Online Talks | Rubens Series
Peter Paul Rubens, The Rainbow Landscape (detail), ca. 1636
(London: The Wallace Collection)
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The last three talks in the series address the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reception of Rubens. From The Wallace Collection:
Rubens Talk Series
Online, The Wallace Collection, 9 June — 21 July 2021
To accompany The Wallace Collection’s new exhibition Rubens: Reuniting the Great Landscapes, this series of seven talks will explore different aspects of Rubens’s extraordinary life and achievements, the fascinating social, cultural and economic circumstances of his age, and his enduring artistic legacy.
Series talks will be presented through Zoom Webinar. Each talk duration is 1 hour, including time for Q&A with the speaker. Tickets can be purchased for individual talks or the entire series. Ticket holders will receive their Zoom link, Webinar ID, and Passcode 24 hours in advance of each talk. Series talks, excluding 21 July, will be recorded. Following each talk, ticket holders will be emailed a link to view the recording, which will be available for one week only.
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John Chu | ‘Equal to the Great Masters’: Landscapes by Gainsborough and Rubens
Wednesday, 7 July 2021, 19.00 BST
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) had a lifelong love of Netherlandish landscape art. As his career developed so too did the range and depth of his appreciation for the ‘Great Masters’ of the Low Countries—prominent in this pantheon was Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). In this talk, John Chu will consider the transformative influence of Rubens’s landscapes on Gainsborough’s art, examining what he learned from his predecessor and why these paintings became such an important model. Looking more broadly, he will also explore the reputation of Rubens’s landscapes in 18th-century Britain and establish the social and artistic conditions that shaped, and made possible, Gainsborough’s fruitful encounter with the works of the Flemish master.
Dr John Chu is Senior Curator of Pictures and Sculpture at the National Trust. He has taught and published widely on 18th-century British and French painting and specialises in the art of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.
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Christoph Vogtherr | Flemish Painting in 18th-Century French Collections
Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 19.00 BST
Flemish painting rose to a prominent role in Parisian collections only in the late 17th century. Even Rubens started to be regarded as one of the major European painters considerably later than in territories of the German Empire or in Italy. This change in perception and taste went hand in hand with new modes of picture displays. In the first decades of the 18th century, the comparison of schools and painters became the guiding principle of art presentation. Flemish painting was introduced into Parisian collections in this context of emulation and competition between the schools. In the process, Flemish and French painting gained a prominence comparable to Italian art. In this talk, Christoph Vogtherr will trace the rise of Flemish and Dutch painting in Parisian collections, its important position in picture displays and art theory, as well as its role in the formation of French 18th-century painting.
Dr Christoph Martin Vogtherr is General Director of the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg. His main research interests are the history of the Prussian Royal palaces, French 18th-century painting, and the history of art collecting in the 18th and 19th centuries. He was previously Director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2016–19), and before that, Curator of paintings and then Director of the Wallace Collection from 2011 to 2016. He has published widely on 18th-century French painting.
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Tim Barringer | British Painters and Rubens’s Poetic Pastorals
Wednesday, 21 July 2021, 19.00 BST
Tim Barringer will explore the character of Rubens’s landscapes, which blend the legacies of classical poetry with the rough and tumble of rural life in the 17th century. Erudite references mix with rustic pastimes. While Rubens’s grand historical and religious paintings, like his portraits, commanded admiration across Europe, British artists and collectors found a special affinity with his pastoral works. Painters such as Constable, Turner, and Bonington were indelibly affected by the experience of seeing Rubens’s paintings and drawings, allowing them to see the natural world anew.
Dr Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor and Chair of the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. He contributed to Rubens and his Legacy, the RA’s exhibition catalogue, and has co-curated exhibitions including American Sublime: Opulence and Anxiety; Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde; Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Trans-Atlantic Inheritance; Unto This Last: Two Hundred Years of John Ruskin; and Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement.
Online Talks | NDENCA, Series 4, May–July 2021
From NDENCA (click for lots more information on speakers and presentation abstracts).
