From Caravaggio to Giovanna Garzoni: new subjects and newly discovered careers in the arts of 17th-century southern Europe
12 January to 16 March 2021
In one part of 10 lectures; £195
This term will be led by Dr Sheila McTighe, with contributions by Dr Giulia Martina Weston and Chloe Bazlen
This course is full
Other courses at The Courtauld
If you would like to pursue art-historical themes raised by these spring term lectures we recommend the following:
On Realism: Autumn School course, Making Sense of Key Concepts of Western Art: ‘Nature’, ‘Life’ and Lifelikeness Click here >
On the early modern art market: Summer School, course 2, Collections and Marketplaces: The Business of Art in Italy, 1500-1700 Click here >
On Baroque Art and the Counter-reformation: Summer School, course 18, The Baroque and its Rebels: Propaganda and Dissent in seventeenth-century Rome Click here >
On the Reformation and Counter-reformation: Summer School course 30, Words and Images: The Power of Faith in the Age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation Click here >
Course Description
The ‘old masters’ of early modern European painting have been rejuvenated by new discoveries in recent years, not least by research on the careers of women in the arts. We now know more about the prominent role 16th– and 17th-century women played, not only in the realm of painting and printmaking, but in literary and intellectual circles where women artists were celebrated and welcomed. In turn, that new knowledge of the intersection between artistic and learned society has helped to illuminate new subject-matter in the arts. This lecture series brings together multiple novelties: new light on Caravaggio’s activities at the frontiers of Italian society; new imagery of poverty and low life in poetry, prints and paintings; a new understanding of women’s use of certain media and certain subjects, as in miniature painting, still life and self-portraiture. In each of the lectures, we’ll take time to look in detail at the ways in which images were made and how they were received by the public, as the crafts of image-making were changed by the new directions taken by artists, both men and women.
Lecturers’ biographies
Dr Sheila McTighe has written extensively about the arts of early modern Italy and France. She has taught in the US, at Cornell and Columbia University, and recently retired from the faculty at The Courtauld, which she joined in 1998 and where she trained a long line of outstanding research students, including her fellow lecturers in the present series. Her most recent book is Representing from Life in Seventeenth-century Italy (2020).
Dr Giulia Martina Weston holds a PhD from The Courtauld, where she has been Associate Lecturer since 2016. She is Consultant Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute and a member of several editorial boards. Giulia is the author of Niccolò Tornioli (1606-1651). Art and patronage in Baroque Rome (2016), and she co-edited the volumes I Pittori del Dissenso (2014) and ‘A tale of two cities’: Rome and Siena in the Early Modern period (2020). She is currently completing a book on Salvator Rosa’s afterlife and influence in Britain.
Chloe Bazlen is currently a member of the The Courtaud’s library team. She studied under Sheila McTighe at The Courtauld and obtained her MA there. Her research focuses on women printmakers, their role in family workshops and the benefits and disadvantages of the print medium to these practitioners.