Exhibition | George Dance the Younger
George Dance, Bank of England: Record Drawing of the Wall from Lothbury Street, 1794–97
(London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, SM 12/1/2).
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From The Soane:
George Dance the Younger: A Bicentennial Celebration
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 14 January — 31 December 2025
Curated by Frances Sands
On 14 January 2025, we mark the bicentenary of the death of the architect George Dance the Younger (1741–1825). Dance is not a household name, and relatively few of his buildings survive, but during his lifetime he was an innovative and celebrated architect. Moreover, as the architectural mentor of John Soane, his influence looms large at Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Born in 1741, George Dance studied architecture in Italy from 1758 until 1764. Initially joining his father’s architectural practice on his return to London, Dance then succeeded him as Clerk of the City Works in 1768. His long and prolific career of 1764–1816 spanned the neoclassical movement and the Greek Revival and he experimented with and shaped both styles. Dance accepted apprentices into his office, shaping the careers of major architects including John Soane, who was apprenticed to Dance in 1768–71. Dance was also a founder member of the Royal Academy.
There is little surviving correspondence from Dance and almost nothing to reveal his thoughts on architecture. Moreover, few of his buildings survive. Yet his legacy is notable, thanks largely to his surviving drawings at the Soane Museum. These were the last great addition to Soane’s collection, on 18 November 1836, just weeks before Soane died. Soane’s accounts show that he paid Dance’s son, Sir Charles Webb Dance, £500 for the drawings collection. Along too came a handsome cabinet, known as ‘The Shrine’ which had been made to contain the drawings. The Shrine can be admired in the North Drawing Room at the Soane Museum and still contains the Dance collection, comprising an invaluable record of the work of George Dance the Younger, a towering figure in architectural history.
More information is available here»
New Book | Holkham
From Hirmer, with distribution by The University of Chicago Press:
Elizabeth Angelicoussis and Leo Schmidt, eds., with photographs by Pete Huggins, Holkham: An English Treasure House and Its Landscape (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2025), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-3777444444, $65. With contributions by Peter Burman, Polly Feversham, Anne Glenconner, Katherine Hardwick-Kulpa, John Hardy, Uta Hassler, Christine Hiskey, Markus Joachim, Christian Keller, Axel Klausmeier, Werner Koch, Silke Langenberg, Tom Leicester, Laura Nuvoloni, Bernhard Ritter, Christoph Martin Vogtherr, and Tom Williamson.
Created over four decades, from the 1720s to the 1760s, by the highly erudite, visionary, and ambitious Earl of Leicester, Holkham Hall is a masterpiece of Palladian architecture. Richly illustrated and with far-reaching essays, this volume invites us to a splendid tour through an incredibly well-preserved house, with all its splendidly furnished interiors and amazing collection of artworks still in place. Lord Leicester designed Holkham as the ideal home and setting for the ancient sculptures, distinguished paintings, and other treasures he had acquired on his Grand Tour. The unique Marble Hall and the Gallery revive and celebrate the virtues of ancient Rome, while the saloons and staterooms vibrate with a baroque sense of grandeur and splendor. With the original family still in custodianship, Holkham is a unique survivor of the golden age of English country house culture.
Elizabeth Angelicoussis is a classical archaeologist and expert on eighteenth-century sculpture collections.
Leo Schmidt is an architectural historian and emeritus professor of heritage conservation at Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus.
c o n t e n t s
Foreword
Introduction
1 Thomas Coke, Earl of Leiceser — The Builder of Holkham
2 The Holkham Landscape
3 The Architecture
4 The Rooms and the Collections
5 Living at Holkham
6 Holkham — Past, Present, and Future
Picture Credits
Acknowledgments
Authors and Contributors
Selected Bibliography
Index
Xavier Salomon Named Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
As noted at the Art History News Blog; from the press release (24 June 2025) . . .
Xavier F. Salomon, the current Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of the Frick Collection in New York, has been chosen by the Gulbenkian Foundation’s Board of Trustees as Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. Following an international recruitment process, Solomon will succeed António Filipe Pimentel, who will retire at the beginning of next year.
Xavier F. Salomon was born in Rome [in 1979] and grew up between Italy and the United Kingdom. He was educated at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he received his BA in art history, his MA, and his PhD with a thesis on “The Religious, Artistic, and Architectural Patronage of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (1571–1621).”
Salomon worked at the British Museum and at the National Gallery in London, before joining, in 2006, Dulwich Picture Gallery as the Arturo and Holly Melosi Chief Curator. At Dulwich, Salomon curated many exhibitions on artists such as Guido Reni, Paolo Veronese, Salvator Rosa, Anthony van Dyck, Nicolas Poussin, and Cy Twombly. In 2011, he joined the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as Curator of Southern Baroque, in charge of Italian paintings from the 17th and 18th century, French 17th-century, and Spanish paintings. In 2014, he curated the monographic exhibition Paolo Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery in London.
Since 2014, he has been Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at the Frick Collection in New York where he curated exhibitions on artists such as Guido Cagnacci, Paolo Veronese, Antonio Canova, Giambattista Tiepolo, Luigi Valadier, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Giovanni Bellini, and Giorgione. He also worked on projects with contemporary artists such as Doron Langberg, Salman Toor, Jenna Gribbon, Nicolas Party, and Flora Yukhnovich. In 2022, he curated the exhibitions James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903): Masterpieces of the Frick Collection, New York at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and The Polish Rider: The King’s Rembrandt at the Royal Łazienki Museum, Warsaw and Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków. In recent years, he supervised the renovation of the galleries at the Frick, moving them first in 2021 to Frick Madison and then back to the historic location of the museum, which reopened in April 2025.
Salomon is the author of the acclaimed online series Cocktails with a Curator and Travels with a Curator and of the book thereon (2022). He is widely published and his scholarly articles have appeared in The Burlington Magazine, Apollo, Journal of the History of Collections, Master Drawings, The Metropolitan Museum Journal, and the Boletín del Museo del Prado, among others. He was a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome in 2002–03; a Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies in Monticello, Virginia in 2017; and a Leigh Fermor House Fellow at the Benaki Museum, Athens in 2024.