New Directions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Art (NDENCA)
Series 4: May–July 2021
Organised by Freya Gowrley and Madeleine Pelling
New Directions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Art (NDENCA) is a digital seminar series aimed at championing new scholarly voices working across visual and material cultures in this period. It aims to take a global perspective, and in particular welcomes contributions by scholars from minority groups. Series 4 seminars take place on Mondays, via Zoom and are open to all. To book tickets, please email us at, ndencaseminar@gmail.com.
Papers are available on our YouTube channel for up to one month after their live session.
P R O G R A M M E
24 May 2021
1) Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (Visiting Research Fellow, University of Leeds, Curator, 17th- and 18th-Century Ceramics and Glass, V&A Museum), Sèvres-mania’ and the Standardisation of Ceramics Connoisseurship
7 June 2021
2) Amara Thornton (Honorary Research Associate, UCL Institute of Archaeology), Caribbean Collections Histories: Archaeology and Empire
14 June 2021
3) Nat Reeve (PhD Candidate, Royal Holloway, University of London), Queer Tombs and Reframing Doom: Elizabeth Siddal and Georgiana Burne-Jones’s Unfinished Collaborative Project
21 June 2021
4) Emily Doucet (University of Toronto), Illuminating Infrastructures: Nadar’s Underwater Photography and the Expansion of Marseille’s Modern Port
28 June 2021
5) Miguel Angel Gaete (PhD Candidate, University of York), Territorial Fantasies, Sexual Nuances, and Savage Energy: Orientalism and Tropicality in Eugène Delacroix and Johann Moritz Rugendas
5 July 2021
6) Kate Heller (Research Associate, Art Institute of Chicago), Wrought(-Iron) Boundaries: A Victorian Ecology of Thomas Jeckyll’s Norwich Gates
12 July 2021
7) Camilla Pietrabissa (Postdoctoral fellow, IUAV University of Venice), Drawing in 18th-Century Venice: The Origins of the Veduta and the Modern Culture of Spectacle
19 July 2021
8) Samuel Raybone (Lecturer in Art History, Aberystwyth University), Global Impressionism and the Idea of Wales
26 July 2021
9) Cabelle Ahn (PhD Candidate, Harvard University), Drawing Site-Specificity: The 1797 Exhibition of Drawings in the Louvre
Online Conversation | Juneteenth
This CW Conversation is part of the Foundation’s Us: Past, Present, Future series (there are lots of terrific resources listed below; for course websites, I’m particularly excited about the timeline, which ranges from 1565 to 2020. –CH).
Juneteenth: A Conversation with Deirdre Jones Cardwell, Richard Josey, and Michael Twitty
Online, Colonial Willamsburg Foundation, 19 June 2021, 4pm (EDT)
General Order Number Three, which officially informed enslaved Texans of their legal freedom, stated that emancipation involved “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property.” Have we achieved the promises of Juneteenth, and how should it be observed? Join Deirdre Jones Cardwell, Programming Lead and Actor Interpreter with Colonial Williamsburg, Richard Josey, Founder and Principal Consultant for Collective Journeys LLC, and Michael Twitty, Culinary Historian, in a discussion about the story, significance, and meanings of Juneteenth.
Click here to join the livestream event on Saturday, 19 June 2021, at 4.00pm (EDT). You don’t have to have a Facebook Account to watch, but you will need to sign in to join the discussion.
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Whether you’re looking to read up on this topic before joining the conversation, or want some further reading afterward, here’s recommended reading from Colonial Williamsburg.
Colonial Williamsburg Juneteenth Resources
Colonial Williamsburg has created several related web resources, including an informational What is Juneteenth? page, a calendar of Juneteenth special events at Colonial Williamsburg, and a Juneteenth Historical Timeline that provides history and context for the commemoration.
The Colonial Williamsburg Resource Library provides access to numerous resources that explore relevant themes such as citizenship, civics, and government using video, lessons, and interactive web activities. The Resource Library features several relevant resources such as the When Freedom Came electronic field trip and Whose Emancipation?
Colonial Williamsburg’s YouTube Channel features 2020 productions “Juneteenth at Custis Square” and “Before Juneteenth.”
Juneteenth Resources from Other Cultural Institutions
• The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture offers “The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth.”
• The Library of Congress blog offers “The Birth of Juneteenth: Voices of the Enslaved” and “Emancipation Day in South Carolina . . .,” an 1863 illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.
