Conference | Vico, Antiquity, and the Visual Arts
Starting today, from ArtHist.net and the conference programme:
Vico, l’Antiquité et les Arts Visuels
Online and in-person, Besançon, MSHE Ledoux, 3–4 November 2025
On the occasion of the tricentenary of the first edition of La Scienza Nuova (Naples, 1725), this international conference aims to analyze, in an innovative and interdisciplinary way, a central aspect of Giambattista Vico’s work: the importance he attributes to images and visual signs, which he considers the original language, historically prior to the development of spoken language. Although he rarely mentions the arts, Vico’s thought allows us to understand the visual artifact of ancient civilizations as an image-object (factum) that embodies the way in which humans perceive, experience, and interpret the world, thus constituting their reality (the historical verum).
The corpus of his ancient visual sources, as well as the influence of his thought on Antiquity and on the creative imagination of the first “universals of imagination” and “ornamental metaphors” within the disciplines of Visual Studies, have never been studied as such by specialists. The exploration of these themes raises numerous methodological challenges and requires a multidisciplinary approach. The three sessions will address theories and histories of art and collecting, literary theory, iconology, mythology, heraldry and emblem studies, the history and comparative study of law, architecture, archaeology, palaeography, anthropology, museology, semiotics, the geography of perception, as well as the psychology and sociology of art, extending to design and the pedagogy of the imagination. The symposium will be broadcast live.
Contact: anna_eleanor.signorini@umlp.fr
m o n d a y , 3 n o v e m b e r
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85036141522?pwd=LJ4sv9sRfCIsrxMoSxTA1L9Oqlf2mG.1
9.00 Ouverture du colloque – Présentation par Anna E. Signorini
9.10 Session 1 | The Construction of Visual Knowledge from Antiquity to the Age of Vico
• Marcus Jan Bajema (Leyde) — Vico and the Longue Durée of Aegean Art (Vico et la longue durée de l’art égéen)
• Maurizio Harari (Université de Pavie) — Sul potente regno de’ toscani in Italia: architettura più antica, religione più tragica, arte militare più sapiente
• Italo Iasiello (Université de Naples Federico II) — Il contesto antiquario di Giambattista Vico: Napoli e l’Antichità nel primo Settecento
• Daniel Orrells (King’s College) — Vico and the Visual World of 18th-Century Antiquarianism
12.00 Déjeuner
14.30 Session 1 | The Construction of Visual Knowledge from Antiquity to the Age of Vico, continued
• Loredana Lorizzo (Université G. D’Annunzio de Chieti-Pescara) — Nella biblioteca di Giuseppe Valletta: Vico e la letteratura artistica
14.50 Session 2 | Semiotics, Law, Pedagogy, Design: Vico’s Iconic Thought
• Davide Luglio (Sorbonne) — La Scienza Nuova et la sémiotique figurale de G.B. Vico
• Osvaldo Sacchi (Université de la Campanie Luigi Vanvitelli) — Gli ‘universali fantastici’ di Vico e la ‘grande bellezza’ del diritto romano
• Donald Kunze (Pennsylvania State University) — Representing Nothing: Vico’s Induction and Inversion
• Marco Dallari (Bologne) — Disegno infantile e rappresentazione del mondo e di sè alla luce della théorie vichiana
• Oliver Reichenstein (Information Architects, Zurich) — (Inter)facing the Truth: Maker’s Knowledge in Human Centered Design
t u e s d a y , 4 n o v e m b e r
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89987641547?pwd=r3qY5x1duD4qhYqIU77eMJCctqv2a3.1
9.00 Dora d’Auria (UMLP Besançon, ISTA) — La connaissance des antiquités du Cilento à l’époque de Vico
9.20 Session 3 | Modern and Contemporary Receptions of Vico in the Visual Arts and Visual Studies
• Silvia Davoli (Oxford et Strawberry Hill House, Londres) — Vico and Antiquarian Collecting in Milan during the 19th Century
• Paolo Heritier (Université de Turin) — Vico, les emblèmes et les Legal Visual Studies
• Frances S. Connelly (Université du Missouri-Kansas City) — Reimagining Culture: Vico’s Poetic Monsters in Contemporary Art
• Isabela Gaglianone (Université de São Paulo) — Vico et le regard philologique d’Aby Warburg
• Anna Eleanor Signorini (UMLP Besançon, ISTA) — Vico vu par les critiques d’art du XXe siècle
New Book | The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England
From Cambridge UP, with an online book launch, together with a speed-pitching workshop, scheduled for Monday (see below) . . .