Salomon’s main areas of expertise are art and patronage in 17th- and 18th-century Rome and Venice, and the painters Paolo Veronese and Rosalba Carriera. He is currently working on a new catalogue raisonné of Paolo Veronese’s drawings and one of Rosalba Carriera’s works, while working also on the catalogue of the Spanish paintings at the Frick Collection. In 2018, Salomon was nominated Cavaliere della Stella d’Italia by the Italian President of the Republic.
The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal houses the collection gathered by Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian throughout his life (1869–1955). The collection includes more than 6,000 pieces from antiquity to the early 20th century, including Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Islamic, and Far Eastern art, as well as European numismatics, paintings, and decorative arts. Currently closed, the museum will reopen in the summer of 2026, after the extensive renovation of the air conditioning, lighting, and security systems in its galleries.
Conference | The 9th Feminist Art History Conference
From ArtHist.net and the conference website:
The 9th Feminist Art History Conference
Online and in-person, American University, Washington D.C., 25–26 September 2025
Registration due by 1 September 2025
The Feminist Art History Conference fosters intersectional and interdisciplinary scholarship on the ways in which gender and sexuality have shaped the visual arts and their study–with a conference program designed to advance new research on topics from the ancient past through the present and across the globe. It provides a forum for participants to examine the roles that art and its agents have played in informing and resisting historical and contemporary inequities. Through this forum, the conference aims to model a more inclusive art history and scholarly community.
The Feminist Art History Conference was established in 2010 to celebrate and build on the feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Professors Emeriti at American University. It is sponsored by the Art History Program in the Art Department, College of Arts and Sciences, at American University, with the generous support of Robin D’Alessandro and Dr. Jane Fortune. The conference comprises 10 in-person panels, 12 online panels, and 5 hybrid panels. Keynotes will be hosted in-person with a livestream feed. Registration is available here.
Organizing Committee
Andrea Pearson, Joanne Allen, Juliet Bellow, Kim Butler Wingfield, Mary Garrard, Norma Broude, Nika Elder, Ying-chen Peng
f r i d a y , 2 6 s e p t e m b e r
10.30 Keynote 1 (online)
• Dorothy Price (Courtauld Institute)
1.00 Session 1 | Shifting Identities / Identity Shifts (online)
• Judith Rehermann — Hans Baldung Grien’s Enigmatic Painting Lot and His Daughters
• Anna Savchenkova — Beauties Replacing Popes and Crosses: The Phenomena of Renaissance Niello Medallions
• Pat Simons — The Amateur Woman Artist and the Myth of Irene di Spilimbergo
• Lauryn Smith — Transcending One’s Sex: Connoisseurial Displays in the Cabinets of Amalia van Solms-Braunfels
2.00 Session 2 | Images of the Female Body as Resistance I (online)
• Georgieva & Takeyana Jini — Embodied Revolt: Gender Perspectives on the Female Body in Japanese Modern and Contemporary Art
• Maite Luengo-Aguirre — Reimagining the Female Body: Feminist Interventions in Painting and Photography in 1990s Spain
• Maria Garth — Zenta Dzividzinska: Nude Photography and Self-Portraiture in the Soviet 1960s
• Gandotra Apeksha — Gender Analysis of Korean Drama Posters: Visual Representation and Stereotypes
3.00 Session 3 | Italy: Women Artists, Feminist Art, and Their Promotion in the 20th Century (online)
• Federica Arcorarci — Romana Loda’s Legacy: Promoting Feminist Art in 1970s Italy Francesca della Ventura: ‘La lotta é FICA1!’. Feminist Practices of Urban Art and Gender Claims in Contemporary Italy
• Camilla Paolino — Feminist Escapes from the Domestic through Art Making in 1970s Italy: On the Work of Clemen Parrocchetti and Lydia Sansoni
4.00 Session 4 | Locating Agency (online)
• Carmen Ruiz Vivas — Women and Peace in Ancient Roman Art: From Symbols to Agents
• Lydia McKelvie — Ghiberti’s Story of Rebecca: Women’s Agency in the Gates of Paradise
• Monica Zavala Cabello — Practices, Rituals, and Agency of the ‘Warrior Woman’ in the Ancient Mexican Tradition: A Gender Perspective Approach to Bernardino de Sahagún’s Images in the Florentine Codex
• Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón — Bloody Mary Tudor Revisited: Queen Mary I of England in the Prado Museum’s Female Perspective
s a t u r d a y , 2 7 s e p t e m b e r
9.00 Session 5a | From the Margins (online)
• Mey-yen Moriuchi — A Reconsideration of Las Señoritas Pintoras from 19th-Century Mexico
• Yuniya Kawamura — Female Ukiyo-e Artists in the Male-dominated Japanese Art World during the Edo Period
• Nadine Nour el-Din — Inventing the Modern: Women Who Shaped Collecting and Patronage in Egypt: Émilienne Hector Luce and Huda Shaarawi
• Georgina Gluzman — Decorative, Useful, National, and Very Feminine: Discourses and Practices around the ‘Impure’ Arts (Argentina, 1920–1940)
9.00 Session 5b | Textiles I: Tradition and Subversion (online)
• Irene Bronner — Eroticism as Gender Critique in Textile Art by South Africans Ilené Bothma, Kimathi Mafafo, and Talia Ramkilawan
• Marina Vinnik — Otti Berger and Anni Albers: Bauhaus Weaving Workshop and Architecture
• Smaranda Ciubotaru — Crafting Subversion: Intermediality and Artisanal Knowledge Among the Female Fiber Artists of the Ceaușescu Regime
• Elizabeth Hawley — Intertwined: “Ancestral Lands, Women’s Work, and Indigenous Sovereignty in the Photographic Weavings of Sarah Sense and Darby Raymond-Overstreet
9.00 Session 5c | Domestic Labor I (online)
• Sarah Evans — Twinned Mothers Set to Work? Bharti Kher’s Mother and Child Joins the Debate About Remunerated Gestational Surrogacy in India
• Bálint Juház — Gender and Motherhood on Eszter Mattioni’s female portraits in the 1930s: The contradictions of a Hungarian woman artist
