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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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