1st Edition
Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Through both longer essays and shorter case studies, this book examines the relationship of European women from various countries and backgrounds to collecting, in order to explore the social practices and material and visual cultures of collecting in eighteenth-century Europe.
It recovers their lives and examines their interests, their methodologies, and their collections and objects—some of which have rarely been studied before. The book also considers women’s role as producers, that is, creators of objects that were collected. Detailed examination of the artefacts—both visually, and in relation to their historical contexts—exposes new ways of thinking about collecting in relation to the arts and sciences in eighteenth-century Europe. The book is interdisciplinary in its makeup and brings together scholars from a wide range of fields.
It will be of interest to those working in art history, material and visual culture, history of collecting, history of science, literary studies, women’s studies, gender studies, and art conservation.
Part I Artificialia and Naturalia
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Science, Gender and Collecting:The Dutch 18th century Ladies’ Society for Physical Sciences of Middelburg
- Between Art and Science: Portraits of Citrus Fruit for Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici
- Anne Vallayer-Coster’s Still Life with Sea Shells and Coral
- Maria Sibylla Merian: A Woman’s Pioneering Work in Entomology
- Sarah Sophia Banks’s Coin Collection: Female Networks of Exchange
- Conversing with Collecting the World: Elite Female Sociability and Learning through Objects in the Age of Enlightenment
- Portrait of Charlotte de France: from Naples to Sicily, a Collection in Transit
- ‘I made memorandums’: Mary Hamilton, Sociability, and Antiquarianism in the Eighteenth-Century Collection
- Eleanor Coade, John Soane, and the Coade Caryatid
- Anne Wagner’s Album (1795-1805): Collecting Feminine Friendship
- An Art Cabinet in Miniature: The Dollhouse of Petronella Oortman
- Collection, Display, and Conservation: The Print Room at Castletown House
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Olivia Lanza di Mazzarino (1893-1970): A Lady’s collection of Eighteenth-Century Folding Fans
Anne Harbers and Andrea Gáldy
Irina Schmiedel
Kelsey Brosnan
Part II Travel, Borders, and Networks
Katharina Schmidt-Loske
Erica Hayes and Kacie L. Wills
Lizzie Rogers
Maria Antonietta Spadero
8. The Collecting Activity of Catherine II in 18th Century Russia: Pioneering Action or Sheer Demonstration of Power?Charis Ch. Avlonitou
Part III Displaying, Recording, and Cataloguing
Madeleine Pelling
Nicole Cochrane
Ryna Ordynat
Hanneke Grootenboer
Part IV Beyond the Eighteenth Century
Anna Frances O’Regan
Arlene Leis
Biography
Arlene Leis is an independent art historian who received her PhD from University of York.
Kacie L. Wills received her PhD in English from the University of California, Riverside, and is Assistant Professor of English at Illinois College.
"The frameworks and methodologies set forth by the authors gathered here will provide models for future feminist scholarship in archival research and in the effective deployment of endeavours in the digital humanities that make use of social network analysis." - Tori Champion, sehepunkte
"This is a valuable, well composed, and beautifully produced book. The fourteen chapters, divided among four parts, are all thoroughly researched and exhaustively documented. Each chapter has both clear, useful notes and a substantial bibliography."
-Larry W. Riggs, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century