• Elizabeth Hamilton — Troubled Domesticities
10.00 Session 6a | State of the Field: Asia (extended panel; runs until 11.50)
• Naoko Seki, Professor, Faculty of Letters, Waseda University
• Yoonjung Seo, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Myonji University
• Soyeon Kim, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Ewha Womans University
• Yutong Li, Postdoc fellow, Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai
10.00 Session 6b | Spectatorship in France (online)
• Dani Sensabaugh — Virtue and Viewership in Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Julie Le Brun as a Bather (1792)
• Heather Belnap — Homme Fatal: Female Spectators and the Male Nude in the Musée Napoléon
• Mathilde Leichle — Looking for the Male Gaze in 19th-Century France: Armand Silvestre and Le Nu au Salon
• Viktoriia Bazyk — The Hypermasculine Male Nude in Student Works at the Académie de France à Rome Viewed through a Queer-Feminist Lens
10.00 Session 6c | Historic Feminist Art Exhibitions (online)
• Joanna Gardner-Huggett — Beijing and Beyond: The Women’s Caucus for Art and the Fourth U.N. World Conference on Women (1995)
• Maggie Hire — Valie Export and Magna Feminism
• Emilie Martin-Neute — In the Shadows: French Female Artists Groups Exhibitions, the Case of the Société des Femmes Artistes (1893–1908)
10.00 Session 6d | Herstories across Asia (Online)
• Lily Filson — From Rada’a to Rome: Elite Women of Tahirid Yemen in the Codex Casanatense
• SaeHim Park — The Little Girl Commemorative Coin: Art, Memory, and Commodification
• Chinghsin Wu — Womanhood and Ethnicity: Chen Jin’s Paintings of Women in Modern Japan and Taiwan
• Sophia Merkin — Fanny van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson (1840–1914)
11.00 Lunch Break
12.30 Session 7a | Mother Nature (in-person)
• Katia Myers — Brú na Bóinne Monuments: The Female Body in Architecture, Myth and Landscape
• Jessica Weiss — Be Fruitful and Multiply: Vegetal Decoration and Dynastic Aspirations in Isabel of Castile’s Breviary
• Tobah Auckland-Peck — The Mine, ‘Mother Nature’, and the Woman Artist: Gender and Industry in Modern British Art
12.30 Session 7b | Feminist Methodologies (online)
• Nina Lubbren — Women’s Public Sculpture in Weimar Germany’s Regions, or: Feminist Art History and Canon Critique
• Nancy Gebhart — Theorizing a Nonlinear Art Historical Timeline as Feminist Practice and Pedagogy
• Karen Leader — Critical Contexts: Getting the Art History We Deserve
12.30 Session 7c | Public Monuments: Feminist Protest and Canon Critique (in-person)
• Sierra Rooney — On the Pedestal: Gender, Representation, and Violence in Monuments to Hannah Duston (19th-Century America)
• Francesca Gregori — The Feminist Antimonumenta Movement in Mexico: The case of ‘Antimonumenta – Vivas Nos Queremos’
• Brenda Schmahmann — Between a Torch and a Wing: Liberating Women in Two Public Sculptures in Johannesburg
12.30 Session 7d | Politics of Media (in-person)
• Agnieszka Anna Ficek — (Un)Fragile Passions: Maria Amalia’s Porcelain Salottino and Queenly Patronage
• Brittany Luberda — Forces at the Forge: 18th-Century Women Silversmiths in America
• Isabel Bird — ‘People Have No Trust in Glue’: Eve Babitz, Amateurism, and the Art of Collage
1.45 Caffe Pause
2.00 Session 8a | 1930s Germany (hybrid)
• Annika Richter — Queer-Feminist Utopias and Deviant Aesthetic Practices in the Artist Album ‘Die Ringlpitis’, 1931
• Elizabeth Otto — Designing Home: Bauhaus Designers and the Nazi Everyday
• Shalon Parker — Two in One: Doubling of the Self in Lotte Jacobi’s Interwar-Period Portraiture
2.00 Session 8b | Images of the Female Body as Resistance II (in-person)
• Theo. Triandos — Crossing: Feminist Interventions at the Intersection of Critical and Aesthetic Practice (Lynda Benglis)
• Rachel Middleman — Revisiting ‘Female Imagery’: Abstract Painting and the Central Image, c. 1963–1973
• Marissa Vigneault — Hannah Wilke: Nice Piece of Art
2.00 Session 8c | Assertions of Women Artists (hybrid)
• Ann Pleiss-Morris — ‘Embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen’: The Reclamation of Feminine Spirituality in the Embroidered Cabinets of Early Modern Women
• Emma Thompson — Authorship, Agency, and Inventive Input: Claudine Bouzonnet Stella and Professional Self-Fashioning
• Mirja Beck — Aimée-Zoë Lizinka de Mirbel and Her Networks: European Women Miniature Painters around 1800
2.00 Session 8d | Domestic Labor II (in-person)
• Ashley McNelis — Mother Art’s Public Performances of Care
• Oriana Mejias Martinez — Art Revindicates Afro Latin American Households Run by Women
• Rebecca DeRoo — Reconsidering Motherhood and Labor in Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document
3.15 Katzen Museum Visit/In-person Meetings
4.00 Museum Reception
4.30 Keynote 2 (in-person)
• Joan Breton Connelly (NYU)
s u n d a y , 2 8 s e p t e m b e r
9.00 Tour at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
10.30 Transportation to Katzen Art Center at American University
11.45 Session 9a | Interrogating Female Vices (in-person)
• Michelle Moseley-Christian — Eve as Glutton: Appetite and Sensory Embodiment in 15th-Century Netherlandish Imagery
• Stephen Speiss — Representing Whoredom in the Early Modern Visual Arts
• Maria Maurer — Imagining the Mistress: Renaissance Portraits and Modern Fantasies
• Annelies Verellen — Michaelina Wautier, Judith Leyster, and Maria Schalcken
11.45 Session 9b | Italy: Women Artists, Feminist Art, and Their Promotion in the 20th Century II (in-person)
• Greta Boldorini — ‘Ashes to Ashes’: An Intimate Work by Adrian Piper from US to Italy
• Allison Belzer — Shared Origins, Distinct Paths: The Nathan and Modigliani Sisters in Post-Risorgimento Italian Art
• Jennifer Griffiths — Adriana Bisi Fabbri: Caricatures and Cartoons of the Feminist Avant-garde
• Giulia Colombo/Zompa — Photography in the Journals by Milanese Feminist Collectives (1972–1978)
11.45 Session 9c | Feminist Museum Initiatives Today (in-person)