Adam James Smith, Rachel Stenner, and Kaley Kramer, eds., The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), 124 pages, ISBN: 978-1009629454, $18.
This collection profiles understudied figures in the book and print trades of the eighteenth century. With an explicit focus on intervening in the critical history of the trades, this volume profiles seven women and three men, emphasising the broad range of material, cultural, and ideological work these people undertook. It offers a biographical introduction to each figure, placing them in their social, professional, and institutional settings. The collection considers varied print trade roles including that of the printer, publisher, business-owner, and bookseller, as well as several specific trade networks and numerous textual forms. The biographies draw on extensive new archival research, with details of key sources for further study on each figure. Chronologically organised, this Element offers a primer both on individual figures and on the tribulations and innovations of the print trade in the century of national and print expansion.
c o n t e n t s
Preface
1 Introduction — Adam James Smith, Rachel Stenner, and Kaley Kramer
2 Elizabeth Nutt: Print Trade Matriarch (1666–1746) — Helen Williams
3 John Nicholson and the Auctioning of Copyright (d.1717) — Jacob Baxter
4 Catherine Sanger: Publisher in Bartholomew Close (1687–1716) — Kate Ozment
5 John White Junior: Printer in the North (1689–1769) — Sarah Griffin
6 Selling the Enlightenment: Mary Cooper and Print Culture (1707–1761) — Lisa Maruca
7 The ‘Indefatigable’ Ann Ward: Printer in York (1715/6–1789) — Kaley Kramer
8 Anne Fisher (1719–1778): Not Simply a Printer’s Wife — Barbara Crosbie
9 Sold at the Vestry: John Rippon (1751–1836) and the Hymnbook Trade — Dominic Bridge
10 Diversity in the Book Trades: Ann Ireland (1751–1843) of Leicester — John Hinks
11 ‘Laugh when you must, be candid when you can’: The Concealed Resistance of the Radical Printer Winifred Gales (1761–1839) — Adam James Smith
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From Eventbrite:
The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England
Book Launch and Early Career Researcher Speed-pitching Workshop
Online, Monday, 3 November, 6.30pm GMT
All welcome! Please register by 2 November.
Join the Centre for Print Culture at the University of Sussex to celebrate the publication of this volume, the follow-on to The People of Print: Seventeenth-Century England, with an evening of lively talks and discussion. The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England profiles understudied figures in the book and print trades, featuring new research and critical perspectives on this fascinating and rich cultural field. We will be joined by Dr Barbara Crosbie (Durham University), Dr Jacob Baxter (St Andrews), and Dr Lisa Maruca (Wayne State, Professor Emerita), who will discuss their research for the latest collection.
