Intern's Journal - A View From the Stacks Week 5

Our wonderful interns Casey and Chelsea have completed their internships and are headed back to school, but they left us with a vivid journal recounting their summer adventures in the Library. Stay tuned for future editions of "A View from the Stacks" which will continue to appear on the blog during the next few weeks.

Week 5 – Research


        Research week! My favorite part of art history. While this process feels daunting at first, I’ve found that research always leads me through unexpected avenues and leaves me questioning even long after the project has been completed. For our project, Laura instructed us to find one piece in the collection to research. Our research would be added to the Library’s vertical files in the hopes of bringing them up-to-par with Registration’s files, and helping to lead future researches in the right direction. Once again, I was faced with choosing one piece in a collection of thousands!

Rather than selecting a piece by an artist I was familiar with, I decided to choose one I knew little about, and one whose vertical file was in need of expanding. I wrote down several and then narrowed my choices. In a Northern Renaissance gallery (of course) I stumbled upon a tiny painting by Frans Francken II called Death and the Miser. This painting, with its grim subject, is not one I would ordinarily be drawn to, but one that certainly interested me at first glance. It shows a skeleton serenading a seated old, feeble man. Presumably the same man and skeleton are seen out the window, but the man appears much younger. This image’s small size does not detract from its psychological impact, nor it’s ability to show the artist’s skill. It was a front-runner in my choices, and I soon found out it was lacking a vertical file altogether. I felt that this painting’s ability to attract my attention at such a small size and with such a strange subject earned it the right to live among the library’s vertical files.

After researching online and looking through files in the Registrar's record, I found out there are several reproductions of Death and the Miser, and also that there are several Franz Francken’s – a problem that has plagued connoisseurs and researchers for generations. For the purposes of this project, I decided to note this information, but to coincide with the Chrysler’s identification panel, to attribute the painting to Frans Francken II (or the Younger) . My Pathfinder for future researchers included websites containing relevant information, other paintings by Frans Francken the Yonger, useful publications within and outside the JOCL, and other artists and paintings from Northern Europe depicting similar subjects. I hope this research will help to further the interest of others looking for information about this painting and those of similar subjects.

Also this week, Chelsea and I constructed our Book Cart, inspired by a German do-it-yourself doll-house book. Our dollhouse, while not as glamorous as the dollhouses in this book, was done on a budget of only $10. We used cardboard and masking tape to create faux bricks and hardwood floors. We printed out pictures of windows, appliances, cabinets, wallpaper, and tile floors for the interior, and included my childhood dollhouse furniture. Members of our house include, Dr. Scott Howe, Dr. William Hennessey and even our cataloguing fellow, John Curtis. We hope you enjoy our home-made Puppenhaus!

- Casey Nye, 2010 Summer Library Intern