• Bryn Schockmel — A Feast of Fruit and Flowers: Women Still Life Painters of the Seventeenth Century and Beyond, on view at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York (from October 25, 2025 to March 8, 2026)
• Élenore Besse — AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions) Proposes to Present Its Missions, History and Research
• Maria Holtrop and Charles Kang — Point of View, Gender at the Rijksmuseum
• Carolyn Russo — Art, Space, and Gender: The Evolution of Women Artists in the NASA Art Program
11.45 Session 9d | Women of a Certain Age: Looking at the Overlooked (hybrid)
• Jessica Fripp — The ‘Critical Age’ during a Critical Time: Older Women and the French Revolution
• Alissa Adams — From Telling to Reading Stories: Older Women and the Disembodiment of Knowledge in 19th-Century Art
• Ruth E. Iskin — Mary Cassatt’s ‘Splendid Old Woman’: Aging as a Feminist Issue in Cassatt’s Art and Time
• Alice Price — Aging Bodies, Mature Careers: Intersectionality of Modernism, Gender, and Aging
1.15 Caffe Pause
1.25 Session 10a | Crossing the Binary (hybrid)
• Robin O’Bryan — A Female Dwarf as a Warrior Maiden: Poetry and Performance in a Venetian Portrait
• Consuelo Lollobrigida — Amaryllis and Mirtillo: Did Women Have in 17th-century Europe Their Same Sexual Love Affair Code of Representation in 17th-Century Europe?
• Yukina Zhang — Vogue Chang’an: Fashion, Gender, and New Female Beauty in Tang China, 618–907
• Kathrine Kiltzanidou — Women as Patrons of Ecclesiastical Institutions in the Balkans and Cyprus during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods
1.25 Session 10b | Textiles II: Labors of Love (in-person)
• Amy Rahn — Affiliative Threads: Made-to-Measure Clothes as Circuits of Care
• Stephanie Strother — Jeanne Goehring, Agnès Jallat, Gabrielle Rousselin, Alice Rutty
• Diletta Haberl — Herta Wedekind zur Horst / Herta Ottolenghi Wedekind
• Margot Yale — At the Seams: The Labor Politics of Sewing in Elizabeth Catlett’s Prints
1.25 Session 10c | Lesbian Self-Fashioning in the 19th and 20th Centuries (in-person)
• Justine De Young — Public Selves, Private Lives: Lesbian Self-Fashioning in Louise Abbéma’s Portraiture
• Toni Armstrong — Beauty Contest: Florine Stettheimer and Queer Modernism
• Julie Cole — Lesbian Collaboration as Subterfuge in the Works of Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun
• Rachel Silveri — Sapphic Surrealism: Valentine Penrose’s Dons des féminines
1.25 Session 10d | 1970s Feminist Art Movement: New Contexts (in-person)
• Susana Pomba — Smoke & Dust Bodies: Judy Chicago’s Atmospheres and Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point
• Jennifer Kruglinski — Eleanor Antin’s Exiled King in Solana Beach
• Stephanie Seidel — Temporary Constellations: The Installations of Betye Saar
• Lesley Shipley — Making Whiteness Visible: The Protest Paintings of Vivian Browne, Faith Ringgold, and May Stevens
Exhibition, Panels, and Talks | Trois Crayons Presents Tracing Time
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello and His Family Spinning Flax, pen and brown ink and wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk, with framing lines in brown ink; signed ‘Domo / Tiepolo f’ at the upper left and numbered 44 in the upper left margin, sheet: 345 × 464 mm (Stephen Ongpin Fine Art). More information about the drawing is available from Christie’s (Sale 21459, 4 July 2023, Lot 41).
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From Trois Crayons:
Tracing Time / Trois Crayons
Frieze No.9 Cork Street, London, 26 June — 5 July 2025
Trois Crayons is pleased to announce Tracing Time, a selling exhibition dedicated to drawings and works on paper held at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street this summer from 26 June until 5 July 2025. Tracing Time is the second annual exhibition hosted by Trois Crayons, an innovative platform which aims to increase the awareness, accessibility and visibility of drawings in all their forms. The exhibition will present the finest drawings and masterpieces on paper from renowned galleries and dealers which span the 15th century until the present day. Tracing Time will showcase works by artists such as Hans Rottenhammer, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, J.M.W. Turner, Auguste Rodin, Gustav Klimt, Jean Cocteau, and Françoise Gilot, presenting rare-to-market works.
Breaking from tradition, the Trois Crayons model includes no gallery booths; instead, all artworks are thoughtfully curated by a team of experts to create an enjoyable exhibition of the highest standard. A further deviation from the norm, the Trois Crayons model allows participants the ability to exhibit in London without the need to be physically present; dedicated and knowledgeable Trois Crayons staff will be on hand to assist visitors and buyers.
Tracing Time sees over 35 international galleries participating and more than 250 works being exhibited, doubling in size since its debut exhibition in 2024. New galleries this year include Wildenstein & Co. (New York), Rosenberg & Co. (New York), and Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd (London), as well as a collaboration with Maak (London and Berkshire), a contemporary ceramics auction house presenting a selection of ceramic works and accompanying works on paper.
Highlights include
• Day & Faber will present a study of animals from the North Italian school that has survived more than 500 years.
• Surprising works from the world of fashion and jewellery will be presented, such as the creations of jeweller René Lalique (with Agar Marteau Fine Art) and a costume study by Antoine Caron (with Galerie Duponchel).
• John Swarbrooke Fine Art will bring a museum quality drawing by Klimt that relates to the painting Die Hoffnung I (Hope I) that hangs in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
• Works from the late 19th century to the present day from Sweden will be presented by galleries such as Clase Fine Art and Colnaghi Elliott Master Drawings, depicting the spiritual and emotional essence of Nordic art.
