Tag: Italian Art

Beyond Disegno: Professional Identity and Material Experimentation in mid 16th-century Italian Portraiture – Dr. Elena Calvillo

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Beyond Disegno: Professional Identity and Material Experimentation in mid 16th-century Italian Portraiture Dr. Elena Calvillo, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Richmond Date: 5:30-7pm, 17th August 2017 Venue: Lecture Theatre C (Room 124), Old Arts Building, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, 3010 More info here: https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/9214-beyond-disegno-professional-identity-and-material-experimentation-in-mid-16th-century By 1531, the Venetian artist Sebastiano del Piombo had resettled in Rome after the Sack, received a lucrative sinecure as the keeper of the papal seals and won acclaim for his method of painting in oils on stone supports. Two decades later, Agnolo Bronzino produced a series of portraits on tin supports while working for Cosimo I de’ Medici. This lecture examines the ways in which their innovative use of materials in portraiture contributed to both the painters’ and patrons’ identities, and how it made claims of originality and invention that might otherwise…

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Book Launch | Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting – Dr Christopher R. Marshall | Ian Potter Museum of Art

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Book cover of Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the WorkbenchBy Dr Christopher R. Marshall

Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the Workbench | Dr Christopher R. Marshall Date: Thursday 20 Oct 2016, 6.00- 8.00pm Venue: Ian Potter Museum of Art, Swanston St, University of Melbourne, Parkville Free but RSVP essential: http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/public-programs/current-events/prgm-date/2016-10-20/prgm/book-launch-baroque-naples-and-the-industry-of-painting-the-world-in-the-workbench Join Dr Gerard Vaughan AM, Director, National Gallery of Australia for the Melbourne launch of Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting: The World in the Workbench by Dr Christopher R. Marshall. In Baroque Naples and the Industry of Painting, Marshall presents a new reading of seventeenth-century Italian Baroque art that explores the social, material, and economic history of painting, revealing how artists, agents, and the owners of artworks interacted to form a complex and mutually sustaining art world. Through such topics as artistic rivalry and anti-foreign labour agitation, art dealing and forgery, cultural diplomacy, and the rise of the independently arranged art exhibition,…

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Wednesday News Round Up | 1st June 2016 |

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The rediscovery of a portrait by Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) was announced this week. As announced on the Villa Ludovisi website the subject shows “Costanza Sforza of Santa Fiore (1560-1617), wife of the Duke of Sora, Giacomo Boncompagni (1548-1612). Giacomo himself was the legitimated son of Ugo Boncompagni = Pope Gregory XIII (1505-1572-1585). So at the time of her marriage in 1576—at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, with the whole College of Cardinals in attendance—Costanza Sforza found herself in the unusual position of daughter-in-law to a reigning Pope.” Plans for a Ballarat Biennale of Australian Art that would ‘draw in $10 million to Ballarat’s economy from an anticipated 100,000 visitors‘ were flagged last week. The proposal is headed by Julie Collins, previously curator of Lorne Sculpture Biennale, she has proposed that the ‘Biennale will be held over six weeks in September…

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Lecture | The Pleasures of Allegory: Rethinking ‘Susanna and the Elders’ – Patricia Simons | University of Melbourne

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Image: Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders. Circa 1555. Vienna, Kunsthistorsiches Museum.

‘Susanna and the Elders’ is commonly read as a case of male voyeurism, in subject and purpose, or as mere moralizing allegory. This lecture moves away from each reductive extreme by re-examining the story’s history and visual effect. Professor Patricia Simons is Professor of Art History, University of Michigan. Her field of study includes the art of Renaissance Europe (primarily Italy, France and the Netherlands) with a special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality Date: Wednesday 9th March, 5:30–6:45PM Venue: Theatre 1, Alan Gilbert Building, University of Melbourne Free to attend. Registrations can be made on the university website.  