Following the launch, there will be a Speed-pitching workshop (7.30–8.15pm GMT) for early career researchers studying topics in the histories of the book, print, and publishing trades. Come with an idea you can explain in 3 minutes, and we will pair you with one of our publishing panel of journal, series, and book editors for feedback:
• Dr Helen Williams, The Printing Historical Society
• Dr Kaley Kramer and Dr Adam James Smith, editors The People of Print
• Professor Samantha Rayner, Commissioning Editor of Cambridge Elements, Publishing and Book Culture
• Dr Rachel Stenner, editor of Publishing History journal and The People of Print series
Journée d’études | Sculpture in Franche-Comté, 15th–20th Centuries
From ArtHist.net:
Actualité de la sculpture en Franche-Comté:
Circulations, Pratiques et Conservation, XVe–XXe siècle
Online and in-person, Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, Besançon, 4 November 2025
Organized by Hélène Zanin
Inscription et lien de visioconférence disponible sur demande: helene.zanin@umlp.fr
9.15 Introduction, Hélène Zanin (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur / Centre Lucien Febvre)
9.30 Actualité de la sculpture des XVe et XVIe siècles
Modération: Sandra Bazin-Henry (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur / Centre Lucien Febvre)
• Matthieu Fantoni (musée Fabre), en visioconférence — Retour d’expérience sur la restauration de La Pietà de Conrad Meit à la cathédrale de Besançon, 2019–23
• Thomas Flum (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur / Centre Lucien Febvre) — La Pietà de Conrad Meit et l’originalité du choix iconographique
• Lola Fondbertasse (musées de Dijon) — Quelques réflexions sur la sculpture bourguignonne du XVe siècle: Le projet d’exposition du musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon
11.00 Pause
11.15 Sculptures et monuments des XIXe et XXe siècles: études et protection
Modération: Sara Vitacca (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur / Centre Lucien Febvre)
• Justine Vigneres (DRAC Bourgogne-Franche-Comté) et Michaël Vottero (DRAC Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), en visioconférence — Découvertes et protections récentes au titre des monuments historiques de sculptures du XIXe siècle en Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
• Charlotte Leblanc (DRAC Occitanie), en visioconférence — La protection des statuaires monumentales de Belfort: étude du groupe Quand Même d’Antonin Mercié
12.45 Pause déjeuner
14.15 Sociabilités, circulation et carrière des artistes
Modération: Claire Maingon (université Bourgogne-Europe / LIR3S)
• Virginie Guffroy (musée du Louvre) — Les réseaux de sociabilités d’un sculpteur bisontin, l’exemple de Luc Breton (1731–1800)
• Grégoire Extermann (Haute école spécialisée de la Suisse Italienne – SUPSI / Fonds National Suisse pour la recherche scientifique) — Nul n’est prophète en son pays: James Pradier et la sculpture à Genève au XIXe siècle
15.20 Pause
15.30 Œuvres multiples et leurs usages
Modération: Hélène Zanin (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur / Centre Lucien Febvre)
• Emy Faivre (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur / ISTA) — Modèles pour apprendre: Circulation et réception des plâtres dans les écoles d’art de Franche-Comté, XIXe–XXIe siècles
• Virginie Frelin-Cartigny (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon) — Louis Hertig: Découverte de l’œuvre d’un sculpteur à travers la photographie
Fin de la journée vers 17h
Conference | The Image of the Black Archive: Past, Present and Future
Anonymous (Delft), Tile panel with a Chinese landscape, ca. 1700; François Desprez, Illustration from Recueil de la diversité des habits‘, 1562; Jan Jansz Mostaert, Portrait of an African Man (Christophle le More?), 1525–30 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
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From The Warburg Institute:
The Image of the Black Archive: Past, Present, and Future
Online and in-person, The Warburg Institute, University of London, 7–8 November 2025
Organized by Hannah Lee and Maria Golovteeva
In 1960, Franco-American art collectors and philanthropists Jean and Dominique de Ménil initiated the Image of the Black archive. Originally begun in Paris and then expanded with an office in Houston, the research project was a response to the 1960s Civil Rights movement in the US. This two-day international conference brings together scholars who have contributed to the project over its history and those producing new research on the historic representation of African people in European and American art and culture. Attendance (online or in-person) is free with advance booking, though places are limited.
Keynote Speaker
Dr Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian, and curator. She is Senior Consulting Curator at The Phillips Collection. Her current book is an exploration of Black figures in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts, published by Yale University Press in 2025.
