

http://gigapan.com/gigapans/166926

One of the landmark woodcuts of the renaissance is Jacopo de’ Barbari’s bird’s-eye view of Venice, printed from six enormous woodblocks that are still in good condition in the Correr Museum in Venice. Amazingly, there are twelve extant prints of the first 1500 edition; six of the second 1514 edition; and six of the third from the later sixteenth century. Several institutions have digitized their sheets at high resolutions allowing us to closely examine every centimeter of the extravaganza (three links are offered above but there are more). De’ Barbari presents an elongated view of Venice from a vantage point somewhere above San Giorgio Maggiore, which has been compared to the shape of a dolphin. GoogleMaps, below, is condensed but still somewhat fish-like:

Digital reproductions show the meticulous detail De’ Barbari was able to achieve in his depiction of architecture, commerce, and day-to-day Venetian life. In 2016 a project called “The Venice Atlas” was posted at: http://veniceatlas.epfl.ch/mapping-venice-1500-searching-the-de-barbari-map-final-report/. Among the many things accomplished by the DH project was a count of the bell towers found in the map. Jonathan Gross then asked the public if they could not only find the 103 towers identified but if any others had been missed. As a fun, no pressure home project this week, see if you can find 103 bell towers in De’ Barbari’s view of Venice.

If you look at several of the Venice maps online, check to see if they have a temporary flat roof on the great bell tower in St Mark’s Square, which was erected after a fire in 1489. This means it is a first state, not the second for which the wood blocks were altered to show restoration work done in 1511-14.

One additional search might be for the former Senate Secretary Antonio Landi, hanging by his neck in Canal de San Secondo. The noose hangs from a pole balanced on two tripods. It can only be found in one state of the print and there is no explanation why it was removed. Perhaps the wood was worn down.

At the top center is the messenger god Mercury, looking down at the city with Neptune riding a sea monster at the mouth of the Grand Canal. Along the sides are putti representing the eight major winds. It has been suggested that the figure representing the northeast wind (left) may be Barbari’s self-portrait.

The Graphic Arts Collection has a facsimile edition of the complete map. The institutions with original prints are: first edition, 1500:
Hamburg, Boston (Museum of Fine Arts), Cleveland (Museum of Art), London (British Museum), Nuremburg (Germanisches National Museum), Paris (BNF), Venice (Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia), Venice (Museo Correr, 3 examples), Venice (Nuseo Navale), Berlin (Staatlichen Museum).

Second edition, 1514 (?):
London (British Museum), Venice (Biblioteca Marciana), Venice (Museo Correr), Vienna (Albertina), Washington (National Gallery of Art), Los Angeles (University of California).

Third edition, late sixteenth century.
Florence (Private collection), Venice (Museo Correr), Venice (Private collection), Vienna (Albertina), Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet), Austin (University of Texas).

Read more: Schulz, Juergen. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500. The Art Bulletin. 1978 Sep; 60(3): 425–474 (Jstor).

For another analysis see: Howard, Deborah. Venice as a Dolphin: Further Investigations into Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View. Artibus et Historiae. 1997 18(35): 101–111 (Jstor).

Over the last five weeks of posting projects for those of us at home, by far the most responses have been to a request for women’s history: Who was the first women to graduate from your school, college, or university? What began with the identification of a 1640 (III/IV (Hollstein Dutch and Flemish, v.26, p.113)  engraving of the artist and scholar Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678), often identified as the first female student at a European university, led to a survey of other notable women who are recorded as being the first to graduate from universities across the United States (and a few outside the US, although that would be a much longer list. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_education)

https://drive.google.com/a/princeton.edu/file/d/1Gx_g_fKBkQ_Ija-Ps4k_Dza0QPXJEMe2/view?usp=sharing  Here is a six-page PDF list of women who were the first graduates from various colleges. The stories are wonderful.

Before Ruth Bader Ginsburg there was Bettisia Gozzadini, who studied law at the Studium of Bologna, dressed as a man, graduating from the university in 1237 and teaching law at her home. There is a bust of Gozzadini at the Museum of the History of Bologna, sculpted by Casa Fibbia sometime between 1680 and 1690. An inscription on its base reads: “Loving daughter, in both rights highly eminent/ Public laws explained and in Bishop’s funeral prayed. Flourished 1242. Died 1261.”  Thanks to Janna Brancolini for the image.

From Ohio, there were the “Oberlin Four.” http://www.womenhistoryblog.com notes “Oberlin College was founded in 1833 in Oberlin, Ohio, and became the first college in the United States to admit women as well as men. There were four courses of study: the Female, Teachers, Collegiate and Theological Departments. Women were allowed to study in the Female or Teachers Department. However, in 1837 four women – Mary Kellogg, Mary Caroline Rudd, Mary Hosford and Elizabeth Prall – entered the college degree program, the Collegiate Department. All but Kellogg graduated in 1841 and received the first Bachelor of Arts degrees earned by women in the United States. Kellogg, who had left school for lack of funds, later returned to Oberlin after marrying James Harris Fairchild, a future president of Oberlin College. Mary Caroline Rudd (later Allen) pictured below.

