April 24, 2024

Folger Librarian to Talk on Images of Macbeth

Ms. Rachel Dankert, Learning and Engagement Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., will give a public talk on Thursday, January 31. Ms. Dankert’s talk has its origins in her research on the Painting Shakespeare exhibition held at the Folger in Spring 2018 and will explore depictions in art of the witches in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth.  The lecture is generously funded by the Wendy J. Shadwell ’63 Endowment and jointly sponsored by the Departments of Art & Art History, and of English, Communication, and Linguistics.

Henry Fuseli, “Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head” (1793, Folger Shakespeare Library)

Ms. Rachel Dankert
Folger Shakespeare Library
The very painting of your fear: envisioning Macbeth and the witches
Thursday, January 31, 5 p.m.
Hurley Convergence Center (HCC) Digital Auditorium

Funding thanks to the Wendy J. Shadwell ’63 Endowment;  jointly sponsored by the Departments of Art & Art History and of English, Linguistics, and Communication

Lecture about Medieval Art and Thought by Jill Hamilton Clements

Illustration of the damned swallowed by a hellmouth from the ‘Winchester Psalter’ or ‘Psalter of Henry of Blois' (Cotton MS Nero C IV).  c. 1220–29. British Library, Cotton MS Nero C IV.

Illustration of the damned swallowed by a hellmouth from the ‘Winchester Psalter’ or ‘Psalter of Henry of Blois’ (Cotton MS Nero C IV). c. 1220–29. British Library, Cotton MS Nero C IV.

On Thursday, January 24, Dr. Jill Hamilton Clements, assistant professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will give a public lecture entitled “Eating the Damned: The Mouth of Hell in Medieval Art and Thought.​”  The talk, based on Hamilton Clements interdisciplinary work mainly on English material, will explore the visual tradition of eating the damned in medieval art and how medieval ideologies of damnation offer us a lens for understanding these images.  Hamilton Clements’ visit to campus is jointly funded and sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History and the Grellet & Dorothy C. Simpson Program in Medieval Studies.

Dr. Jill Hamilton Clements
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Eating the Damned:  The Mouth of Hell in Medieval Art and Thought

Thursday, January 24, 3:30 p.m.
Hurley Convergence Center (HCC) Digital Auditorium
Reception following in the HCC
Jointly sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History and the Simpson Program in Medieval Studies

Julia DeLancey Publishes New Archival Research

This summer saw the publication of a new article by Professor of Art History Julia DeLancey.  The article, entitled “Celebrating citizenship: Titian’s portrait of the color seller Alvise Gradignan della Scala and social status in early modern Venice,” looks at the portrait of della Scala—now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden—by the sixteenth-century Venetian painter, Tiziano Vecellio, more commonly known as Titian. Using new archival discoveries made mainly in the Archivio di Stato in Venice, the article places Titian’s portrait of his colleague and supplier into the larger social and artistic context of Renaissance Venice and presents new information about color sellers and their place in Venetian social hierarchy.

DeLancey, Julia A.  “Celebrating citizenship: Titian’s portrait of the color seller Alvise Gradignan della Scala and social status in early modern Venice.”  Studi Veneziani n.s. 76 (2017):  15 – 60.