Tag: Portraiture

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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Lectures | David Solkin, Kate Retford and Martin Myrone on Portraiture | National Gallery of Victoria

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A trio of public lectures on portraiture by three leading art historians: David H. Solkin FBA (Courtauld Institute of Art), Kate Retford (Birkbeck, University of London) and Martin Myrone (Tate Britain). These scholars are coming to Melbourne as part of the University of Melbourne’s international conference, Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits, 1700-1914 and will present three free lectures at the NGV. Information and bookings for the full Human Kind conference can be found here. David Solkin: English or European? Portraiture and the Politics of National Identity in Early Georgian Britain. Thursday 8 September, 6:00pm. Clemenger Theatre, National Gallery of Victoria (International). The influence of European art created a fundamental shift in British portraiture in the mid eighteenth-century. With some artists championing native tradition and others embracing Continental trends, a struggling national identity was played out in British portraiture.…

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Registration Open: Conference | Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits 1700-1914 | Melbourne September 8-11 2016

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Joseph Wright of Derby Self-portrait 1765-68 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Alina Cade in memory of her husband Joseph Wright Cade, 2009

Registration is now open for Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits 1700-1914, presented by the University of Melbourne and the National Gallery of Victoria. This international conference will run from September 8 to 11 and will focus on British and Australian portraits between 1700 and 1914. Inspired by the outstanding collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, this interdisciplinary conference will be the largest gathering of international and Australian scholars to focus on portraits. It will provide a unique opportunity to explore both British and Australian portraits through a dynamic interchange between academics and curators. The keynote speakers are: David Solkin, Courtauld Institute of Art, London | Martin Myrone, Tate Britain, London | Kate Retford, Birkbeck, University of London | David Hansen, Australian National University, Canberra | Anna Gray, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. See the website for full abstracts for the keynote lectures. The full…

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Conference | Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits 1700-1914 | Melbourne September 8-11 2016

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Joseph Wright of Derby Self-portrait 1765-68 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Alina Cade in memory of her husband Joseph Wright Cade, 2009

The University of Melbourne and National Gallery of Victoria present Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits 1700-1914 . This international conference will run from September 8-11, 2016 and focus on British and Australian portraits between 1700 and 1914. Inspired by the outstanding collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, this interdisciplinary conference will be the largest gathering of international and Australian scholars to focus on portraits. It will provide a unique opportunity to explore both British and Australian portraits through a dynamic interchange between academics and curators. The conference will focus on British or Australian portraits both as separate fields and as overlapping or comparative studies. The portraits under discussion derive from a rich variety of international collections, with a particular focus on the portraits of the National Gallery of Victoria. The conference aims to be both informed and provocative and…

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New Book | Representations of Renaissance monarchy Francis I and the image-makers

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New book Representations of Renaissance monarchy Francis I and the image-makers by Lisa Mansfield from the University of Adelaide. About the book Representations of Renaissance monarchy analyses the portraits and personal imagery of Francis I, one of the most frequently portrayed rulers of sixteenth-century Europe. The distinctive likeness of the Valois king was widely disseminated and perceived by his French subjects, and Tudor and Habsburg rivals abroad. Complementing studies on the representation of Henry VIII, this book makes a dynamic contribution to scholarship on the enterprise of royal image-making in early-modern Europe. The discussion not only highlights the inventiveness of the visual arts in Renaissance France but also alludes to the enduring politics of physical appearance and seductive power of the face and body in modern visual culture. Coinciding with the five hundredth anniversary of Francis I’s accession, this book will…

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Lecture | Cult of Identity: Whistler, Warhol and Weiwei

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Whistler, Warhol and Weiwei. Three artists, three centuries of portraiture. From the iconic painting of Whistler’s Mother, to Warhol’s celebrity portraits and Ai Weiwei’s ‘selfies’, these artists highlight our continuing fascination with portraiture. How does portraiture inform our identity? How do we understand the self today? From paintings to Polaroids, in a special address Dr Vivien Gaston will delve into how these three significant artists approach portraiture, and why we are so obsessed with the ‘selfie’. Speaker Dr Vivien Gaston, Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellow, University of Melbourne Date: Saturday 2nd April, 2–3pm, Venue: NGV International, Education Theatre Ticketed event, bookings online: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/cult-of-identity-whistler-warhol-and-weiwei/