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911) was the first woman admitted to MIT, receiving her S.B. degree in 1873 (the first graduating class of MIT was 1868). The title of her thesis [PDF file] was “Notes on Some Sulpharsenites and Sulphantimonites from Colorado.” In 1875 she appealed to the Women’s Education Association of Boston for help in establishing a laboratory at MIT for the instruction of women in chemistry. The Women’s Laboratory opened in 1876 with Professor John M. Ordway in charge, assisted by Richards. She held the position of instructor in chemistry and mineralogy in the Women’s Laboratory until it closed in 1883. From 1884 to her death in 1911, Richards was instructor in sanitary chemistry at MIT.–https://libraries.mit.edu/mithistory/community/notable-persons/ellen-swallow-richards/

Many schools closely followed the decisions made elsewhere, which influenced their own progress (or lack of). Here is The Harvard Crimson reporting on the decision at Dartmouth College to admit women beginning in the fall of 1972. : https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1971/11/22/dartmouth-to-admit-women-in-fall/

Dartmouth, like Harvard and others, has a complicated history that is not easy to record, given that women were allowed to study at the school long before they were given degrees. The attached PDF is a casual document and if you find mistakes, it can easily be corrected and updated.

The University of Pennsylvania archives posted this image of the first women to matriculate at UPenn, working in the chemistry laboratory, 1878 (L to R: Gertrude K. Peirce, Anna L. Flanigen, and Mary T. Lewis). “Gertrude Klein Peirce and Anna Lockhart Flanigen met at Women’s Medical College. The two women were the first female students admitted to the University of Pennsylvania. Miss Peirce earned a certificate of proficiency in Chemistry in 1878. She continued her studies in a post-graduate course in 1878 and 1879….”–https://archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/penn-people/notables/women

Of course, they are not all success stories.  On May 21, 1897, men and women, young and old, gathered to protest the admission of women to Cambridge University, as seen in Thomas Stearn’s photograph above. Here’s more: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/02/22/cambridge-boys-celebrate-when-women-are-refused-degrees/.

If your story is missing, you can still send notes to jmellby@princeton.edu and I will add them. Thank you to everyone who participated.

The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña or ICP) is the department of the Puerto Rican government “responsible for the establishment of the cultural policies required in order to study, preserve, promote, enrich, and diffuse the cultural values of Puerto Rico.” The ICP began operating in November 1955 under its first executive director Dr. Ricardo Alegría and continues to promote all aspects of Puerto Rican culture, including archeology, museums, parks, monuments, historic zones, music, visual arts, and dance, as well as maintaining the Archives and the National Library of Puerto Rico. Their site is here: Instituto de Cultura Puertoriqueña

ICP’s first logo was designed by Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), who also established the Institute’s Graphic Arts Workshop (Taller de Artes Gráficas). During the 960s, Homar designed and screen printed a number of posters for the ICP, many of which are now represented in Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection thanks to the generosity of Alma Concepción and Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones. Not only are they beautiful works of graphic art but they document important events in Puerto Rican history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2b5R0L7HVQ

This 2015 video was recorded in conjunction with the exhibition HOMAR: A Tribute to an Artist of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, organized by the Hunter College Center for Puerto Rican Studies. It features a conversation among artists to share their memories, personal experiences and the ways they have been influenced by the renowned artist and graphic designer Lorenzo Homar and his peers in the Puerto Rican art scene both on the island and among the Puerto Rican stateside communities: Rodríguez-Calero and Nitza Tufiño, with moderator: Néstor Otero.

Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), Festival de Teatro Puertorriquena, Teatro Tapia, 1962. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.03985.
In 1956, barely into its second year, the ICP created the Theater Arts Promotion and Dissemination Program and in 1958 launched an annual Puerto Rican Theater Festival to promote the work of Puerto Rican playwrights. Lorenzo Homar designed and printed several of the festival posters, including this one in 1962 for the 5th annual festival held at the Teatro Tapia, the oldest permanent theater in Puerto Rico.

Located in Old San Juan on Fortaleza Street in front of Plaza Colón, the Tapia Theater was given its name during its reconstruction of 1948, honoring Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826–1882) one of the fathers of Puerto Rican literature.

https://enciclopediapr.org/en/encyclopedia/tapia-y-rivera-alejandro/. “As a playwright, Tapia is particularly known for the 1867 play La cuarterona, in which he denounced racial prejudice.”

Full text available: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0000253484&view=thumb&seq=11 or in a bilingual edition: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/691871

Homar also designed the poster [left] for ICP’s 8th annual theater festival: Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), Festival de Teatro Puertorriqueno en el Teatro Tapia, 1965. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.03989

Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), Feria de artesanias en Barranquitas, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, 1966. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.03947

The National Artisan or Crafts Fair (Feria Nacional de Artisanas de Barranquitas) takes place every July in Barranquitas, a small mountain town in the center of Puerto Rico. This annual event brings together local artisans from around the island and last year nearly 200 local artisans took part; making this the largest craft festival in Puerto Rico.

The fair dates back to 1959 when the first event was held to mark the centenary of the birth of local barranquiteno hero Luis Muñoz Rivera (1859-1916). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Mu%C3%B1oz_Rivera

“At that time there was only a single kiosks where local craftsman displayed their creations. The following years fair saw even more artisans taking part and in 1961 the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture announced the first National Fair of Handicrafts in Barranquitas. Since then the fair has grown in popularity, not only with local artisans, but in the variety of cultural activities that occur during the event.”

Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), 1871-1971 Centenario del tenor Antonio Paoli, 1971. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.03999

For the centenary of the tenor Antonio Paoli (1871-1946), this poster celebrates the first Puerto Rican to gain international recognition in the performing arts. His Wikipedia page lists 1,725 performances between 1888 and 1942, including 575 performances of Verdi’s Otello. To his credit, Paoli was also the first opera singer in the world to record an entire opera; he was part of a recorded performance of Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo in Italy in 1907.

The ICP organized a celebration in 1971 and commissioned a screen printed poster from Homar, who depicts Paoli in his most famous role of Otello. See more: https://historyofthetenor.com/antonio-paoli/