• Celebrating its 150th anniversary, Wildenstein & Co. will be showing a selection of French works on paper including a study for Leda and the Swan by Edmé Bouchardon and a cubist watercolour by Georges Braque.
“We have made it our mission to demystify acquiring drawings by the world’s best artists. Through our innovative presentation model, we are working to create an environment where buying drawings and works on paper is a pleasurable and straightforward experience that both established and new collectors can equally enjoy. From our installation style to our talks programme, each visitor is encouraged to engage with the medium in new and meaningful ways. Works on paper are one of the most democratic areas in the art market, and we hope to share our passion for paper with all who visit.”
–Alesa Boyle, Tom Nevile, and Sebastien Paraskevas (Founders of Trois Crayons)
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At Frieze No.9 Cork Street, the basement auditorium will play host to a series of talks from leaders and specialists in the field of drawings and works on paper, and Trois Crayons will offer off-site tours at The British Museum, The Courtauld Gallery, and Sotheby’s. All events are free to attend with advance registration.
o n – s i t e e v e n t s
Opening Reception (Vernissage)
25 June 2025, 6pm, rsvp@troiscrayons.art
Timeless Materials: A Conversation on Drawing with Contemporary Artists
27 June 2025, 4pm
Moderator: Annette Wickham (Former Works on Paper Curator, Royal Academy of Arts)
Panellists: Joana Galego, Nicholas C. Williams, and Pippa Young
Women Artists in Focus: Curating New Narratives
28 June 2025, 2pm
Moderator: Euthymia Procopé (Director of Development, Rediscovering Art by Women)
Panellists: Jennifer Higgie (author of The Mirror and the Palette: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self Portraits and The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World), Amy Lim (Curator of The Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire), and Rachel Sloan (Associate Curator of Works on Paper, The Courtauld Gallery)
The Drawings of John Constable
30 June 2025, 4pm
Guest speaker: Susan Owens (former Curator of Paintings at the V&A; her recent book The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art won the Apollo Book of the Year award in 2024; she is currently preparing a book on Constable, to be published in 2026).
Piccadilly Jim: The Discovery of James Gibbs’s Designs for the Façade of Burlington House
1 July 2025, 4pm
Guest speaker: William Aslet (Scott Opler Fellow, Worcester College, University of Oxford)
In partnership with The Burlington Magazine
New Ways of Looking at Italian Renaissance Drawings
2 July 2025, 4pm
Moderator: Luca Baroni (L’IDEA – Testi Fonti Lessico Disegni)
Panellists: Martin Clayton (Head of Prints and Drawings, Royal Collection Trust), Rachel Hapoienu (Assistant Curator of Works on Paper, The Courtauld Gallery), Tom Nevile (co-founder, Trois Crayons), and Catherine Whistler (Research Keeper, Western Art Department, Ashmolean Museum)
In partnership with L’IDEA
The Intimate Collector: Why Drawings Thrive in the Digital Age
3 July 2025, 4pm
Moderator: Bethany Woolfall (Arcarta Vice President of Customers)
Panellists: Alesa Boyle (Co-founder, Trois Crayons, London and Gallery Director, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London), Gregory Rubinstein (Sotheby’s, Senior Director and Head of the Old Master Drawings Department Worldwide), and Lorna Tiller (Senior Gallery Partnerships Manager, Artsy)
In partnership with Arcarta
Between Drawings and Ceramics
4 July 2025, 4pm
A lively panel discussion exploring the parallels and contrasts in how drawings and ceramics are collected, appreciated, and understood.
In partnership with Maak
The Drawings of Jean-Antoine Watteau
5 July 2025, 2pm
Moderator: Jennifer Tonkovich (Associate Editor, Master Drawings and Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator, Drawings and Prints, Morgan Library & Museum)
Panellists: Grant Lewis (The Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings, 1400–1880 at the British Museum and curator of Colour and Line: Watteau Drawings, British Museum) and Axel Moulinier (collaborator on A Watteau Abecedario, an online catalogue raisonné of the paintings by Antoine Watteau, and co-curator of The Worlds of Watteau, Château de Chantilly)
In partnership with Master Drawings
o f f – s i t e e v e n t s
Exhibition Visit | Colour and Line: Watteau Drawings
26 June 2025, 10.30am, The British Museum
Host: Grant Lewis (The Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings, 1400–1880)
Auction Visit | Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
28 June 2025, 11.00am, Sotheby’s
Hosts: Gregory Rubinstein, Cristiana Romalli, Mark Griffith-Jones, and Alexander Faber. Attendance is limited to 25 spaces.
Print Room Visit | The Courtauld Gallery’s Collection of Drawings à Trois Crayons
1 July 2025, 10.30am, The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House
Hosts: Ketty Gottardo (Martin Halusa Senior Curator of Drawings) and Rachel Sloan (Associate Curator of Works on Paper)
Shrewsbury’s Flaxmill Maltings and the 18th-C. Origins of the Skyscraper
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Last week in The New York Times (20 June 2025), Helen Barrett wrote about Shrewsbury’s Flaxmill Maltings, the world’s first iron-frame building, constructed in 1797, which recently opened to the public following a 20-year restoration aimed at telling the story of England’s ‘industrial heritage’. In 2024, this 18th-century forerunner of the skyscraper was selected by The Royal Institute of British Architects as ‘West Midlands Building of the Year’.
An English Heritage press release from this spring (31 March 2025) issued a plea for the site’s bell to be returned. As far as I can tell, it’s still missing, though I would be glad to hear otherwise. –CH
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English Heritage will open the Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings site on April 1 — and experts say now is the time to return its lost iconic bell. The bell, missing since the 1980s, is an important part of Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings’ history. It’s considered a symbol of the socio-economic change brought on by the Industrial Revolution.
The design of the late 18th-century building itself is groundbreaking too. The flaxmill was the world’s first multi-storey, iron-frame building, providing the blueprint for all modern high-rise buildings, which changed skylines around the world forever. As part of the re-opening, English Heritage will offer a self-guided exhibition and behind-the-scenes tours so the public can experience this historic site for themselves.
