08/01/2026
As we move forward into 2026 The Burlington Magazine continues to publish outstanding art-historical scholarship. This month includes a fresh interpretation of Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1978) 'Rotoreliefs' (1935), highlighting his trademark and copyright applications, which are published for the first time. Duchamp registered his 'Rotoreliefs' – a set of double-sided discs designed to be spun on a phonograph – and exhibited them at an inventor’s fair in Paris. He also applied for a U.S. copyright and pursued distribution at Macy’s department store. Such procedures are fascinating in the context of the career of an artist who dethroned the status of authorship.
Moving back to the eighteenth century, new research on the period that the Scottish portraitist Katherine Read (1732–78) spent in Rome in the early 1750s is presented. Meanwhile, the influence of Marco Ricci’s (1676-1730) 'capricci' on the drawings of Charles-Louis Clérisseau is demonstrated by works rediscovered in La Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. They, in turn, were to prove an inspiration to the Scottish architect Robert Adam. The extent of the patronage enjoyed by the Venetian, gothic painter Paolo Veneziano (active 1310–58) is explored through a detailed study of the artist’s painting of St Prisca – a rarely depicted subject, who was honoured in Rome. It highlights the taste of Cardinal Gozio Battagli, who spent much of his life in Avignon and founded chapels in his native Rimini.
Reviews are led this month by an extensive appraisal of Rembrandt research and discoveries over the past five years, which embrace new paintings, exhibitions, catalogues, books and major sales of prints. An especially rich spectrum of exhibition reviews include Fra Angelico in Florence, treasures from the Holy Sepulchre at the Frick Collection, New York, Greuze and David in Paris, and Michelangelo in Haarlem. Books authoritatively analysed range from studies of intarsia, Renaissance jewellery in Scotland and sculpture in seventeenth-century Milan, to Joseph Vernet and Vanessa Bell.
🔗 Discover the full list of content, plus this month's free content, linked here: https://www.burlington.org.uk/current-issue
