About This Artwork
Joseph Cornell
American, 1903–1972
Homage to the Romantic Ballet1942
Box construction with blue glass
Closed: 4 1/2 x 9 15/16 x 6 5/8 in.; Open: 9 x 9 x15/16 x 10 in.
Titled. Signed, and dated within box lip, on black paper in white type:
Homage to the Romantic Ballet
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****Joseph Cornell****1942****
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Inscribed on the inside lid, on black paper in white type: On a moonlight [sic] night in the winter of 1835 the carriage of Marie Taglioni / was halted by a Russian highwayman, and that ethereal creature commanded / to dance for this audience of one upon a panther’s skin spread over the / snow beneath the stars. From this actuality arose the legend that, to keep / alive the memory of this adventure so precious to her, Taglioni formed the / habit of placing a piece of ice in her jewel casket or dressing table draw- / er, where melting among the sparkling stones, there was evoked a hint of / the starlit heavens over the ice-covered landscape.
Lindy and Edwin Bergman Joseph Cornell Collection, 1982.1854
Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture
Gallery 397
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
Beverly Hills, California, Copley Galleries, Objects by Joseph Cornell, 1948, cat. 2, as Tagioli Jewel Case.
Pasadena, California, Pasadena Art Museum, An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell, December 27, 1966–February 11, 1967, p. 26-27, 59, cat. 13 (ill.).
New York, The Cosmopolitan Club, Joseph Cornell, 1970, no cat.
Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Depth and Presence, May 3–30, 1971, no cat. nos., n. pag.
Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Cornell (1930-1972), December 23, 1973–June 3, 1974, no cat.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture, March 16–September 26, 1976, pp. 163-166, fig. 245 (ill.), 338, cat. 43.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Spirit of Surrealism, October 3–November 25,1979, pp. 166-67 (ill.), 172, cat. 102.
New York, Castelli, Feigen, Corcoran, Joseph Cornell and the Ballet, November 2–December 18, 1983, pp. 13–16, cat. 6 (ill.).
Publication History
Dore Ashton, A Joseph Cornell Album (New York: Viking Press, 1974), pp. 26 (ill.), 75, 99.
Rosalind Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture, (New York: The Viking Press, 1977), p. 124, 127, fig. 96 (ill.).
Dickran Tashjian, Joseph Cornell: Gifts of Desire (Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1992), p. 113–114, pl. 34.
Dawn Ades, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago; New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), p. 45–47, cat. 20 (color ill.)
Ownership History
Sold by the artist to William Copley, Beverly Hills, California, by 1948; sold to Richard L. Feigen, New York, July 1969; sold to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1976; given to the Art Institute, 1982.