This conference is organised with the generous support of the Henry Moore Foundation, the Society for Renaissance Studies, and the Association for Art History.
f r i d a y , 7 n o v e m b e r
9.00 Registration
9.30 Opening Remarks
9.45 Panel 1
• Joaneath Spicer (Walters Art Museum), Balthazar, One of the Three Kings > Portrait: Prince Aniaba of Assinie as Balthazar, 1700
• Adam Sammut (University of York), Painted Black: Rubens’s ‘Mulay Ahmad’ after Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen
• Edward Town (Yale Center for British Art), Framing the Black Presence in British Art: Research, Curation, and the Limits of the Archive
11.05 Tea and coffee break
11.30 Panel 2
• Najee Olya (William & Mary), The Contradictions of the Anthropological Gallery: Frank M. Snowden, Jr.’s Ethiopians and the Image of the Black in Western Art
• Jaqueline Lombard (University of New Hampshire), Coins on the Cutting Room Floor: Twelfth-Century Images of Saint Maurice in the Image of the Black Archives
• Paul Kaplan (Purchase College, SUNY), First Fruits
12.50 Lunch break
13.50 Panel 3
• Michael I. Ohajuru (Institute of Commonwealth Studies), The John Blanke Project: Artists and Historians Reimagine the Black Trumpeter to Henry VII and Henry VIII
• Sarah Thomas (Birkbeck), Facing the Inventory: WY Ottley and the Archive of Enslavement
• Nanfuka Joan Kizito (Makerere University), Decolonising the Archive: An Africanised Reflection on the History of the ‘Image of the Black in Western Art’ Project
15.10 Panel 4
• Isabel Raabe (Talking Objects) and Doreen Mende (Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden), Plural Histories of Networked Knowledge: Cross-Collections Research at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
• Sarah Okpokam (National Portrait Gallery), TBC
16.10 Tea and coffee break
16.30 David Bindman: In Memoriam
Drinks Reception
s a t u r d a y , 8 n o v e m b e r
9.30 Registration
10.00 Keynote
• Adrienne L. Childs, The Ornamentality of Blackness
11.00 Tea and coffee break
11.30 Panel 5
• Jacopo Gnisci (UCL), European Perceptions of Ethiopia’s Material Past in the Renaissance
• Patricia Simons (University of Michigan Ann Arbor \ University of Melbourne), Heat and Wind: Renaissance Representations of Black Men in Material Culture
• Riccardo Tonin (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Musi da porton: The Image of the Black on the Doors of Venice
12:50 Lunch break
13:50 Panel 6
• Amber Burbidge (European University Institute), Blackness and Bathing: The ‘Black Venus’ in the Image of the Black Archive
• Denva Gallant (Rice University), Afterlives of the Black Body: Dismemberment and the Black body in Matteo di Pacino’s Miracle of the Leg
• Nancy Ba (Sorbonne Université), Ethnographic Sculpture as Visual Archive? The Politics of Flesh, Complexion, and Scientific Image-Making in the Colonial Context, 1859-1931
15.10 Panel 7
• Borja Franco Llopis (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Misconceptions and Silences: Black Representation and Slavery in Iberian Art
• Ekaterini Kepetzis (Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität, Landau), ‘Only a lodger, and hardly that’: The Representation of Blacks on Eighteenth-Century English Trade Cards
• C.C. McKee (Bryn Mawr), Forms of Blackness from Fireburn to Sale: Painting Labor, Race, and the Environment in the Post-Emancipation Danish West Indies
16.30 Closing Remarks
Online Talks | Finding Moses Williams
Upcoming from The Library Company of Philadelphia:
Finding Moses Williams
Online, Wednesday, 19 November 2025, 1.00–3.30
Silhouette of Moses Williams, perhaps by Raphaelle Peale or by Williams himself, after 1802, 9 × 8 cm (Library Company of Philadelphia).
This program of illustrated talks by five speakers will focus on the identification of the exceptional hollow-cut paper profiles created by Moses Williams (1776–1830) at Peale’s Philadelphia Museum and on presenting new historically accurate information about Williams’s life and family. Moses’s parents were manumitted by Peale in 1786 and Moses, who was born enslaved, was then indentured to Peale by his parents until age twenty-eight
Raised within the Peale family, Moses was literate and trained in skills for creating and installing the Museum’s displays of art and natural science. After the installation of a physiognotrace device for creating hollow-cut paper profiles in 1802, Moses was freed and given the concession to operate this new attraction. The popularity of this inexpensive form of portraiture and the highly accurate and elegant profiles Moses cut, made him financially independent.
