at the Palazzo Pesaro-Papafava, Warwick-in-Venice, Italy
July 19-31, 2010
Directors: Louise Bourdua and Victoria Avery, History of Art, University of Warwick
Eligibility: Advanced doctoral students, and postdoctoral scholars who have completed a Ph.D. within three years, in any discipline, with an interest in early modern Italian or English families and workshops, broadly defined. About 24 participants from North America and the United Kingdom will be selected. Applicants from member institutions of the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies consortium receive preference.
Application deadline: March 12, 2010.
Award: The program provides housing and a stipend to cover expenses.
Cultural production in early modern Italy remained intimately tied to neighborhood, friendship, and extended kinship ties. The family formed a key component of identity but, as the historian Thomas Kuehn observed, the family was not just a “genetically constituted, co-residential unit of production and consumption. It was a group with practical interests that were mediated by cultural logic.” While studies of patronage have shed much light on the dynastic relationships of artistic patrons and agents, much work remains to be done on the makers’ families.
The seminar will consider and debate the role of fathers and sons in artistic production, including both biological and adopted children; the importance of marriage and the role of women, especially daughters, in artistic families; the role and extent of the extended family, such as uncles, cousins, and sons- or brothers-in-law; the impact of death, family conflict, or break-up on artistic production; and the effect of family workshops on artistic style and form over the longue durée from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.
The seminar will include guest speakers, guided visits to extant artistic workshops and homes, and time spent exploring the city’s wealth of pertinent archival material.
More information and application details; or e-mail renaissance[at]warwick.ac.uk.
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.