Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe

About this book

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. Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe 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.

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
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
9. ‘I made memorandums’: Mary Hamilton, Sociability, and Antiquarianism in the Eighteenth-Century Collection / Madeleine Pelling
10. Eleanor Coade, John Soane, and the Coade Caryatid / Nicole Cochrane
11. Anne Wagner’s Album (1795-1805): Collecting Feminine Friendship / Ryna Ordynat
12. An Art Cabinet in Miniature: The Dollhouse of Petronella Oortman / Hanneke Grootenboer

Part IV Beyond the Eighteenth Century
13. Collection, Display, and Conservation: The Print Room at Castletown House / Anna Frances O’Regan
14. Olivia Lanza di Mazzarino (1893-1970): A Lady’s collection of Eighteenth-Century Folding Fans / Arlene Leis

Customer Reviews

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.