Recent research into Moses’s life provides us with a clearer understanding of his artistry and other activities, as well as his death date and the identity of his descendants. And, the story of Williams’s birth family illuminates how the practice of indenture used by Free Black families, like the Williams family, was a strategy for seeking financial stability.
A small selection of Moses Williams’s profiles will be on display at the Library Company during November and December and in the Peale Gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The program is sponsored by the Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in African American History and the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Registration for this free virtual event is available here»
p r e s e n t a t i o n s
1.00 Welcome — Sarah Weatherwax (Senior Curator of Graphic Arts, The Library Company of Philadelphia)
1.05 Introduction to LCP’s Program in African American History — Wynn Eakins (Reference Librarian and African American History Subject Specialist, The Library Company of Philadelphia)
1.10 Finding Moses in the Peale-Sellers Family Album — Carol Soltis (Project Associate Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
1.35 Presenting Moses at The Peale, Baltimore’s Community Museum — Nancy Proctor (Re-founding Director of The Peale)
2.00 ‘Not Yet Completely Free,’ Moses and His Family in the Context of the Gradual Manumission Act — Ellen Fernandez Sacco (Genealogist and Independent Scholar)
2.25 Locating Moses William in Philadelphia: New Information about Moses Williams’s Life and Death Based on a Re-examination of Philadelphia’s Primary Sources — Dean Krimmel (Creative Museum Services, Research Consultant to The Peale)
2.50 Moses Williams, A Technical View — Lauren Muney (Silhouette Artist and Researcher)
3.15 Final Q&A
Conference | 18th-C. Painting between Italy and the Hapsburg Empire
From the Department of Art History at the Universität Wien:
Settecento Malerei: Cultural Transfer between Italy and the Habsburg Territories
Online and in-person, Department of Art History of the University of Vienna, 23–24 October 2025
Organized by Eleonora Gaudieri and Erika Meneghini
Registration due by 19 October 2025
The beginning of the Settecento was characterised by a considerable expansion of the transalpine art market, driven by a strong interest in collecting Italian artworks. This phenomenon attracted numerous Italian artists, including many painters, to Vienna and its allies, the courts of the German prince-electors of Schönborn, Wittelsbach and others. At the same time, a number of Austrian painters were encouraged to further their training in Italy, where they were profoundly influenced by the local visual language. The high quality and renowned tradition of Italian painting, fostered by a dense network of international connections, enabled numerous artists of Italian origin, as well as Italians by adoption, to pursue successful careers at the Habsburg imperial court in Vienna. This phenomenon must be understood within the broader context of the diplomatic and artistic networks that connected Vienna with key centres on the Italian peninsula, such as Venice, Bologna, Rome, and Naples.
The two-day workshop will provide a wide-ranging exploration of 18th-century Italian painting as a focal point for transfer phenomena between the Italian peninsula and the domains of the Habsburg Empire, with a special focus on Vienna as the imperial capital. The proceedings will open with the keynote speech by Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralata. The subsequent sixteen presentations have been organised into four sections, reflecting the variety of perspectives through which these historical and artistic phenomena can be approached: Collecting Italian Painting in the Habsburg Empire; Artworks and Material Objects as Vehicles of Cultural Transfer; Artists as Transregional Agents Between Italy and the Habsburg Regions; and The Role of Academies and Museums in the Transfer of Knowledge. The objective of this study day is on one hand to examine the meanings and functions of Italian painting within the socio-political and cultural context of the Habsburg imperial court in Vienna and its allied courts; and on the other hand, to explore the various dynamics that fostered the transfer of Italian painting and Italian artistic knowledge to Vienna and the territories of the then Habsburg Empire.
The conference languages are English, German, and Italian. A livestream of the event will be available. Please confirm your attendance in-person or online via email to settecentomalerei@gmail.com by 19 October. If you have any questions, please contact the organisers: Eleonora Gaudieri and Erika Meneghini.