• The Library of Virginia’s The Uncommonwealth blog focuses on “Why Juneteenth?”
• PBS features “What is Juneteenth?” with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• The National Archives presents an online exhibit The Emancipation Proclamation, providing context on that document issued January 1, 1863.
Books
• Annette Gordon-Reed. On Juneteenth. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2021.
• Angela Johnson. All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014.
Online Talk | Sarah Coffin on Fêtes and Feasts
From The Royal Oak Foundation:
Sarah Coffin | Fêtes and Feasts: Diplomatic Dining and the Noble Table, 1660–1830
Online, The Royal Oak Foundation, Wednesday, 16 June 2021, 6.00pm (EDT)
Martin van Meytens, Banquet at the Wedding of Joseph II to Isabella of Parma, 10 October 1760, detail, 1763, oil on canvas (Vienna: Schönbrunn Palace).
What do Italian architects, English, French, and German diplomats and noblemen, and French chefs all have in common? Between the 17th century and 1830, they served up fantastical ‘table architecture’ to honor their noble and royal guests. These tables showcased lavish temples, beautiful arrangements of food, specially created sugar and porcelain sculptures, silver and gilded display pieces, and even table fireworks.
Marriages, diplomatic visits, and treaty signings turned these meals into theatrical extravaganzas, in which the chef played the role of master of ceremonies, organizing all the details including musical entertainment to accompany the cuisine. When James II of England acceded to the throne in 1685, he sent Lord Castlemayne to Rome as Ambassador to the Vatican where he arranged an elaborate banquet in honor of the Pope.
While Italy and France led the way in culinary fashion, English visitors and diplomats were often the beneficiaries and sometimes the hosts. Chef Antonin Câreme’s splendid dinner for the Treaty of Versailles attended by Alexander I of Russia, Tallyrand and others led to the chef briefly being lured to England by George IV for a State Dinner for Tsar Alexander in 1816, who tempted the chef to then travel to Russia.
Sarah Coffin, will recount some of these amazing meals and illustrate the elaborate table settings and accoutrements devised to impress guests from the top echelons of European society and royalty. She will provide first-hand accounts by observers, as well as show prints and paintings that show the masterpieces that were created for the pleasures of the table.
Sarah D. Coffin is an independent decorative arts and design historian, curator, consultant, and lecturer who has extensively researched and explored the interaction of culinary design and history. Previously she was Senior Curator and Head of the Product Design and Decorative Arts Department at Cooper Hewitt for over 14 years, retiring in 2018. Her tenure at Cooper Hewitt included her curation of the exhibition Feeding Desire: Design and Tools of the Table, 1500–2005. Other exhibitions for Cooper-Hewitt included the blockbuster exhibition Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels (2011); Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730–2008; and The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, which she co-curated and co-authored the exhibition catalog. Most recently she co-authored the exhibition catalogue for a show on Art Nouveau architect and designer Hector Guimard, opening in 2022 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and then The Driehaus Museum, Chicago.
Watch live on Wednesday, June 16 at 6.00pm (EDT), or rent the recording for 4 days. $15 Royal Oak members; $20 non-members.
Online Conversation | Future of Publishing, Art and Architectural History
The Future of Art and Architectural History in Publishing: A Conversation
Online, University of Buckingham, 27 May 2021, 5pm (UK)
The last of this academic year’s Research Days organised by the Department of History and History of Art at the University of Buckingham is structured as a conversation with some of the most prominent editors in history of art and architecture. To register, please send an email to Seminars-HRI@buckingham.ac.uk. Questions may be addressed to Adriano Aymonino, who will be moderating the event, adriano.aymonino@buckingham.ac.uk.