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Talk | Eugene Barilo von Reisberg: ‘Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Portraiture in the Age of Social Mobility’ | Melbourne University

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Eugene Barilo von Reisberg (Art History Program, School of Culture & Communication), PhD Completion Seminar: ‘Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Portraiture in the Age of Social Mobility’. For nearly four decades, from the early 1830s to the early 1870s, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) was among the most popular and highly sought-after, internationally-renowned elite portrait specialists, who enjoyed the patronage of royal, aristocratic and middle-class elites. This seminar will demonstrate that the artist’s success and popularity among the highest echelons of society were contingent upon his mimetic abilities, the rigorous application of his academic training, as well as the bold innovations of his technical approaches that placed him hors concours among fellow portrait practitioners of the era. Further, by using evidence from the biographies of Winterhalter’s sitters, the seminar will reassess his works as visual documents whose iconographic narratives: encapsulate the status and social mobility of his sitters; illustrate…

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Lecture | Conrad Rudolph – Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems | University of Melbourne

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FACES (Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems) is a project that, after two years of research support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), has established proof of concept for the application of face recognition technology to works of portrait art. In the application of face recognition technology to photographed human faces, a number of difficulties are inherent in a real or perceived alteration of appearance of the face through variations in facial expression, age, angle of pose, and so on. With works of portrait art, not only do all these problems pertain, but these works also have their own additional challenges. Most notably, portrait art does not provide what might be called a photographic likeness but rather one that goes through a process of visual interpretation on the part of the artist. After establishing the initial parameters of…

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Collaboratory | Reading the Face: Image, Text and Emotion | University of Melbourne

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The face is one of the most intense sites for the expression and communication of emotion. That intensity generates millions of representations of the face, in a range of textual, dramatic, visual, cinematic and material forms. This collaboratory will bring together research on representations of the expressive face, from the medieval to the modern world, from illumination and early print culture through to contemporary graphic novels, non-fiction and cinema. Speakers will consider how images of the face make meaning and communicate emotion, and will focus particularly on the question of facial hermeneutics: how do we read and interpret faces, whether they appear to us in visual, textual or cinematic form? The collaboratory will also consider the relation between the human and the non-human, with particular focus on the animal face, the monstrous or demonic face, and the machine face. Confirmed…

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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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Conversations | Face Talk: conversations with Archibald Prize finalists | Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

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The Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery is hosting a series of talks about portraiture to accompany its current exhibition of 2014 Archibald Prize finalists. The conversations will be moderated by Dr Vivien Gaston, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and the National Gallery of Victoria. All talks will be held at the MPRG – see below for dates and times of individual events. The cost of each event is $45 (members) $50 (general), this includes drinks and nibbles 6pm–6.30pm, conversation 6.30pm–7.30pm, Archibald Prize 2014 viewing 7.30pm–8.30pm. Seating is limited and bookings are essential – book via the MPRG website: http://mprg.mornpen.vic.gov.au/EVENTS   Body Talk | Angus Trumble, Peter Daverington and Jason Benjamin, moderated by Dr Vivien Gaston Saturday 4 October, 6pm–8.30pm   What does the body tell us about a person? How does an artist capture the distinctive traits of…

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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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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Deirdre Coleman

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Deirdre Coleman ‘Touissant Louverture in the Johnston House Museum’ The Haitian revolution was the only successful slave revolution in history, transforming the French colony of Saint-Domingue into the independent republic of Haiti. To what extent can we see the Johnston House Museum’s automaton clock and other ‘portraits’ of Toussaint L’Ouverture as part of the West’s disavowal of the Haitian revolution’s political goals of racial equality and racial liberation? Date: Monday 27 July, 6:30pm. Venue: Please note changed venue for this month’s seminar – Linkway room, 4th floor, John Medley Building (Building 191), University of Melbourne, Parkville (map). To follow the Melbourne Portrait Group visit their website.

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