Dr. Eleonora Gaudieri, eleonora.gaudieri@univie.ac.at
Postdoctoral Researcher (APART-GSK funding programme, ÖAW)
Department of Art History, University of Vienna
Erika Meneghini MA, erika.meneghini@univie.ac.at
PhD Candidate
Department of Art History, University of Vienna
The workshop is supported by the Department of Art History and the Vienna Center for the History of Collecting at the University of Vienna. Funding is provided by the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, the City of Vienna, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
t h u r s d a y , 2 3 o c t o b e r
9.00 Welcome
9.30 Keynote
• Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralata (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio) — Vienna italiana: Forme e attori dello scambio culturale tra Sei e Settecento, tra immigrazione artistica e vocazione internazionale dell’aristocrazia europea
10.30 Coffee Break
10.50 Section 1 | Collecting Italian Painting in the Habsburg Empire
Moderator: Silvia Tammaro
• Stefan Albl (Schloss Eggenberg & Alte Galerie, Graz) — Il dilemma della scelta: L’arrotino di Giacomo Francesco Cipper
• Ilaria Telesca (University of Naples ‘Federico II’) — Arte e potere: La committenza artistica dei viceré austriaci di Napoli
• Jiří Štefaňák (Masaryk University, Brno) — Non multa, sed multum: Italian Painting in the Collections of the Moravian Aristocracy at the End of the 18th Century
12.30 Lunch Break
14.00 Section 2 | Artworks and Materials Objects as Vehicles of Culture Transfer
Moderator: Eleonora Gaudieri
• Ada Berktay (Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul) — Lepanto as Material Allegory: Naval Triumph and the Politics of Display in Italian and Habsburg Visual Culture
• Tomáš Kowalski (Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava) — Baroque Illusion: Italian Settecento Frescoes in Slovakia
• Beatrice Bolandrini (Università e-Campus; Accademia del Lusso, Milan) — Anton Giorgio Clerici ed Annibale Visconti, ‘consiglieri intimi’ di Carlo VI e Maria Teresa, committenti di Giambattista Tiepolo e Mattia Bortoloni
• Tomáš Valeš (Masaryk University, Brno) — Shared, ‘Recycled’, Reinvented: Art of Venetian Settecento in the Hands of ‘Viennese’ 18th-Century Painters
• Erika Meneghini (University of Vienna) — From Naples to Vienna and the Habsburg Lands: The Artistic Reception of Francesco Solimena’s Oeuvre beyond the Alps
19.00 Conference Dinner
f r i d a y , 2 4 o c t o b e r
9.00 Section 3 | Artists and Transregional Agents between Italy and the Habsburg Regions
Moderator: Erika Meneghini
• Francesco Ceretti (University of Pavia) — Pietro Bellotti: Da Venezia alle corti mitteleuropee
• Eleonora Gaudieri (University of Vienna) — Daniele Antonio Bertoli: Traces of his Activity at the Habsburg Court in Vienna
• Enrico Lucchese (University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’) — I soggiorni viennesi e nei territori asburgici di Antonio Pellegrini (1675–1741)
• Sanja Cvetnić (University of Zagreb) — Federico Bencovich as Transregional Artist
• Laura Facchin (University of Insubria, Varese) — Angelica Kauffmann: Painter of the Habsburg Court from Milan to Vienna
12.00 Lunch Break
13.30 Section 4 | The Role of Academies and Museums in the Transfer of Knowledge
Moderator: Stefan Albl
• Susanne Müller-Bechtel (University of Würzburg) — Figur–Pose–Wissen: Das akademische Aktstudium als epistemische Kunstpraxis in Rom, Wien und Mailand
• Lorenzo Giammattei (Sapienza University of Rome) — The Antique in the Drawings of Austrian Artists in Rome in the Second Half of the 18th Century
• Paolo Pastres (Independent Researcher, Udine) — Vienna e Firenze nel Settecento: Due modelli museali a confronto
15.00 Coffee Break
15.20 Final Discussion
16.45 Optional visit to the Schönbrunn Chapel and the Blue Staircase
Poster Image: Sebastiano Ricci, Allegory of the Princely Virtues, Blue Staircase, Schönbrunn Palace, 1702 (Vienna).
