Word: connoisseurship
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...some objects, a dry wit. One could be fatigued by the result but never bored, for Jackson-Stops is a dab-hand at fitting potted histories around incompressible works of art. One is firmly led through the mutations of English taste, as early Elizabethan patronage becomes the acquisitive connoisseurship of the late 18th century, and the tiny enameled world of Nicholas Hilliard opens to the spacious marmoreal one of the Grand Tour and Burlington House. Only after the 1930s, | with the ethos of country-house patronage in full retreat before the incomprehensible 20th century, does the show become a bore...
...Connoisseurship apparently knows no limits. Many people who used to ask for whiskey by the brand now do the same with sparkling water. Some may even distinguish among flavors, but not if ice cubes and lime are used. Differences are hard to spot, even when the waters are downed neat, but they do exist, as the chart indicates. Brands of club soda and carbonated mineral water are ranked by preference and rated as follows: four bottles, excellent; three, very good; two, good; one, fair; zero, must suit tastes other than mine...
...always had a special place. Its holdings are vast: more than 1.5 million items, ranging from playing cards to Michelangelo drawings. Yet what counts is not their gross but, so to speak, their net: the core of old master drawings and prints assembled, over a lifetime of passionate connoisseurship, by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen (1738-1822). At a time when any crocodile can become a "major" collector by scrawling a digit and six zeroes on a check for a B+ Van Gogh, it is worth recalling what Albert and his wife Marie Christine achieved. Until they began collecting...
...carry the eye around the forms with irresistible energy, represent an extraordinary alliance of analytic thought and manual control. Not all the drawings in the show are on this inspired level (how could they be?), but even from this tiny sampling, one can see what the heights of connoisseurship can sometimes contain...
...added a group of Leonardo drawings and some related prints from its own collection. The show is curated by the leading active expert in Leonardo studies, Carlo Pedretti, with a catalogue preface by his predecessor in that role, Kenneth Clark. The result is a triumph of connoisseurship and presentation, as well as a demonstration of the real meaning of the verb "to draw...