• Mark Eastment, Editorial Director, Art and Architecture Editor, Yale University Press, London
• Michelle Komie, Publisher, Art & Architecture, Princeton University Press
• Alodie Larson, Art and Art History Editor, Oxford University Press
• Thomas Weaver, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Art and Architecture, MIT Press
Online Talk | Building a Print Collection in Malta
This month’s installment of The Wallace Collection Seminars on the History of Collections and Collecting:
Krystle Attard Trevisan, The ‘Primo Costo’ Inventory of Count Saverio Marchese (1757–1833)
Wallace Collection Seminars on the History of Collections and Collecting
Online, The Wallace Collection, London, 24 May 2021, 17.30
Print collecting was considered a noble and erudite activity from the sixteenth and well into the nineteenth century. Collectors in major cities purchased prints from dealers and publishers and traded with other collectors. Malta’s role in the print market has so far been overlooked. There were no dealers in prints on the island. However, the Maltese nobleman and collector Count Saverio Marchese built a collection of 4,500 high quality prints. We know how he did this through his ‘Primo Costo’ manuscript in which he recorded all his purchases. The manuscript reveals who formed part of Marchese’s widespread network of print sellers in European cities such as Paris, Munich, Rome, and Milan. It confirms that there were local suppliers, though not specialised print dealers. It reveals the various collecting methods that Marchese adopted to obtain prints from Malta. The ‘Primo Costo’ is a rare type of document which gives invaluable insight into European print trading, making it essential for studying collecting practices. Marchese recorded the names of continental and local dealers, auctioneers, and other suppliers. The manuscript also refers to other Maltese collectors. Using the information found in the ‘Primo Costo,’ this paper will identify key figures not only within the Maltese print market but also within the European one.
Krystle Attard Trevisan is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Register here to view this talk via Zoom.
To view the talk via The Wallace Collection’s YouTube channel, please click here.
Some of the previous seminars are now available on YouTube.
Online Discussion | Advancing Equity in & through Academic Footnotes
Information on The Italian Art Society, which is dedicated to the study of Italian art and architecture from prehistory to the present day, is available here:
Citing Truth to Power: Advancing Equity in & through Academic Footnotes
The Emerging Scholars Committee of The Italian Art Society
Online, 2 June 2021, 12pm (CST)
Footnotes are the fundamental building blocks of academic arguments. They not only validate new ideas, they also situate us scholars within larger academic conversations and serve as a roadmap for how those conversations have developed over time. But this relationship is reciprocal. When appealing to the authority of these previous scholars, our footnotes also amplify their voices and argue implicitly for what conversations are worth being had, and by whom. As a result, footnotes often serve to reinforce the dominance of a narrow range of (usually European and American, white, fully-able, male) academics, limiting both the kinds of conversations that can be had within a field as well as who can have them. For this reason, we invite you to our virtual open forum. By bringing scholars of Italian Art History and related art historical and humanities fields into conversation with each other, we hope to interrogate what is at stake in both our footnotes and the citational process.
Allison Levy is Digital Scholarship Editor for Brown University Library’s Digital Publications Initiative. She has authored or edited five books on early modern Italian visual culture and is co-chair of the College Art Association’s Committee on Research and Scholarship.
Julia DeLancey is Professor of Art History at the University of Mary Washington. She specializes in the visual culture of early modern Venice and, most recently, works on questions related to disability, art, and visual culture.
Robert Clines is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Western Carolina University. His first book A Jewish Jesuit in the Eastern Mediterranean appeared in 2019. He’s currently writing a book tentatively entitled Ancient Others: Essays on Race, Empire, and the Mediterranean in Italian Renaissance Humanism.
Online Talk | Alec Cobbe, Birds, Bugs and Butterflies
Tomorrow, from The Decorative Arts Trust:
Recounting the Life of the ‘Peacock’ Worcester Service (1763)
Alec Cobbe, joined with Leslie Fitzpatrick
Online, Monday, 10 May 2021, 1.00pm (ET)
Join us as we learn about some incredible ceramics from Ireland with artist, designer, and collector Alec Cobbe. Alec will share an illustrated talk about the creation, dispersal, and recovery of the ‘Peacock’ Worcester service of 1763, the largest mid-18th-century service recorded from any British porcelain manufacturer. Thomas and Lady Betty Cobbe of Newbridge House, County Dublin, acquired the service after becoming acquainted with Dr. Wall’s porcelain factory in Worcester as they traveled from Dublin to Bath.
This lecture features scholarship that is part of a recent publication and exhibition Birds, Bugs and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe’s ‘Peacock’ Worcester Porcelain composed by Alec and shown at Dublin Castle (October 2019 to February 2020).