Online Talks | European Prints in Museums in the American South
From ArtHist.net:
Paper Backstories: European Prints in Southern Museums
Online, hosted by Vanderbilt University, 16 October 2025
Staged in conjunction with the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art’s Fall 2025 exhibition Paper Backs: Hidden Stories of European Prints from the VUMA Collection, this virtual symposium will bring together curators who oversee collections of European prints at museums spread across the South. Each curator will give a lightning-style, 10-minute presentation about their museum’s pre-1915 European print holdings, with the goal of making these collections better-known amongst local, regional, and global audiences of both amateurs and professionals. The symposium also seeks to initiate a collective discussion about how and why European prints often served as catalysts for the formation of institutional art collections in a region with limited public art infrastructure before the turn of the twentieth century. How did old master and early modernist European prints in particular support various progressive and post-World War I- era agendas? What challenges and opportunities face the study and promotion of such objects in the South today? Attendance is free and open to all.
Please register to receive the Zoom link.
s c h e d u l e
12pm (Central Standard Time) Courtney Wilder, The Vanderbilt University Museum of Art, Nashville
12.15 Sarah Cartwright, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Florida State University, Sarasota
12.25 Dana E. Cowen, The Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill
12.35 Maggie Crosland, The Birmingham Museum of Art
12.45 Nelda Damiano, The Georgia Museum, University of Georgia, Athens
1.00 Alyssa M. Hughes, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
1.10 Q&A
1.30 Event concludes
Cambridge Material Culture Workshop Fall 2025
This fall’s Material Culture Pre-1850 Workshop schedule:
Cambridge Material Culture Workshop
Michaelmas 2025
We’re excited to announce the term card for Michaelmas 2025. Each of the four sessions will meet online and in-person at St. John’s, Cambridge, starting at 5pm. For more information, please contact Tomas Brown (tbnb2@cam.ac.uk) or Sophia Feist (stcf2@cam.ac.uk).
27 October
• Corryn Kosik (Edinburgh), The Influence of European Courts at Regent Arran’s Kinneil House
• Matthew Wood (Curator, Castle Howard), Weighing Scales of Power: The State Apartments at Castle Howard
3 November
• David Martin (Cambridge), Feeding the Body to Save the Soul: Love Feasts in Colonial South India, 1830–1842
• Lis Riveros (Cambridge), The Social Architecture of the Interwar English Pub
17 November
• Alice Goldsney (University of East Anglia), Work in Progress: Breaking Bread in Reformation England
• Robert Hewis (Bard Graduate Center), ‘With Sower Sawce their Sweete do Taste’: Sweetness and Morality at the English Banquet
1 December
• Carlo Scapecchi (Arden University), Making and Repairing Luxurious Carriages and Coaches in the Medici Court in Florence, 1591–1650
• Jamie Ostmann (Durham), From the Court to the Coffeehouse: London Chocolate Culture, 1650–1720
Conference | Sacred Ceramics
Johann Joachim Kaendler, Crucifixion Group, detail, Meissen, 1743
(Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo by Adrian Sauer)
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Details of this conference appeared here at Enfilade several weeks ago; please note, however, that registration now includes an online option (with recordings sent out afterwards) for anyone who is interested but unable to attend on Tuesday.
Sacred Ceramics: Devotional Images in European Porcelain
Online and in-person, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 30 September 2025
Organized by Matthew Martin and Rebecca Klarner
Was eighteenth-century European porcelain just a ceramic material to be moulded into useful objects—or could it mean more? This conference explores what European porcelain might have communicated when it was used to create devotional objects.
This conference explores the phenomenon of religious sculpture produced in European porcelain in the eighteenth century. Sculptures on religious subjects represent some of the most ambitious and complex productions in European porcelain of the period, yet they remain relatively understudied. Meissen, Doccia Vienna, Höchst, Fulda, Nymphenburg—all these factories produced devotional images in porcelain. Even factories in mid eighteenth-century Protestant England—Chelsea and Derby—produced sculptures employing Catholic devotional imagery. In each instance, cultural-political motives for the creation of these images can be reconstructed.
