EXHIBITION

At Home in Renaissance Italy

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

5 October 2006 - 7 January 2007

“At Home in Renaissance Italy reveals for the first time the Renaissance
interior’s central role in the flourishing of Italian art and culture.
The exhibition provides an innovative three-dimensional view of the
Italian Renaissance home, presented as object-filled spaces that bring
the period to life. The exhibition showcases masterpieces by Donatello,
Carpaccio, Botticelli, Titian and Veronese, and exquisite treasures from
the Medici and other private collections, alongside unexpected everyday
objects like a babywalker and a pair of velvet shoes.

“Many of the paintings, sculpture and decorative art objects we now
associate with this period began their lives within the home. The
exhibition places outstanding art and domestic objects within their
original contexts. Together they highlight the rhythms and rituals of
Renaissance living - from entertainment and cooking, to marriage and
collecting.

“With rich displays of paintings, furnishings and cherished family
possessions from the palazzi of Tuscany and the Veneto, At Home in
Renaissance Italy presents an entirely fresh look at the Renaissance.”

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1487_renaissance/


CONFERENCE

At Home in Renaissance Italy

V&A Lecture Theatre, 17-18 November 2006

This international conference coincides with the major V&A exhibition At
Home in Renaissance Italy. It marks the culmination of an intense
programme of research carried out by an international, interdisciplinary
team of scholars funded and supported by the V&A, the AHRC Centre for
the Study of the Domestic Interior, the Getty Grant Program and the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The urban Italian house was a powerful site of aesthetic innovation and
cultural change. This exhibition offers a new way of looking at
Renaissance art through domestic life and artifacts in daily use. For
the first time, the role of the household in the creation of Italian
Renaissance art and culture is fully acknowledged, alongside that of
city, court and church.

Taking place against the background of the exhibition, this conference
will be a forum for the presentation of innovative research by academics
and museum curators from a variety of perspectives. Exploring the visual
and cultural complexity of the domestic interior, it will present a
fresh approach to the Italian Renaissance by concentrating on the urban
house as a key context for the development of art and culture. The
conference will be a forum for the presentation of new research and will
explore issues such as setting up home, the manufacture and consumption
of domestic objects and the different meanings and uses of space.

The conference will be structured thematically and aims to include new
research focused on these themes:
     * Designing the Home: production and consumption
     * Domestic Practices: exploring the everyday
     * The Urban House in Context: the human and material environment.

For further information visit
http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/courses/conferences/index.html#renaissance
To book tickets call +44 (0)20 79432211 or email bookings. [log in to unmask]


PUBLICATIONS FROM CSDI

Imagined Interiors: representing the domestic interior since the
Renaissance
Edited by Jeremy Aynsley and Charlotte Grant.
V&A Publications, forthcoming 2006.

With an introduction by Jeremy Aynsley and Charlotte Grant, and
including, along with other contributions, ones by past and present CSDI
staff and associates in the form of essays by Jeremy Aynsley, Flora
Dennis, Charlotte Grant, Hannah Greig, Viviana Narotzky, and feature
spreads by Inge Daniels, Amanda Girling-Budd, Jane Hamlett, Harriet
McKay, Ann Matchette, Elizabeth Miller, Rebecca Preston, Giorgio Riello,
and John Styles.


At Home in Renaissance Italy
Edited by Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis.
V&A Publications, forthcoming 2006.

With an introduction by Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis and
including, along with other contributions, ones by past and present CSDI
staff and associates in the form of essays by Marta Ajmar-Wollheim,
Flora Dennis, Ann Matchette in a summary catalogue edited by Elizabeth
Miller.


Institutional Interiors in early-modern Europe
Edited by Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti .
Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007.


Renaissance Studies special issue on 'Approaching the Italian
Renaissance Interior: sources, methodologies, debates'
Edited by Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, Flora Dennis and Ann Matchette.
December 2006.


Quaderni Storici special issue, 'Interiors' on new methodologies for
studying the interior
Edited by Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti


ANTIQUARIES MEETING

Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly
Thursday 26 October
5:00 pm (tea served from 4:15 pm)

Flora Dennis, Imagined Interiors - the domestic interiors database

“Those who are not Fellows are welcome to attend ordinary meetings
(excluding ballots) as a guest of a Fellow. If you would like to attend
a meeting but do not know any Fellows, please contact the Society for
help (tel: 020 7479 7080).”


SOCIETY FOR COURT STUDIES LONDON SEMINARS 2006-2007

*Please note the new venue*
Seminars are held at The Georgian Group, 6 Fitzroy Square, London WIT
5DX at 6pm.

23 October 2006
Craig Clunas (SOAS)
‘As a Hedge and a Fence ': Kingly Courts OF Ming China (1368-1644)

20 November 2006
Nigel Saul (Royal Holloway College)
Politics and Luxury: the Court of King Richard II

18 December 2006
Dries Raeymaekers (University of Antwerp)
A Princely Court in Brussels. The Court and Household of the Archdukes
Albert & Isabella (1598-1621)

22 January 2007
Patrick Little (History of Parliament)
Music at the Court of King Oliver

19 February 2007
Ian Archer (Keble College, Oxford)
The Material Culture of Royal Ceremonial in the Sixteenth Century


19 March 2007
Irena Murray (RIBA)
'Our Slv Acropolis:' Architecture and Governance at the Prague Castle,
1918-1938

14 May 2007
Chris Skidmore (Christ Church College, Oxford)
At The Court of the Protector: The Material World of Edward Seymour,
Duke of Somerset

11 June 2007
Mary Hollingsworth
Electing the Court: Ceremony and Discomfort in Sixteenth-Century Papal
Conclaves

Please note that the Society's new website can now be found at
www.courtstudies.org