Category: Research

X-rays and infrared scans of Hogarth’s best-known works, A Rake’s Progress, show he changed some of the eight paintings in the series after completion, when knock-off prints started appearing before he had published his own.

After creating his originals, Hogarth would have smaller engravings made to be printed and sold. Plagiarism was rife, however, and pirate copies of his previous work, A Harlot’s Progress, had appeared a little over a week after prints had been delivered to his subscribers.

The collection of pictures at Wilton has been celebrated since the seventeenth century; and its historic arrangement is uniquely well documented in a series of catalogues of which the first, issued in 1731, was the earliest such publication about any private collection in England. Of successive owners of the house, three made significant contributions: William, 4th Earl of Pembroke, who commissioned van Dyck’s monumental portrait of his family that dominates the Double Cube Room he had created; his grandson, Thomas, 8th Earl of Pembroke who assembled what was in some respects a pioneering collection of old master pictures for the house; and his grandson, Henry, 10th Earl of Pembroke, patron of Reynolds and Wilson, among others. Such masterpieces as Lucas van Leyden’s Card Players, Cesare da Sesto’s Leda – long attributed to Leonardo – and Ribera’s Democritus are matched by remarkable portrait drawings by Raphael and Holbein. These are complemented by a substantial deposit of family portraits and other pictures that attest to the tastes and interests of successive generations of the Herbert family.

Daughter of a Lancashire blacksmith, Ellen Sharples was the driving force behind a remarkable family of artists.  Based in Bath and Bristol, she sailed to America twice, was imprisoned during the French Revolution and painted the first five US presidents.  She supported the family financially, educated her daughter Rolinda and trained her to become a painter of contemporary events.  Though her life and her legacy are little known, Ellen was a Georgian era pioneer.   She created one of the early Academies of Art, where for the first time women could study on equal terms with men. 

Author Hazel Gower quotes from Ellen’s journal to explore this unusual mother daughter relationship, presenting an inspiring portrait of the pair.   Chronicling their passion, commitment and resourcefulness, this is the forgotten story of two women artists and their adventurous lives on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Italian drawings in the collection of the Teyler Museum are world-famous. They belong to the most important acquisition in the museum's history: the purchase in 1790 of several albums of drawings from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689) and Roman nobleman Livio Odescalchi (1658-1713). Overnight, the brand-new museum came into possession of over 1700 drawings. 

The seventeenth and eighteenth-century drawings, with sheets by Bernini, Carracci, Guido Reni, Gercino, Salvator Rosa and many others, are now described in a new catalogue by Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken. Van Tuyll, former chief curator of Teylers Museum and head of the department of prints and drawings in the Louvre, spent over twenty years researching this part of the collection, which consists of 900 drawings. In this online symposium, he will present the most significant findings of his research, and three international experts will respond.

Homing in on the depiction of the enslaved child, the YCBA’s research team enlisted a pediatrician to estimate the boy’s likely age, which was determined to be around 10, says Martin. Drawing on records from the early 1700s, the curatorial investigators note that it was then routine to ship boys of African descent under 10 years of age to Britain to serve as domestic servants in affluent households. The child would probably have served as a so-called page in the household of one of the men depicted.

The striking portraits depict a member of the military aristocracy and an unmarried woman from New Julfa, the Armenian district of Isfahan, which was the cosmopolitan capital of Persia in the 17th century. Paintings of this  style are known to have hung in the houses of Isfahan’s wealthy merchant classes.

The figures are dressed in luxurious fabrics including Persian silks, which the Armenians of Isfahan famously traded across the globe. Both portraits include European details, such as a Venetian wine glass, a German clock and Dutch flowers, signifying affluence through access to luxury international commodities. 

This is the first detailed analysis of elite men’s clothing in 17th-century Scotland and its influence on English male fashion. Focusing on the years 1566 through 1701, it centers on the clothing choices of five Stuart royals: James VI and I, Prince Henry, Charles I, Charles II, and James VII and II.   

