Enfilade

The final seminar of the series takes place on Wednesday:

Luba Kozak and Diogo Lemos | Pets, Portraiture, and Identity
Online, Material and Visual Culture Research Cluster, Edinburgh, 4 December 2024

Each week we hear from two speakers, sharing their research on, and approaches to, the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century material and visual culture. We aim to make a space in which these rich histories can be explored from varied disciplines to enhance our research practices. We meet on Wednesdays, 5–6pm GMT, online using Zoom; registration closes 1 hour before seminar start time.

Luba Kozak | Pet Animals as Connectors: Exploring the Role of Pet Animals in Shaping British Identity and Colonial Encounters in 18th-Century British Portraiture

This paper explores the role of pet animals in shaping British identity and colonial encounters as portrayed in eighteenth-century British portraiture. Through an analysis of John Eccardt’s Portrait of Lady Grace Carteret, Countess of Dysart with a Child, Black Servant, Cockatoo, and Spaniel (1740) and Johann Zoffany’s Colonel Blair and his Family with an Indian Ayah (1786) as case studies, I investigate how pet animals reveal power structures and hierarchies within the domestic sphere, exposing deeper tropes of colonisation and race (Braddock; Bocquillon). Ultimately, I propose that pet animals act as critical contact points between the British aristocracy and enslaved individuals in these artworks, bridging cultural, racial, and species divides.

Recognising the need to address the material presence of animals in art and their marginalisation in the field of art history, I analyse these paintings through more inclusive theoretical frameworks including ecocriticism and post-colonialism. Building on the scholarship of Ingrid Tague and Erin Parker, who discuss the domestication of animals within British households, I examine how these animals negotiated status and place within elite homes as depicted in visual culture. This approach repositions non-human figures as active subjects rather than pictorial accessories. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper is at the intersection of art history, animal studies, philosophy, and ethics. Amidst growing concern for animal ethics and the Anthropocene, this timely research offers a broader understanding of the complexities of human-animal relations, relevant in historical and contemporary.

Luba Kozak is a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada).

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Diogo Lemos | Spreading the Icon: Visual Culture and Royal Patronage under the Reign of John V, King of Portugal

During his reign (1707–1750), John V recognized the importance of emulation and identifying the most renowned masterpieces of his time. By so, he instructed his diplomats to collect copies of certain artworks from various courts. The most iconic among them served as vital iconographic sources for artworks commissioned by the king, executed by artists trained in Europe’s leading apprenticeship circuits, who later disseminated these same iconographic references in other courts. This talk aims to highlight a set of artworks produced within European courts which played a pivotal role in shaping the image of the Portuguese court.

The primary goal is to decipher the mechanisms of ‘promotion’ of these artworks; to grasp the processes and means (ex. the press but also espionage) used to transform them into true icons. Relating this context with the Portuguese court, documentation will also reveal the mechanisms—and circles of influences—used by John V to know and acquire them. Furthermore, the project seeks to intersect these artworks (primarily portraits) with the material culture of both the Portuguese and European courts in which France plays an important role. Nevertheless, rather than solely emphasizing France as the primary influencer, the intention is to accentuate the nuances and distinctiveness of the artistic and material cultures within these courts, moreover, highlighted by Portuguese court itself. In short, focusing on the iconology of the Catholic Kings, this proposal aims to unveil and decode a curated collection of artworks commissioned by King John V, providing new insights into the cultural (and political) milieu of the era and demonstrating how certain iconic masterpieces (yet often underestimated) not only reflected cultural exchanges between nations during the reign of John V but also shaped European visual culture during this period.

Diogo Lemos is a researcher at the Centre for the History of Society and Culture of the University of Coimbra, where he is developing an art history PhD project in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities for which he was awarded a fellowship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.