The British Museum's Rothschild Renaissance: A grand collection from across the centuries

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Exhibition Review: The Waddesdon Bequest: A Rothschild Renaissance, British Museum, London

The Waddesdon Bequest is as challenging as it is intriguing. A grand collection - spanning centuries and continents, and peppered with forgeries - it has the potential to be a curatorial nightmare. But with a new perspective on the collection, donated to the British Museum in 1898 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, the result is a sometimes playful, sometimes surprising but always fascinating reinterpretation of the Bequest.

The design of the space is spectacular in its own right, with dramatic lighting and projections conjuring up the opulence of the collection’s original setting at Rothschild’s country pile, Waddesdon Manor. The objects themselves are beautifully displayed, from precious Renaissance jewellery seemingly suspended in mid-air to a pearlescent opal vase, lit from within to bring life to the sea creatures carved around the outside.

Digital screens provide a close-up view of the craftsmanship and hidden details of portrait miniatures and boxwood micro-carvings. Among the genuine Renaissance masterpieces are much later copies, forgeries and hybrid objects. It is near-impossible to tell these apart without consulting the accompanying labels.

Some of the forgeries are almost more ingenious than the genuine articles: an exquisitely carved rock crystal vessel, near-flawless apart from a hairline crack, is indistinguishable from its original counterparts. But the crack was not the result of a clumsy owner in the distant past: rather, it was made deliberately by the forger, who engraved over it to make it appear that the vessel had been accidentally damaged and repaired.



The blurred line between genuine antique and forgery can wrong-foot the visitor, but it also gives a different perspective on the collection. The pieces on display were not brought together solely for their art historical value but for their beauty, craftsmanship and distinctiveness.

Rothschild himself, in one of several quotes scattered across the exhibition, wrote: “The collector of genuine works of the Renaissance might be likened to a child who cries for the moon.” He did not aim to create a rigorously provenanced collection but rather to recreate a Renaissance kunstkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. The joy in craftsmanship and the fascination with unusual items that characterised such Renaissance collections is equally evident in the Waddesdon Bequest.

This collection, like the cabinets of curiosities that preceded it, was highly personal. Like the great collectors of old, Rothschild would have guided his guests around, relaying stories about his treasured items.

There is a strong sense of this personal element in the displays, with anecdotes about how a fine silver gilt cup used to smell strongly of cherry brandy, or how another priceless artefact was bought on the island of Patmos while the Baron was cruising on his yacht in the Aegean.

Often, the history of an object as it changes hands over the generations is just as captivating as its origins. A case in point is the Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably the most famous item in the Bequest.

Dating from 1400 and dripping with pearls, sapphires, rubies and gold, books could be written about its artistic merit. But it is the lesser-known later history of the piece that is explored here: the piece was once sent away for repairs, only to be sold by the craftsman and replaced with a forgery.

The original, displayed here, changed hands on the private market until it was bought by Rothschild and eventually donated to the British Museum as part of the Bequest. It was only discovered that the replica made by the craftsman was actually a forgery when it was compared with this original during the 1950s.

In short, this new display is not the place to come to learn about the finer points of Renaissance art. But there are many other places where one can do so. Instead, it gives a unique insight into the nature of collectors and collecting.

The Waddesdon Bequest is a fitting addition to the suite of exhibits – alongside the Enlightenment and Collecting the World galleries – that tell the story of how the British Museum came to be, and the objects, collections and individuals who have made it what it is today.

• Open 10am-5.30pm (8.30pm Friday, closed December 24-26 and January 1). Admission free.

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art530096-the-british-museum-rothschild-renaissance-a-grand-collection-from-across-the-centuries