Category: Research

“‘You will offer a ship of silver’: A Brief History of Medieval Votive Ships

“Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces as Miniatures”

“Miniatures Acting Out: Narratives and Statuettes in Early Modern Germany and the Low Countries”

“The Work of the World: Rarities in Miniature”

8th March - Why did so many female artists in pre-modern times focus on still-lifes? (such a shame it's already happened, but let's hope a YouTube recording might be available soon!)

9th March - Donatello - Celebrating the importance of the Renaissance master in the first major exhibition in nearly 40 years

10th March - The Académie Julian in the late 19th century and its influence on women artists internationally

16th March - The Grand Tour, the two Horaces and the Court of Florence (1740-1786) at Strawberry Hill

18th March - Grace, sprezzatura and new discoveries: Parmigianino at The Courtauld

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, hundreds of women in London and Paris became professional artists, exhibiting and selling their work in unprecedented numbers. Many rose to the top of their nations’ artistic spheres and earned substantial incomes from their work, regularly navigating institutional inequalities expressly designed to exclude members of their sex. In the first collective, critical history of women artists in Britain and France during the Revolutionary era, Paris Spies-Gans explores how they engaged with and influenced the mainstream cultural currents of their societies at pivotal moments of revolutionary change.   

Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the experiences of these narrative painters, portraitists, sculptors, and draughtswomen, this book challenges longstanding assumptions about women in the history of art. Importantly, it demonstrates that women built profitable artistic careers by creating works in nearly every genre practiced by men, in similar proportions and to aesthetic acclaim. It also reveals that hundreds of women studied with male artists, and even learned to draw from the nude. Where traditional histories have left a void, this generously illustrated book illuminates a lively world of artistic production.   

Featuring an extensive range of these artists’ paintings, drawings, sculptures, and writings, alongside contemporary prints, satires, and works by their male peers, A Revolution on Canvas transforms our understanding of the opportunities and identities of women artists of the past.

Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.

Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.

1 Introduction: Experts in the Interbellum

Part 1 Science, Authentication and Issues of Conservation 

2 "We Cannot Splash Light onto Our Palettes": The 1893 Munich Exhibition and Congress and Its Public Demand for Research on Painting Materials and Techniques

3 A. P. Laurie and the Scientific Appreciation of Art

4 Seeing Through the (Old) Masters: The Crisis of Connoisseurship and the Emergence of Radiographic Art Expertise  

5 Rome 1930, the International Conference on the Scientific Analysis of Artworks and Its Legacy in Italy

Part 2 Education and Professionalisation 

6 Mending, Sticking, and Repairing: Reconstructing Conservation Expertise in Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

7 Wissenschaft, Vocation, or Bildung?: Debating the Sites and Aims of German Art History at the End of the Nineteenth Century

8 Education in the Art and Conservation Field in German Countries

9 Experiments in a Teaching Museum: The Fogg’s "Laboratory for Art"

Part 3 Museums and Institutions 

10 Omnium Gatherum to a ‘Treasury of Art and Science’: The Development of Conservation Expertise at the Ashmolean Museum

11 The (In)visibility of the Paintings Restorers of the Rijksmuseum in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

12 Gemäldekunde. German Pioneers of the ‘Science of Painting’ 

13 Invention as Necessity: The Salvage of Italian Frescoes During World War II

14 Expertise, Multiple Actors, and Multiple Voices

Piranesi’s ‘Catalogo delle Opere’ BY ANDREW ROBISON

Picasso’s ‘Faun musician’: revealing the making, contextualising the meaning BY KRISTI DAHM, FRANCESCA CASADIO, JEAN-LOUIS ANDRAL

Anthony van Dyck in London: newly discovered documents BY JUSTIN DAVIES, JAMES INNES-MULRAINE

Carlo Maratti’s additions to the ‘Barberini Venus’ BY GIOVAN BATTISTA FIDANZA

A pastel ‘Study for a head’ by Boltraffio in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan BY ANTONIO MAZZOTTA,AGOSTINO ALLEGRI

Dante 1321–2021

The Spanish Gallery, Bishop Auckland BY ISABELLE KENT

Obituary: Richard Kendall (1946–2021) BY JAMES A. GANZ

Obituary: John White (1924–2021) BY JULIAN GARDNER

This latest volume in the Frick Diptych series focuses on Fragonard’s Progress of Love ensemble, a jewel in the crown of the Frick’s collection. An illuminating essay by Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, is paired with a lyrical piece by the Man Booker Prize–winning author Alan Hollinghurst.  

Designed to foster critical engagement and interest specialist and non-specialist alike, each book in this series illuminates a single work in the Frick’s rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer.

Margaret van Eyck, a house called ‘The Wild Sea’ and Jan van Eyck’s posthumous workshop BY JAN DUMOLYN, SUSAN JONES, WARD LELOUP, TOON DE MEESTER, MATHIJS SPEECKE

The ‘Weston Altarpiece’ in the Museum of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell BY RICHARD WEST

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’: Gerard Seghers, Michelangelo and Caravaggio BY ANNE DELVINGT

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits BY SARA AYRES

The Art of Conservation: XVII: Jan Cornelis Traas, paintings restorer of the Van Gogh family collection BY ELLA HENDRIKS

Colossal orders and a Classical facade: Hoefnagel and Nonsuch revisited BY MARTIN BIDDLE

Christian Theuerkauff (1936–2021) BY MARJORIE TRUSTED

The finding of the infant Bacchus BY LARS HENDRIKMAN

This book is the first comprehensive publication on Scottish portraiture from the period 1644 to 1714, with an emphasis on the painters David Scougall (1625-1685), and his son John Scougall (1657-1737). It is based on in-depth art historical and archival research. As such, it is an important academic contribution to this thus far little-researched field. Virtually nothing was known about the Scougall portraitists, who also include the somewhat obscure George Scougall (active c. 1690-1737). Thorough archival research has provided substantial biographical information. It has yielded life dates and data on family relations and, also, it has become clear that David Scougall had two parallel careers, as a portrait painter and as a writer (solicitor). The legal community in which the Scougalls were embedded has been defined, as well as an extended group of sitters and their social, economic, and family networks. The book includes a catalogue raisonné of the oeuvre of David Scougall. 

