New Book: Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Routledge)
edited by Arlene Leis and Kacie L. Wills
Book Description 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. Table of Contents Part I Artificialia and Naturalia
1. Science, Gender and Collecting:The Dutch 18th century Ladies’ Society for Physical Sciences of Middelburg
Anne Harbers and Andrea Gáldy
2. Between Art and Science: Portraits of Citrus Fruit for Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici
Irina Schmiedel
3. Anne Vallayer-Coster’s Still Life with Sea Shells and Coral
Kelsey Brosnan
Part II Travel, Borders, and Networks
4. Maria Sibylla Merian: A Woman’s Pioneering Work in Entomology
Katharina Schmidt-Loske
5. Sarah Sophia Banks’s Coin Collection: Female Networks of Exchange
Erica Hayes and Kacie L. Wills
6. Conversing with Collecting the World: Elite Female Sociability and Learning through Objects in the Age of Enlightenment
Lizzie Rogers
7.Portrait of Charlotte de France: from Naples to Sicily, a Collection in Transit
Maria Antonietta Spadero
Part III Displaying, Recording, and Cataloguing
8. The Collecting Activity of Catherine II in 18th Century Russia: Pioneering Action or Sheer Demonstration of Power?
Charis Ch. Avlonitou
9. Portrait of Charlotte de France: from Naples to Sicily, a Collection in Transit
Nicole Cochrane
10. ‘I made memorandums’: Mary Hamilton, Sociability, and Antiquarianism in the Eighteenth-Century Collection
Madeleine Pelling
11. Eleanor Coade, John Soane, and the Coade Caryatid
Nicole Cochrane
12. Anne Wagner’s Album (1795-1805): Collecting Feminine Friendship
Ryna Ordynat
13. An Art Cabinet in Miniature: The Dollhouse of Petronella Oortman
Hanneke Grootenboer
Part IV Beyond the Eighteenth Century
14. Collection, Display, and Conservation: The Print Room at Castletown House
Anna Frances O’Regan
15. Olivia Lanza di Mazzarino (1893-1970): A Lady’s collection of Eighteenth-Century Folding Fans Arlene Leis
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