The main purpose of the flaxmill was to spin linen thread from flax. The business thrived since its opening in 1797, and the site expanded with the flaxmill eventually becoming Shrewsbury’s largest employer. For almost 200 years, the bell was a familiar sound to the residents of Shrewsbury. It would ring out to mark the start and finish of each working day at the flaxmill and, later, the maltings. However, during the 1980s or 1990s the bell was lost when the building was left derelict following the closure of the business in 1987. The bell, believed to be about 24 inches tall, was originally operated by a pull rope, later changing to an electric chiming mechanism after the Second World War. It is easily identifiable, with ‘1797’ distinctively cast upon it.
Matt Thompson, Interim Curatorial Director of English Heritage:
“We believe the bell went missing in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings was left derelict. Whilst it is possible that the bell could have been melted down, it is more likely that someone took it as a souvenir of this imposing, historic building which – at the time – looked close to ruin. Maybe it’s sitting in someone’s garden or in a shed now? As Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings begins its new incarnation as an English Heritage site, it feels like the right time to appeal for information on the bell’s whereabouts so that we can restore it to its rightful place.
When it opened in 1797, the flaxmill needed 800 workers and a third of these were children. Shrewsbury itself was too small to provide that number, so children were brought in from as far afield as London and Hull under the parish apprenticeship system. Mostly from the workhouses and often orphans, these children were allocated to work at the mill, given housing, food and clothes but not paid wages. The bell would have called these children in from the Apprentice House nearby. Days were long and conditions often brutal, with testimony from some former child labourers at the mill eventually contributing to the 1833 Factory Act, which restricted the hours that children could work each day.
As with much of England’s industrial heritage, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings is a hugely underappreciated historic site. As the world’s first multi-storey, iron-frame building, its pioneering design paved the way for modern high-rise buildings and it has rightly been dubbed ‘the grandparent of skyscrapers’. Without Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, today’s cities would look very different and, for that reason alone, the building deserves international recognition.
However, the social change brought about by this very flaxmill and the factory system in general is equally as important to British history. The associated urban migration, long, hard working hours and exploitation of children were catalysts for labour reform movements and legislation to improve conditions, including the 1833 Factory Act for which the government received testimony from former workers at Shrewsbury Flaxmill.
The lost bell is a symbol of this huge societal shift: it oversaw the increased reliance on machinery, the dwindling fortunes of the flax industry, the change in purpose of the building to a maltings and, after a brief silence whilst the building housed soldiers during the Second World War, it was given an electric chiming mechanism to ring out over the handful of workers at the maltings. It would be a fitting end to the incredible story of Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings if we could find the bell and restore it to its rightful place, providing today’s visitors with an audible connection to the site’s history and past generations of workers.”
Sweet 16
From the Editor
Juneteenth! The summer solstice! And Enfilade turns 16! You all know the ropes: buy an art book to celebrate! It’s also a fine time to renew (or begin) your HECAA membership. Thanks so much for another year.
Best for a good summer!
Craig Hanson
Call for Papers | A History of Textile Cleanliness
From ArtHist.net:
A History of Textile Cleanliness
Washing and Perfuming Fabrics from the Medieval to the Modern Period
Institute of Art History, University of Bern, Switzerland, 28–29 May 2026
Organized by Moïra Dato and Érika Wicky
Proposals due by 30 September 2025
The exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, on view at The Met in 2024, engaged visitors in the museum experience by recreating the displayed dresses’ scents—identified through chromatographic analysis—to illuminate their history and relationship to bodily senses. The analyses and interpretations published in the catalogue reveal not only the presence of perfumes but also traces of cosmetics, sebum, polluted air, and wine, among other aromas. While the poetic resonance of these sensory traces may evoke the ephemeral existence of these garments, their scents have not always been perceived as desirable. On the contrary, the history of textiles and clothing is deeply intertwined with practices of washing, stain removal, deodorisation, and perfuming, all of which were designed to ensure their longevity and reusability. This international conference seeks to explore these practices and their significance in textile history.
The historical study of textile cleaning has emerged at the intersection of cultural history, material culture studies, sensory studies, economic history, and archaeology. While textile production, trade, and consumption have been well-documented, research into the maintenance and cleaning of textiles—both as part of everyday domestic practices and in the care of symbolically significant textiles (such as liturgical garments and ceremonial fabrics)—has only recently gained scholarly attention.
Studies on hygiene underlined the role of textiles in approaches to and conceptions of bodily cleanliness, especially through the relationship between undergarments and the body. As noted by Georges Vigarello in his book Le propre et le sale, white clothing has long been associated with personal hygiene. Researchers have particularly focused on the laundering of linens and their symbolic role as indicators of health, moral, and spiritual virtues (Vigarello, 1985; Roche, 1989). Subsequently, the study of cleanliness and the purity of linens has been extended to colonial contexts, where these notions were intertwined with concepts of race and whiteness while also highlighting regional differences in perceptions of cleanliness and body care (Brown, 2009; White, 2012). Concepts connected to health, bodily hygiene, and clean textiles are also closely linked with questions of smells and techniques for scenting fabrics, an area that has been explored by historians and art historians specializing in the senses (Dospěl Williams, 2019; Schlinzig, 2021).
The inception and evolution of cleaning materials and technologies, from the use of soap to spot-removal recipes and chemical innovations, have also attracted the interest of historians (Leed, 2006). For example, some studies have shown how cleaning methods were adapted based on fibre type and colour stability, as well as how the manufacturing of undergarments itself was conditioned by their future washing (North, 2020). These practices of cleanliness have also been addressed through the lens of social actors, particularly in relation to gendered labour. The work of laundresses, who are rarely documented in written records, has been discussed as a form of embodied knowledge and skills (Morera and Le Roux, 2018; Robinson, 2021). Advertising imagery has also served to explore the dynamic between collective perceptions of clean laundry and its commercial dimensions (Kelley 2010).