After his presentation, Alec will be joined in conversation with Leslie Fitzpatrick, who previously served as the Samuel and M. Patricia Grober Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago.
This program is dedicated in memory of Christopher Monkhouse, a recipient of the Decorative Trust’s Award of Merit, whose extraordinary 2015 exhibition and publication Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840 continue to serve as a testament to the incredible material culture of Ireland.
Participants will receive an email with the event link after registering. If you have any questions about this or other programs, please email carrie@decorativeartstrust.org.
Registration is available here (pay what you can)
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From Boydell and Brewer:
Alec Cobbe, Birds, Bugs and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe’s ‘Peacock’ China: A Biography of an Irish Service of Worcester Porcelain (London: Boydel Press, 2019), 143 pages, ISBN: 9781783274727, £45 / $80.
A major contribution to our knowledge of the Worcester porcelain factory in its early years, based on a single large and elaborate dinner service commissioned by an Irish family.
2020 Winner of the American Ceramic Circle Book Award
The early years of the famous Worcester porcelain factory established by Dr Wall have always been a little mysterious, owing to the destruction of the records of the business for this period. Alec Cobbe’s discovery of family papers listing the purchases over a period of years of a particularly beautiful and ornate table set have enabled him to give a vivid glimpse of how the factory interacted with its customers. He is able to describe the commissioning of perhaps the largest service of first period Worcester porcelain on record by Thomas and Lady Betty Cobbe for Newbridge House Co. Dublin. It was bought in stages from 1763 as the family travelled from Dublin to Bath each year, stopping at Worcester en route, as other Irish gentry did. The Cobbe service, uniquely in the context of British porcelain, was accompanied by a full set of Irish silver and steel cutlery fitted with Worcester porcelain handles matching the service. The various pieces of porcelain and their historical context are described as well as their painted decoration, and the sources for it. The later history of the service is outlined and its gradual dispersal in the nineteenth century, culminating in a final sale of the remaining pieces lot by lot in a Christie’s sale in 1920. This book celebrates Cobbe’s reassembly of more than 160 pieces of the original service over a period of more than thirty years and their return to Newbridge following their exhibition in the State Apartments at Dublin Castle. Overall, the book gives an important insight into Irish social life and patronage in the mid-eighteenth century.
Alec Cobbe was born in Ireland and still resides in Newbridge House, Co. Dublin, where his ancestors have lived since it was built in the middle of the eighteenth century. He practises as an artist and designer. As a passionate collector, he added to his family’s historic collections and assembled the world’s largest group of composer-owned keyboard instruments.
C O N T E N T S
Foreword
Preface and Acknowledgements
Beginnings
‘Snuff for Dr Walls’: The Cobbes in Worcester and London
Plans for Collecting and Entertaining
The Peacock Service and Its Cutlery
The Decoration of the Original Peacock Service
The Service through Later Centuries, Sale, and Reassembly
Appendices
I. Transcripts from Worcester and Cobbe archives, accounts, and inventories
II. Hypothetical tally of the original Peacock Service
III. Transcript of Christie’s 1920 sale catalogue
IV. Known destinations of Cobbe pieces
V. A note on the nomenclature of Worcester porcelain pieces
VI. Inventory of Worcester blue-scale porcelain from the original service and re-assembled pieces in Lady Betty’s pattern of birds, insects, and butterflies
Online Seminars | Sartorial Society Series, Summer 2021
I’ve included here a selection of talks most relevant to the 18th century, but the whole series looks terrific.–CH From the Sartorial Society Series:
Looking Back: The Historicisms, Hauntings, and Heritage of Dress
Sartorial Society Series, Summer Semester 2021
A digital seminar series exploring the history of dress, fashion, and bodily adornment.
“The past has to be taken apart. Old themes are worn as new details.” –Judith Clark
When introduced to histories of dress, we are often met with timelines of fashion that imply a neat, progressive evolution of fashionable styles through the years. Clothing is framed as an index to history. Yet dress does not conform to an orderly chronology. It is full of disruptive reverberations, re-interpretations, and revivals. The fashions of the past are repeatedly dismantled and reimagined, sending sartorial echoes through time.
