The central feature in the Museum of Art’s exhibit ‘“To All Art Lovers’: David Teniers’s Theatrum Pictorium” is an art catalog that goes way back. Way, way back—to 1660, in fact. It is the earliest known catalog of an art collection.
In the mid-17th century, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria employed David Teniers the Younger as his court painter. Teniers also became the curator of Leopold’s collection of over 1,300 paintings. Teniers set out to document some of the more notable works by making exacting miniature “cabinet paintings” of them, which he then had recreated into small engravings by a team of engravers. His bound catalog, Theatrum Pictorium, or “The Theater of Painting,” describes 243 Italian paintings in Leopold’s collection, with the included engravings serving as visual references.
The exhibit is curated by Eloise McFarlane ’24.5, a Sabarsky Graduate Fellow, and runs through April 19. For those who can’t get to the Museum of Art before then, McFarlane (in collaboration with Doug Perkins ’94, the museum’s associate director of operations and finance) has also created an online story map.
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