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Lecture | Saint Dominic and the Foundation of the Order of Preachers, in Italian Art – Joan Barclay-Lloyd | Newman College

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Tomb of St Dominic, Bologna

In the thirteenth century Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic founded two great mendicant orders – the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The imagery of Saint Dominic (c. 1170-1221) is much less well known than that of Saint Francis. This lecture will show some of its important features. Major works discussed will be the early parts of the tomb or Arca of Saint Dominic, by Nicolo Pisano , c. 1264-67, in Bologna; the Portrait of Saint Dominic with Scenes from his Life by Francesco Traini, c. 1342-5, in Pisa; and the frescoes in the ‘Spanish Chapel’ at S. Maria Novella in Florence by Andrea Bonaiuti, c. 1366-68. Dr Joan Barclay Lloyd taught art history from 1980 to 2006 at La Trobe University and continues her research on medieval art and architecture from her base in Rome. Date: 7th March, 5pm…

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Lecture and Symposium | New Perspectives on Italian and Australian Art History | University of Melbourne

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Photo of Gerard Vaughan

A symposium on new perspectives on Italian and Australian Art History at the University next week, with a keynote by National Gallery of Australia Director Dr Gerard Vaughan. Full program for symposium is now available on the website (pdf link). Changing the National Gallery of Australia: re-thinking the installations | Dr Gerard Vaughan In late 2015, the Director of the National Gallery of Australia, Dr Gerard Vaughan announced: ‘We have commenced an ambitious project to transform the experience at the NGA. Every time you visit the Gallery there will be new discoveries as we constantly revitalise the galleries dedicated to the permanent collection.’ In this lecture, Dr Vaughan will provide a detailed account of the new rehang, which has included the relocation of the entire Australian collection downstairs. International art, including Jackson Pollock’s famous Blue Poles (1952), has now moved…

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News and Writing on Art and Art History | June 19th 2015

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A round-up of art news and reviews from the past week. On the saga of federal arts funding good news that Labor, Greens and Independents have combined forces to pass a move for a Senate Inquiry into the National Programme for Excellence into the Arts. The Art Newspaper has published a version of Richard Schiff’s catalogue essay for the exhibition New York Painting at Kunstmuseum Bonn. In the essay Schiff (in what is becoming a sub-genre of arts writing) criticises the critic as having ‘failed painting’. The essay contains a number of insightful observations on the state of criticism and some of the clichés ‘infecting’ art writing. “The politics of art keeps generating generalities. Within American universities, the case against painting has hinged on the belief that Western culture is morally bankrupt; that it is inherently sexist, racist, colonialist, imperialist and…

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Seminar | A New Document for Ghiberti at Santa Maria Novella in Florence | Hugh Hudson

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A New Document for Ghiberti at Santa Maria Novella in Florence: The Confraternity of St Peter Martyr between Convent and Commune | Dr Hugh Hudson, University of Melbourne An unpublished reference in a book of the Confraternity of St Peter Martyr in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze shows that Lorenzo Ghiberti was among a group of 27 Florentine citizens who met in early 1414, of whom four were elected captains for the year. This raises a number of questions about confraternal practices in early Renaissance Florence. Did one have to be a member of a confraternity to elect, or be elected as, its captain? How much did the organisation of more convent-supported confraternities differ from more lay, or independent, confraternities? Through reference to published confraternal statutes, as well as unpublished archival records, the paper will take this new Ghiberti…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Callum Reid, ‘Semper rectus, semper idem: The Uffizi Self Portrait Collection’

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The Uffizi collection of artists’ self-portraits, the majority of which is today secreted away in the Vasari Corridor, is the product of several important events in the history of collecting by the Grand Ducal families in Florence. This paper will discuss the various approaches to the acquisition and display of self-portraits across the Medici and Lorraine Grand-Duchies, their changing locations and their significance to the evolution of the broader gallery. First collected throughout the seventeent century and brought to the Uffizi around the turn of the eighteenth century, in many respects the early programs for their arrangement were an important antecedent to the overall organization of objects in the gallery and in other European collections. Continuing into the eighteenth century, we will look at the post-Medici approach to the growing collection and the various personnel (including the artists themselves) who…