The historic resonance of dress can also carry an emotional weight on a personal level. Clothes can serve as welcome memories of loved ones, or less-welcome spectres of the past. Memories of clothes can be deeply nostalgic, while the garments not-worn can serve as ‘sliding-door’ moments, causing us to dwell on the parallel lives we did not live or bodies unlike our own. This has been explored, for example, by Shahidha Bari, who describes “spectral visions of ourselves [that] haunt these garments like all things that are romanticised and never realised.”
Dress maintains its capacity to ‘haunt’ in the setting of the museum or archive. Elizabeth Wilson described museums of dress as ‘mausoleums of culture’: haunted and eerie. She stated that ‘there are dangers in seeing what should have been sealed up in the past. We experience a sense of the uncanny when we gaze at garments that had an intimate relationship with human beings long since gone to their graves.’ Carol Tulloch has written of the power of archives to access personal fashion histories that may otherwise have been lost, suggesting that: “archives enable a lived experience to be revived and reassessed time and time again.”
The Sartorial Society Series is organised by a group of dress historians and curators with the aim of celebrating the diverse, innovative, and excellent research emerging in the field of dress history. We want to create a space that welcomes and supports dress historians from all backgrounds, and fosters positive connections within our field. The series will encourage collegiality and will be an open, inclusive, and friendly space to meet others interested in dress history. We encourage BYO wine, tea or soft drink of choice and invite you to join the post-talk Q&A.
All sessions are held on Thursday evenings at 6pm UK time (BST/GMT). Most talks are 20 minutes; some are 10 minutes. Registration links are available here.
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Week 1 | Nostalgia and Nationalism
20 May 2021
• Cecilia Gunzburger, French Revolutionary Dress in the Bourbon Restoration: The Political Uses of Historic Dress
• Sabine Wieber, Vienna’s 1879 Festzug and the Habsburg Empire’s ‘Glorious’ Past
• Alison Toplis, An Exploration of the Smock as a Nostalgic Spectre of Rural England
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Week 3 | Reconstruction and Reproduction
10 June 2021
• Amber Pouliot, Serena Partridge’s ‘Accessories’ Collection for the Brontë Parsonage Museum: Haunting the Heritage Context
• Jordan Mitchell-King, Reanimating Dress: Interpreting Historical Clothing through Experimental Wearing
• Cynthia Chin Kirk, ‘I Am Only Fond of What Comes from the Heart’: Memory and Trauma in Martha Washington’s Purple Silk Gown
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Week 4 | Performance and Performativity
24 June 2021
• Ella Hawkins, The Time is Out of Joint: ‘Haunted’ Costuming at Shakespeare’s Globe
• Hilary Davidson, Looking Back Through Fashion: Regency Romanticisms
• Anouska Lester, ‘Item, One Ghost’s Crown’: Haunting and Loss in Philip Henslowe’s 1598 Theatrical Inventories
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Week 7 | Historicism, Revival, and Re-Use
29 July 2021
• Serena Dyer, Sartorial Chronology and Fashionable Anachronism: Historicism, Temporality, and the Making of Dress Histories
• Sarah Hodge, A Fancy for the Past: Historical Style in Britain, 1800–1851
• Ruby Hodgson, Robe a la Grand-Mere: Re-Use of 18th-Century Silk in Romantic Era Dress
• Jane Hattrick, Queering the Hartnell Crinoline: Reinventing Second Empire French Fashions, Fantasy, Gender Performativity, and the Royal Body
Online Lecture and Conference | Piranesi @300
Base of the Antonine Column from Piranesi’s Campo Marzio (Rome, 1762)
(British School at Rome Library)
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Clare Hornsby, Piranesi at the BSR: Thomas Ashby’s Curious Campo Marzio
Online Lecture, 6 May 2021, 18.00–19.30 CET
Piranesi @300
Online Conference, 19–21 May 2021
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Venice 1720 – Rome 1778) was one of the leading figures in 18th-century Italian and European culture. An artist, engraver, architect, merchant, intellectual, and polemicist, he was essential in the formation of modern aesthetic sensibility, for the birth of modern archaeology, for the theories of architecture and urbanism. His influence has been enduring, from Romanticism to the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, up to the present day.