The 1712 letter penned by the Jesuit Father François Xavier d’Entrecolles not only conveyed to Europe first-hand knowledge of Chinese porcelain production at Jingdezhen, but it also construed access to this knowledge as a triumph of the Jesuit global mission—the successes of the Jesuits in China made the secret of kaolinic porcelain available to the Catholic princes of Europe.
Porcelain’s alchemical heritage was also not without significance: success at the alchemical enterprise had always been deemed dependent on divine favour. These factors could lead to porcelain assuming a sacral character in Catholic court contexts. Devotional images in European porcelain exploited these cultural associations of the medium itself.
This international conference will explore the religious production of European ceramic factories and consider questions such as: Who were the artists and patrons involved in these sculptures’ creation? How did these sculptures function in private and public contexts? What significance lay in the use of porcelain to create devotional images?
More information is available here»
Conference | Impressions of Empire: Works on Paper
From ArtHist.net:
Impressions of Empire: Works on Paper as
Agents of Intermedial Translation and Cultural Exchange
Online and in-person, Colnaghi Gallery, London, 25–26 September 2025
The Colnaghi Foundation and Athena Art Foundation in London are delighted to host this symposium exploring how works on paper were used to construct meaning and identity, and engendered the intermediary exchange of artistic ideas during the period of global empire and colonisation. The symposium will be hosted both online and in the Colnaghi Gallery in London.
t h u r s d a y , 2 5 s e p t e m b e r , online and in-person
12.30 Arrival
13.00 Welcome
13.15 Session One
• Chloé Glass (Research Associate, Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago) — Decoding Stefano della Bella’s Etchings
• Eunice Yu (DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford) — Collecting and Constructing National Identity in Print: Translations of Empire from the Black Sea to the Adriatic
14:20 Coffee and Tea Break
14.45 Session Two
• Emily Cadger (PhD candidate, University of British Columbia and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Western Washington) — Political Poppies and Beautiful Books: Illustrated Floral-hybrids as Interpreters of Empire in the Fin-de-siècle Children’s Books of Walter Crane
• Vivian Tong (Lecturer in Chinese Art History at the Hong Kong Baptist University) — Images of Nature in a Global Horticultural Expansion: Sketching a Story of Sino-European Commerce, Cultural Exchange, and Colonial Expansion with Chinese Export Watercolours in the 18th and 19th Centuries
• Joseph Litts (PhD Candidate, Department of Art & Archeology, Princeton University) — The Plantation Landscapes of Anna Atkins and Anne Dixon, online presentation
16.15 Break
16.30 Session Three
• Linda Mueller (Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Zurich) — Drawing the Contract: Visualizing Obligation in the Early Modern Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds
• Gonzalo Munoz-Vera (Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech School of Architecture) — Rediscovering Latin America: Robert Burford’s Panorama of Lima (1834) through the Eyes of Lieutenant William Smyth, online presentation
17:45 Drinks
f r i d a y , 2 6 s e p t e m b e r , online only
11.00 Welcome
11.10 Session One
• Victoria Adams (PhD, the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau) — The Art of the Empire in the ‘Britain of the South’: Works on Paper in the British Art Section of the 1906–1907 New Zealand International Exhibition
• Chandni Jeswani (Art and Architectural Historian) — Mapping Kashi: Pilgrimage Cartographies and Colonial Translations on Paper
12.15 Break
12.45 Session Two
• Michael Hartman (Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth) — Collecting Portraits to Control Land in 18th-Century British North America
• Catherine Dossin (Associate Professor of Art History, Purdue University) — Harbors of Power: Maritime Identity and Colonial Ambition in 18th-Century French Prints
14.00 Break
14.30 Session Three
• Annemarie Iker (Lecturer in Writing, Princeton University) — Cuba and Catalan Modernisme
• Ashar (Usher) Mobeen (PhD Candidate, Western University) — Palimpsests of the Heavens: Empire, Epistemicide, and the Papered Sky
15.15 Closing Remarks
Enfilade 
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