The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (27 page)

Ashmolean Museum
, Oxford.

The most important of the museums belonging to the University of Oxford. The nucleus of the Ashmolean collection was formed by the ‘closet of rarities’ (a collection of curiosities rather than works of art) assembled by the traveller and gardener John Tradescant (1608–62) and given in 1659 to the antiquary Elias Ashmole (1617–92), who offered it to Oxford University in 1675. The original Ashmolean Museum was built by the University to the design of the mason and sculptor Thomas Wood to house this collection and was opened in 1683–the first public museum in Great Britain. The new building in Beaumont Street, designed by C. R. Cockerell , was opened in 1845, and this was enlarged in 1894. In 1899 the designation ‘Ashmolean Museum’ was transferred to the new building and the original museum of Thomas Wood became known as the ‘Old Ashmolean Building’. It now houses the Museum of the History of Science. The collections of the Ashmolean are large and varied. It is particularly rich in works from the ancient world (including marbles from the collection formed by Thomas
Arundel
in the 17th cent.) and in Italian
Renaissance
paintings. Also outstanding are the collections of coins and of Old Master drawings, the latter including a superlative representation of
Michelangelo
and
Raphael
from the collection of Sir Thomas
Lawrence
.

 
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(
c.
1475–1552).
Italian
Mannerist
painter from Bologna, where he was a pupil of
Francia
.
Vasari
describes him as having an eccentric personality and this comes out in his paintings, which are often bizarre in expression:
The Holy Family with Saints
(St Nicolas aux Champs, Paris) is described by S. J. Freedberg (
Painting in Italy
:
1500
–
1600
, 1971) as ‘suggesting to the spectator the image of what he would expect from a demented Michelangelo’. Aspertini was in Rome 1500–3 and his sketchbooks of Roman remains (BM, London) are important sources about contemporary knowledge of the
antique
.

 
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(
c.
1615–52).
Dutch painter, mainly of landscapes. He studied in Italy in the 1630s and 1640s and came to specialize in real and imaginary scenes of the Roman Campagna, his glowing light effects owing much to
Claude Lorraine
. His most famous painting, however, is not a landscape, but
The Threatened Swan
(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), an unusual work—showing a bird defending its nest against a dog—that is said to be an allegory of Dutch nationalism.
Rembrandt
, who was Asselyn's friend etched his portrait. Because of a crippled hand he was nicknamed ‘Crabbetje’ (Little Crab).

 
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assemblage
.

Term coined by Jean
Dubuffet
in 1953 to describe works of art made from fragments of natural or preformed materials, such as household debris. Some critics maintain that the term should apply only to three-dimensional found material and not to
collage
, but it is not usually employed with any precision and has been used to embrace
photomontage
at one extreme and room
environments
at the other. It gained wide currency with an exhibition called ‘The Art of Assemblage’ staged at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1961.

 
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(1593/4–1657).
Dutch still-life painter, the brother-in-law of Ambrosius
Bosschaert
the Elder, with whom he trained in Middelburgh. He worked in Utrecht before settling in Delft in 1632. His touch was less exquisite than Bosschaert's , but his range was wider, his paintings often including fruit and shells as well as flowers. Jan Davidsz . de
Heem
was his pupil in Utrecht.

 
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