The third centenary of Piranesi’s birth struggled to achieve resonance in 2020 due to the pandemic. Initiatives to celebrate the great artist’s work will resume in Rome in May 2021, accessible online internationally.
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On Thursday, May 6, the British School at Rome, will host an online lecture exploring Piranesi’s book Campo Marzio di Antica Roma of 1762, its magnificent map, and some of the curiosities of the copy of the volume held in the rare books collections of the library at BSR. This lecture by Clare Hornsby in collaboration with Valerie Scott BSR librarian will feature the recently launched initiative of BSR Library and Archive, the Digital Collections website, of which the Piranesi Campo Marzio volume will be a highlight.
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On 19, 20, and 21 May a group of Roman institutions—the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, British School at Rome, Villa Médicis-Académie de France, and the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma—have organised an online conference, Piranesi@300, bringing together more than 20 Italian and foreign scholars (from Brazil, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, England, Spain, etc.) to present new research and new analyses of some of the many aspects of Piranesi’s extraordinary personality and creativity.
During the week of the conference, further presentations will be made available via video recording; a highlight is The Digital Piranesi presented by a team from the University of South Carolina. Additionally, the YouTube channel of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale will host contributions from a number of Piranesi experts, including the Director of the Vatican Museums Barbara Jatta and the restoration team which brought the church of Santa Maria del Priorato on the Aventine hill in Rome, Piranesi’s architectural masterpiece, back to its original beauty.
1 8 – 2 4 M A Y 2 0 2 1
Pre-recorded sessions (available all week)
Hosted on the website of the University of South Carolina
• Jeannie Britton, From Page to Screen: A New Look at Piranesi’s Annotated Images
• Zoe Langer, The Digital Piranesi: New Approaches to Translating the Opere
• Jason Porter, The Virtual Piranesi: New Methods of Immersive Literacy
• Michael Gavin, Piranesi’s Diagrammatic Sublime
Hosted on the YouTube channel of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome
• Barbara Jatta (Direttore, Musei Vaticani), Piranesi in Vaticano
• Daniela Porro (Soprintendente Speciale archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio di Roma) Restauri della Soprintendenza alla piazza di S. Maria del Priorato
• Alessandro Mascherucci (Soprintendenza Speciale archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio di Roma), Problematiche tecniche del restauro al complesso piranesiano
• Giorgio Ferreri (Sovrano Militare Ordine di Malta), S. Maria del Priorato, i restauri
• John Wilton-Ely (Professor Emeritus, Hull University), Soane’s Attitude towards Piranesi
• Maria Cristina Misiti (Ministero della Cultura) and José Maria Luzon Nogué (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid), Piranesi dal libro cartaceo all’opera multimediale
• Sergei Tchoban (Tchoban Voss architects, Berlin), Imprint of the Future: Destiny of Piranesi‘s City
• Pierluigi Panza (Politecnico di Milano), Piranesi alla Scala
W E D N E S D A Y , 1 9 M A Y 2 0 2 1
Hosted by Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Roma
9.45 Welcome by Andrea De Pasquale (Direttore, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Roma) and Marcello Fagiolo (Presidente, Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma)
10.00 Piranesi’s Techniques: Drawing, Etching
Chairs: Mario (Bevilacqua (Università di Firenze / Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma) and Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò (Roma)
• Andrea De Pasquale (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Roma), Piranesi e il suo torchio
• Giovanna Scaloni (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Roma), L’Istituto centrale per la grafica per Piranesi
• Lucia Ghedin (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Roma) and Sofia Menconero (Sapienza – Università di Roma), La tecnica di reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) applicata alle matrici calcografiche: una sperimentazione sulla serie delle Carceri piranesiane