Building upon this previous research, this international conference seeks to explore textile cleaning from a global perspective and its interplay with hygiene, olfaction, social opinion, aesthetic preferences, quality expectations, ecological issues, and economic imperatives, all of which are inherent to fabrics. The conference aims to investigate these various practices and their part in the everyday experience of life in the past. Who were the people involved in the daily or extraordinary cleaning of fabrics, and which ingredients and tools were used? What knowledge about textiles and their care was shared at the time, and how was it transmitted? How did these practices evolve during the 18th and 19th centuries, a period of intense development in chemistry and industrial science?
The question of care and cleaning becomes even more significant when considering the many lives of textile objects. Cleaning and maintenance certainly varied not only by fabric type but also by purpose and context of use. Household linens and work clothes were used to the last thread—mended, transformed, and repurposed. More expensive and refined garments and textile decorations were used more sparingly; some were eventually passed down—and even preserved until today. This aspect prompts an exploration of the wide variety of textiles and the differing care practices for under and outer garments, furnishings, and domestic fabrics. Were undergarments the primary focus of cleaning routines? How were sartorial and furnishing fabrics with complex patterning techniques and precious materials (from silk to metal threads) cared for? How was the shape of specific garments, such as ruffs, maintained through washing? How did the intended use of a textile—ranging from menstrual cloths to ceremonial gowns—influence the choice of cleaning methods? Additionally, given that fabric itself was often used as a cleaning tool, what were the interactions between textiles of varying value?
Conceived as a bodily experience, the cleanliness of fabrics carries significant implications tied to the senses. Indeed, integrating sensory studies with the history of cleanliness enables an exploration not only of the sensory experiences associated with washing or wearing clean linen or clothes but also of the sensory knowledge that developed around it. Thus, it becomes possible to examine which notions of pleasantness or discomfort were associated with textile washing or with specific practices such as drying laundry outdoors. How were the smells associated with cleanliness and the thresholds of sensory perception defined? How was the temperature of the washing water evaluated? In what ways were textural changes in fabric during washing assessed? Moreover, attention to sensorial experiences invites us to consider the significant tradition of perfuming laundry, whether placing sachets in linen drawers or sewing them into the hems of garments.
This conference will encompass geographical regions from the Atlantic world to Europe, Africa, the Islamic world and Asia. Adopting this approach raises numerous questions about cultural differences as well as the circulation of cleaning practices and techniques. It enables an examination of the differences and evolutions in conceptions of hygiene and their relationship to textiles across countries and cultures. Moreover, it highlights how these practices were influenced by factors such as available resources, climate, and social norms, shaping distinct traditions of textile care across different societies. Similarly, a longue durée perspective (from the medieval to the modern period) provides an opportunity to explore both changes and continuities in cleaning habits, shaped by advancements in technologies, evolving medical theories, socio-philosophical morals, and shifts in cosmetic and aesthetic preferences. This approach invites us to map out conceptions of cleanliness and identify thresholds of sensitivity: What is considered clean? What criteria are applied in making this assessment? When do clothes become unwearable? What scents are associated with cleanliness? In this regard, the study of representations—such as those found in art and fiction—can offer valuable insights into historical perceptions of cleanliness and its limits.
The conference will take place at the University of Bern’s Department of History of Textile Arts (Institute of Art History) on 28–29 May 2026. We invite proposals from all researchers, particularly doctoral students and early career scholars, on topics ranging from the medieval to the modern period and across all geographical regions. Proposals (300 words), along with a short biography (150 words max), should be sent to Moïra Dato (moira.dato@unibe.ch) and Érika Wicky (erika.wicky@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr) by 30 September 2025.
Conference Organizers
Moïra Dato (University of Bern) and Érika Wicky (Université Grenoble-Alpes / LARHRA)
Scientific Committee
Olivier David (Institut Lavoisier / Paris Saclay), Aziza Gril-Mariotte (Musée des Tissus, Lyon / Université Aix), Raphaël Morera (CNRS-EHESS), Corinne Mühlemann (University of Bern), and Helen Wyld (National Museum Scotland)
s e l e c t e d b i b l i o g r a p h y
• Biow, Douglas. The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018.
• Brennan, Julia M. and Magali An Berthon. “Threads of Evidence: Textile and Clothing Remains at Tuol Sleng.” In Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: A Multifaceted History of Khmer Rouge Crimes, edited by Stéphanie Benzaquen-Gautier and Anne-Laure Porée, 163–178. Leiden: Brill, 2024.
• Brown, Kathleen. Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Corbin, Alain. Le Miasme et la Jonquille : odorat et imaginaire social. Paris: Aubier, 1982.
• Delaunay, Quynh. Histoire de la machine à laver. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1994.
• Dospěl Williams, Elizabeth. “Appealing to the Senses: Experiencing Adornment in the Early Medieval Eastern Mediterranean.” In Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, edited by Fiona Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey, 77–96. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.
• David, Olivier and Catherine Ganahl. “Rituels de la lessive, odeur du linge propre”, Odeurs et parfums : pratiques quotidiennes et usages rituels, Osmothèque / Musée du quai Branly, 12.04.2023.
• Kelley, Victoria. Soap and Water: Cleanliness, Dirt and the Working Classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.
• Leed, Drea. “’Ye Shall Have It Cleane’. Textile Cleaning Techniques in Renaissance Europe”. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, vol. 2, n°2 (2006), 101–119.
• Morera, Raphaël and Thomas Le Roux. “Blanchisseuses du propre, blanchisseurs du pur. Les mutations genrées de l’art du linge à l’âge des révolutions textiles et chimiques (1750–1820).” Genre & Histoire [Online], n°22 (2018).
• Nicole Robinson, Michele. “Dirty Laundry: Caring for Clothing in Early Modern Italy.” Costume, vol. 55, n°1 (2021), 3–23.
• North, Susan. Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Rawcliffe, Carole. “A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and Her Work.” Gender & History, vol. 21., n°1 (2009), 147–69.
• Roche, Daniel. La Culture des apparences : une histoire du vêtement (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle). Paris: Fayard, 1989.
• Schlinzig, Tino. “Odor as a medium of cohesion and belonging.” Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, vol. 52, n°1 (2021), 47–69.
• Tuckett, Sally. Transatlantic Threads: Scottish Linen and Society, c. 1707–1780. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025.