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Exhibition Review | Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino at Palazzo Strozzi and Baccio Bandinelli at The Bargello: an appreciation | Esther Theiler

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Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino: Diverging Paths of Mannerism and Baccio Bandinelli, Sculptor and Master (1493-1560) Reviewed by Esther Theiler Palazzo Strozzi and the Bargello have provided not only welcome respite from the heat in Florence this summer but also rewarding opportunities for appraising the threads of influence of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo as they metamorphosed into the style most often characterised as mannerist. The curators at the Palazzo Strozzi have made a considered decision to call this style the “modern manner” rather than mannerism, in accordance, they believe, with sixteenth century usage (even though the English language version of the exhibition still uses ‘mannerism’). Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino: Diverging Paths of Mannerism is the first exhibition since Pontormo and Early Florentine Mannerism (a 1956 exhibition also held at Palazzo Strozzi) to bring together a substantial canon of work…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Adam Bushby, ‘El Gran Turco: Ottoman Turks in Venetian painting, 1453-1571′

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Ottoman Turks often appear in Venetian painting between the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the defeat of the Turkish navy by the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The relationship between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire is typically understood through commercial trade, naval battles and religious differences. This paper examines the representation of Ottoman Turks in Venetian painting, including portraiture, identifying a trend of increasingly negative representations, and discussing the extent to which pictorial changes reflected political and commercial changes in the Mediterranean. Venue: Dulcie Hollyock Room, Ground Floor, Baillieu Library (Building 177), University of Melbourne, Parkville (map). Date: Monday 11 August, 6:30pm.

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Floor Talks | Italian Masterpieces at the NGV

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See the NGV’s permanent collection in a new light as curators and conservators take visitors through the permanent displays, making connections with artists and works featured in the Italian Masterpieces. Please note these talks are not in the Italian Masterpieces exhibition but held in NGV’s permanent collection. Friday 1 August Renaissance portraiture & personalities: Lucrezia Borgia | Speaker Carl Villis, Conservator of European Paintings before 1800 Friday 8 August Love and marriage in the Italian Renaissance | Speakers Dr Matthew Martin, Curator, Decorative Arts & Antiquities and Sophie Matthiesson, Curator, International Art Friday 15 August Veronese and Tiepolo | Speaker Carl Villis, Conservator of European Paintings before 1800 Friday 22 August Mengs and eighteenth-century portraiture | Speaker Laurie Benson, Curator, International Art Friday 29 August Paola Pivi | Speaker Max Delany, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art Venue: NGV International permanent collection.…

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Exhibition Review | Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court | Katrina Grant

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Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado Reviewed by Katrina Grant The exhibition runs until until 31st August 2014 at the NGV International, St Kilda Rd. This exhibition tells two stories. The first is the story of Italian art from Raphael to Tiepolo and the second is the story of Spanish engagement with Italian art over this period. The exhibition highlights the close artistic relationship between Italy and Spain in the Early Modern period. It includes paintings that were directly commissioned by the Spanish Royal family from such artists as Titian, as well as works collected a century or more after they were painted, such as the Holy Family by Raphael. There are also works by artists who travelled to Spain to undertake commissions in various royal residences. And, of course, there are paintings by a number of…

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Exhibition Review | Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice | David Packwood

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Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice David Packwood Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice is on at the National Gallery, London, 2014 until the 15th June 2014. It was written,  then, on my page in the Book of Fate that at two in the afternoon of the sixth day of June in the year 2014 that I, along with a friend, should attend an exhibition of Paolo Veronese for the first time within the hallowed halls of the London, National Gallery. “Veronese” is no longer just a name to me, or a reproduction in a book, or a digital image floating on a computer screen. In this exhibition I begin to grasp the man behind the banquets, the purveyor of large altarpieces, the manufacturer of political allegories- the man who unwittingly gave birth to a school in which the best pupil was…

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