• Ginevra Mariani (Roma), Progetto Piranesi: il catalogo generale delle matrici di Piranesi, 2010–2020. Nuovi dati e future prospettive sull’opera incisa di Giambattista Piranesi
• Stefan Morét (Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe), The Role of Drawn Copies after Antique Ornaments in Piranesi’s Workshop
• Bénédicte Maronnie (Università della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio), Pratiques graphiques dans l’atelier de Giovanni Battista Piranesi à l’exemple d’un dessin inédit conservé à Zurich
13.30 Lunch Break
14.30 Piranesi and European 18th-Century Collections
Chairs: Mario Bevilacqua (Università di Firenze / Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma) and Barbara Jatta (Vatican Museum)
• Ebe Antetomaso (Biblioteca Corsiniana e dei Lincei, Roma), Materiali piranesiani nella collezione Corsini: appunti dai bibliotecari
• Charleen Rethmeyer and Georg Schelbert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Piranesi in Prussia: Spotlights on a Variable Relationship
• Gudula Metze (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), 1720–1778: Piranesi and the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden
16.45 Break
17.00 Keynote Address
• Delfin Rodriguez Ruiz (Universidad Complutense, Madrid), Piranesi e la Spagna
T H U R S D A Y , 2 0 M A Y 2 0 2 1
Hosted by the British School at Rome
9.45 Welcome by Chris Wickham (Director, British School at Rome)
10.00 Piranesi: Architect, Antiquarian, and Theorist
Chairs: Clare Hornsby (BSR) and Caroline Barron (Birkbeck)
• Maria Grazia D’Amelio Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’) and Fabrizio De Cesaris Sapienza – Università di Roma), Giovan Battista Piranesi e l’architettura pratica
• Lola Kantor-Kazovsky (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Piranesi’s Carceri, Cartesian ‘Dream Argument’ and Scientific Interests in Early 18th-Century Venice
• Silvia Gavuzzo Stewart (Roma), La dedica di Piranesi a Lord Charlemont nella Tavola II delle Antichità Romane
• Paolo Pastres (Deputazione di Storia Patria per il Friuli), Fantasia al potere: Piranesi, Algarotti e la lezione di Antonio Conti
• Cristina Ruggero (Berliner-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin), ‘Onde per riguardo della Pianta… non resta che l’indice ad incidersi’: Piranesi e Villa Adriana
• Eleonora Pistis (Columbia University, New York), Piranesi without Images: The Thinkability of Architecture
13.45 Lunch Break
14.30 From Venice to Rome: Piranesi as Artist, Dealer, and Entrepreneur
Chair: Harriet O’Neill (British School at Rome / Royal Holloway University of London)
• Enrico Lucchese (Univerza v Ljubljani), Pulcinella e poveri Cristi: Per Giambattista Piranesi disegnatore e i suoi rapporti con Giandomenico Tiepolo
• Francesco Nevola (Atene), Piranesi: Peritissimo in tutte le Arti Liberali
15.30 Keynote Address
• Heather Hyde Minor (University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana), Piranesi’s Epistolic Art
F R I D A Y , 2 1 M A Y 2 0 2 1
Hosted by the Villa Médicis-Académie de France à Rome
9.45 Welcome by Sam Stourdzé (Direttore, Accademia di Francia a Roma)
10.00 Piranesi’s Influence: Europe and Beyond
Chair: Heather Hyde Minor (University of Notre Dame)
• Olga Medvedkova (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris), ‘La Dévideuse italienne’ ou habiter la ruine
• Valeria Mirra (Roma), Dalla fortuna di Giovanni Battista Piranesi in Francia allo stabilimento dei ‘Piranesi frères’ a Parigi
• Helena Perez Gallardo (Universidad Complutense, Madrid), Sotto il cielo di Parigi: Piranesi negli incisori e fotografi francesi nel 1850
• Angela Rosch Rodrigues (Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil), G. B. Piranesi at the Brazilian National Library: A Trajectory of the rovine parlanti from Rome to Rio de Janeiro
• Hiromasa Kanayama (Keio University, Tokyo), La raccolta piranesiana nel Giappone dell’Ottocento: le vicende della collezione Kamei
13.15 Lunch Break
14.30 Piranesi in the 20th Century
Chair: Francesca Alberti (Académie de France à Rome)
• Giacomo Pala (Universität Innsbruck) Piranesi: Posthumous Architect
• Angelo Marletta (Università degli Studi di Catania), Forma Urbis forma architecturae: Piranesi, Kahn e i frammenti di Roma
• Victor Plahte Tschudi (Oslo School of Architecture and Design), Alfred H. Barr and the Reinvention of Carceri as Modern Art
16.30 Break
17.00 Keynote Address
• Alain Schnapp, Piranèse, ruine des ruines
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