The most important contemporaries of the Scougalls were the portraitist L. Schüneman (active c. 1655/60-1667 or slightly later), his successor James Carrudus (active c. 1668-1683 or later), whose work is identified for the first time in this book, David Paton (c. 1650-in or after 1708), Jacob Jacobsz. de Wet (1641/42-1697) and Sir John Baptist Medina (1659-1710). Their lives and work are discussed. An extensive survey of Scottish portraits, with an emphasis on the work of the Scougall painters, is presented for the period 1644 to 1714. Numerous attributions to various artists and sitter identifications have been established or revised. An overview of the next generation is provided, in which the oeuvres and biographical details are highlighted of the principal portrait painters, such as William Aikman (1682-1731), Richard Waitt (1684-1733) and John Alexander (1686-1767). Countless paintings have been photographed anew or for the first time, and have been compared in detail, which had hardly been done before, while information is also included on technical aspects and (original) frames. The resulting data have been complemented by analysing the social and (art-) historical context in which the portraits were made. The works of the portrait painters in Scotland from this period, as this book shows, now form a solid bridge between the portraits painted prior to George Jamesone’s death in 1644, and those by the renowned Scottish painters of the eighteenth century.

The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm is home to the world's largest collection of miniature paintings, 5,700 in all. The majority of them are are portrait miniatures, by Swedish and other European artists from the 16th century down to the middle of the 20th. The collection is remarkable not only for its size, but just as much for its breadth and depth. No other holding is as representative of miniature paitning across Europe. Despite this, the collection has remained unknown to many outside specialst circles. This volume provides, for the first time, a comprehensive introduction to the Museum's large holding of miniatures, a combined guide and history written by Magnus Olausson, Director of Collections. At the same time, it offers a survey of the history of miniature painting, with examples drawn exclusively from the Nationalmuseum. A good deal of space is devoted both to the nations of major significance for this art form and to individual miniaturists, as well as to aspects of the subject such as the roles of artist and patron, the uses and functions of miniatures, and materials and techniques. the last of these sections is written by miniatures conservator Cecilia rönnerstam.

More portraits survive of Lucy Harington Russell, 3rd Countess of Bedford (1580-1627) than of any other non-royal Jacobean woman. A Lady of the Bedchamber to James I’s queen, Anna of Denmark, the charismatic Lucy performed in elite Court entertainments and was a patron of writers, including poet John Donne. Currently on loan to the Queen’s House from Woburn Abbey are important full-lengths of Lucy wearing fantastical masque costume, of 1605-6, and a slightly later one of Queen Anna herself. Art historian Karen Hearn will discuss both portraits and consider some further remarkable images of Lady Bedford.

In 2021, as a result of the financial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, the V&A underwent a major restructure, creating new curatorial departments and bringing the National Art Library and Archives together with the V&A’s Research Institute. Together with this move, we began a comprehensive review of the NAL and Archive services, led by two independent consultants, Dr Sarah Thomas and Anna Jobson. Sarah and Anna were tasked with examining how, in the extraordinary context of the pandemic, the library could – and should – move forward as a core part of the V&A’s mission, considering the place of the NAL within a national and international library landscape, how libraries have changed in response to the pandemic and wider trends in digital and technology and, in particular, how we might broaden access to the NAL and our archives.

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To that end, we are embarking on a transformation programme to take the National Art Library into its next phase, with renewed commitment to make our collections and resources accessible to all. We’ll shortly be appointing a Chief Librarian to lead this process, and we will be working behind the scenes to make our digitised collections more discoverable, to make more of our unique and distinctive collections, and to improve remote access to our resources. While financial constraints mean that we’re not able to act immediately on all of Sarah and Anna’s recommendations, we are committed to renewing and reinforcing the NAL, making it more sustainable, connected and inclusive, serving more people nationally and internationally as a fundamental part of the V&A’s 21st-century mission.

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We’re delighted to be able to welcome readers back to the National Art Library’s reading rooms from 26 January, with increased opening hours and capacity. We’ll be opening every Wednesday from 11am and 5pm, with a walk-in service: and we’ll be increasing our opening hours later in the spring.

Woodland Imagery in Northern Art reconnects us with the woodland scenery that abounds in Western painting, from Albrecht Dürer’s intense studies of verdant trees, to the works of many other Northern European artists who captured 'the truth of vegetation' in their work. These incidents of remarkable scenery in the visual arts have received little attention in the history of art, until now. Prosperetti brings together a set of essays which are devoted to the poetics of the woodlands in the work of the great masters, including Claude Lorrain, Jan van Eyck, Jacob van Ruisdael, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci, amongst others.   

Through an examination of aesthetics and eco-poetics, this book draws attention to the idea of lyrical naturalism as a conceptual bridge that unites the power of poetry with the allurement of the natural world.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw the art of frame carving and gilding reach a crescendo of beauty and skill. The formation of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 saw a shift back to artist-designed frames. Their first frames were both robust and innovative and probably went some way to softening their brilliant-coloured painting. This lecture will explore how artists revived the tradition of frame design during the second half of the 19th century and how these were a more personal expression of the artists than at any other period in history.