The engaging text brims with details about the wardrobes and habits of Scottish royalty, such as how the men selected fabric and kept clothes clean. The book is organized along three themes: the significance of the Stuarts’ Scottish heritage in the style they developed; the role of Scots in exporting their style to London and beyond; and the reception of Stuart style among the male elite in Scotland. Maria Hayward explores how Stuart style was displayed in sport, at political and social events, and at church. The book also reveals the importance of vital supporting players—namely, the courtiers who helped kings and princes develop their style, as well as the tailors who disseminated it to men beyond the royal court.

This is Volume I of the three-volume catalogue raisonné of all drawings considered by the authors to be by Rubens. It covers the years 1590–1608, Volumes II and III dealing, respectively, with the periods 1609–20 and 1621–40.

It is the first publication that presents the artist’s entire drawn oeuvre in chronological order, previous such publications containing only selections of drawings. By leafing through the illustrations, this arrangement provides the user with a quick visual impression of the variety of techniques, media, subject and functions of Rubens’s drawings at an one time. 

Volume I consists of the drawings of the artist’s childhood, apprenticeship and first years as a master in Antwerp to his formative years in Italy, spent mostly in Mantua and Rome, with an excursion to Spain.

These are the years primarily devoted to learning and absorbing the art of the past, from sixteenth-century German and Netherlandish prints to the works of the ancient and Italian Renaissance masters. A large number of these drawings consists of copies after the works of other artists, largely executed as part of the artistic training at the time.

While this is relatively short for a European adult man by today's standards, at the time Michelangelo was alive (1475 to 1564) that height would not have been unusual, said scientists with the Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Bioarchaeology Research Center (FAPAB) in Avola, Italy. 

FAPAB researchers Francesco Galassi, a paleopathologist, and Elena Varotto, a forensic anthropologist, measured the shoes and then calculated the wearer's foot dimensions and height, and their results aligned with a description of Michelangelo by the 16th-century artist and writer Giorgio Vasari. Vasari wrote that Michelangelo was "broad in the shoulders" but the rest of his body was "somewhat slender in proportion" and his stature was average, according to the study.

Isaac Coates was an Englishman who lived in Wellington and Nelson between 1841 and 1845. During that time he painted watercolour portraits of 58 Māori from Nelson, Marlborough, Wellington, Waikanae and Kāpiti. Some of these portraits have been well-known for nearly 180 years, although their creator was not definitively identified until 2000. The discovery in 2007 of a Coates book of portraits in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University added many previously unknown images to his body of work. 

The portraits depict Māori men and women from chiefly whakapapa, as well as commoners and at least one slave. Coates’s meticulous records of each subject’s name, iwi and place of residence are invaluable, and his paintings are strong images of individuals, unlike the more stereotyped work of some of Coates’s contemporaries. Whānau, hapū and iwi treasure Coates’s works because they are the only images of some tūpuna, and they are reminders of those who risked their lives to bring their people to a better life in the Cook Strait regions of Kapiti coast, Wellington, Nelson and Marlborough.

Soon after the Greek Revolution, the Acropolis was cleared of its Medieval buildings. Byzantine icons too were shunned, even in University Museum collections. This lecture touches on icons in the Fitzwilliam but focuses on the fate of one icon in the Yale University Art Museum, acquired in 1871, but hidden in its storeroom until now.

This talk gives an overview of the how and why art travelled, from the 13th to the 20th centuries; paintings, textiles, as well as smaller items. 

It looks at, not just at the basic reasons why it travelled within historical contexts, but also the problems and solutions inherent in the size of objects on the move, the personnel that did the actual wrapping and packing of the art, the methods of wrapping and packing themselves and the logistics given the politics at certain periods in history. It also looks at insurance in a historical context, as well as the state of the roads over which the art was in transit. The use of primary sources moves the subject from myth to reality.

Dress in Medieval society functioned as symbols of status and circumstance: from indicating economic levels (e.g. receivers of alms), marriage status of women, to social class at birth. People were conditioned to decode the complex signage system in dress, beyond and above our contemporary 'reading' of fashion. This course offers the opportunity to explore fashion during the High to Late Middle Ages (1200-1500) through investigating period art, literature and surviving textiles, and develop to an understanding of the meaning of high- status clothing. In this class we will do practical exercises, visual investigations, discussions, and where available, field visits.