• Ungerer, Catherine. “Les valeurs urbaines du propre: Blanchissage et hygiène à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Ethnologie française, vol. 16, n°3 (1986), 295–298.
• Vigarello, Georges. Le propre et le sale : l’hygiène du corps depuis le Moyen Âge. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1985.
• Wang, Joan S. “Race, Gender, and Laundry Work: The Roles of Chinese Laundrymen and American Women in the United States, 1850–1950.” Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 24, n°1 (2004), pp. 58–99.
• Ward, William Peter. The Clean Body: A Modern History. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019.
• Welch, Evelyn. “Scented Buttons and Perfumed Gloves: Smelling Things in Renaissance Italy.” In Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella, 13–39. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.
• White, Sophie. Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
• Zdatny, Steven. A History of Hygiene in Modern France: The Threshold of Disgust. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.
Exhibition | Duplessis (1725–1802): The Art of Painting Life
From the press release for the exhibition:
Duplessis (1725–1802): The Art of Painting Life / L’art de peindre la vie
Inguimbertine, Hôtel-Dieu, Carpentras, 14 June — 28 September 2025
Curated by Xavier Salmon
From June 14 to September 28, 2025, the Inguimbertine at the Hôtel-Dieu of Carpentras hosts an exhibition dedicated to Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725–1802), one of the most remarkable portraitists of the 18th century, in celebration of the 300th anniversary of his birth. The Hôtel-Dieu of Carpentras, magnificently restored, provides the perfect setting. Inaugurated in April 2024, this heritage site is now home to the Bibliothèque-Musée Inguimbertine. With nearly 43,000 visitors since its opening, it has established itself as a major cultural venue in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, immersing visitors in the history of Carpentras and the Comtat Venaissin, as well as in the world of an 18th-century library-museum and a grand fine arts gallery.
Joseph Siffred Duplessis, Portrait of Benjamin Franklin, oil on canvas, 72 × 58 cm (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Friedsam Collection, 32.100.100).
In 2025, the Inguimbertine has the honor of celebrating a native of Carpentras, Joseph Siffred Duplessis, born 300 years ago and recognized as a master of portrait painting at the court of King Louis XVI. His works, now housed in the world’s greatest museums, attest to Duplessis’s artistic genius. The exhibition brings together around sixty paintings from the 200 he created, sourced from prestigious collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Palace of Versailles, and the Louvre Museum. The exhibition also provides the Inguimbertine with an opportunity to highlight the richness of its own collection, which includes the largest public holding of the artist’s works—22 paintings and drawings, among them the only two religious paintings he ever produced. These masterpieces allow visitors to discover or rediscover Duplessis’s remarkable skill, particularly in his role as the official portraitist of Louis XVI. This first retrospective of the master portraitist is accompanied by a catalog of his works, listing nearly two hundred paintings, published by Lienart Editions.
Duplessis had an extraordinary ability to capture the essence of his subjects with mastery and sensitivity that transcend time. Visitors will be particularly impressed by his virtuosity in rendering the complexions of faces and the textures of fabrics. Acknowledged by his contemporaries as “the greatest portrait painter in the kingdom,” his talent for portraying character and presence is being showcased through a carefully curated selection of works. For a portraitist, painting and exhibiting well-known figures was essential to gaining public recognition. In this pursuit, Duplessis worked within three spheres: men of letters, scholars, and artists. Among his most famous works are the full-length portrait of Louis XVI and two portraits that have left a lasting mark on art history: that of Austrian composer Gluck and that of the American statesman Benjamin Franklin, whose long stay in France embodied the ideals of the Enlightenment and the birth of a new world.
Curated by Xavier Salmon, curator at the Louvre Museum and a specialist in 18th-century portraiture, this exhibition promises to be a major cultural event of 2025. It offers a unique opportunity to understand why Duplessis was considered one of the greatest portraitists of his time. Visitors are able to explore his official commissions for the royal court and the ministers of Louis XVI, his clientele in both Provence and Paris, as well as his rare religious paintings, all within the stunning setting of the Hôtel-Dieu of Carpentras.
Xavier Salmon, Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725–1802): Le Van Dyck de la France (Paris: Lienart éditions, 2025), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-2359064650, €35.
New Book | Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Etchings from the BSR
From De Luca Editori d’Arte:
Clare Hornsby and Caroline Barron, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Etchings from the Research Collections of the British School at Rome (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2025), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-8865576403, €60.
This book presents some of the most significant objects in the Research Collections of the British School at Rome (BSR), gathered by the School’s first student and third Director, the archaeologist Thomas Ashby (1874–1931). Ashby bought a large number of early books and prints that now make up the basis of the Special Collections, including a substantial number—around 150—loose etched prints and several complete printed books made by the multi-talented artist, architect, and printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Venice 1720–Rome 1778).
The etchings come from all stages of Piranesi’s career and reflect many aspects of his vast output. They have been the subject of exhibitions organised by the British School, in Rome and elsewhere, and they feature in online catalogues, but this book is the first produced by BSR to offer an analysis of a selection of the loose prints, 104 in total. The focus of the catalogue is the archaeological and topographical subject matter of the prints, as well as an examination of the text that accompanies them in the form of detailed labels and captions. Piranesi’s print output has become widely known in the last century or so and his name has come to be associated with drama, exaggeration, fantasy and even mystery. This book takes a close look at the prints and reveals a partial corrective to that view: Piranesi the antiquarian and archaeologist emerges as protagonist here, highlighting just one of the rich variety of responses to the ancient past that formed the cultural environment of Grand Tour Rome.
Clare Hornsby is an art and architectural historian and a Research Fellow at BSR. She has published on the Grand Tour, the antiquities market between Rome and London, and on eighteenth-century architecture. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma, and of the Scientific Committee of the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Caroline Barron is an ancient historian who works on the cultural and historical significance of Latin epigraphy, from antiquity to the present day. A monograph on the collecting of Latin inscriptions in the eighteenth-century is forthcoming, and her current research project is on the history of epigraphic forgery. She is Assistant Professor in Classics (Roman History) in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a Research Fellow at BSR.
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