Head of European Paintings at Metropolitan Museum to Explore Bellini's Painting of St. Francis

CHESTERTOWN, MD—One of the world’s leading experts on Italian Renaissance painting will elucidate one of the period’s masterpieces when he delivers the ninth annual Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History at Washington College on Thursday, April 19.

Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will explore Giovanni Bellini’s painting in the Frick Collection, “St. Francis in the Desert,” in a talk entitled “Bellini, St. Francis and the Religious Poesia” at 5 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

The preeminent Venetian painter of the late 15th and early 16th century, and teacher of both Titian and Giorgione, Giovanni Bellini is admired for both the technical brilliance and the beauty of his work. His painting of St. Francis of Assisi, which, among other things, marks the beginning of true landscape painting in Italy, shows a transcendent moment for Francis at his mountainside retreat at Monte La Verna. The background is bathed in sunlight, with a cooler light washing over St. Francis and his rocky setting. The saint seems to face the source of the bright light, mouth agape and arms outstretched, with the stigmata, or wounds of Christ’s Crucifixion, visible on his palms. (To see the painting in more detail and tour the Frick gallery where it is displayed, go to http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/bellini/google.htm.)

Despite generations of erudite scholarship and recent technical investigation of the panel, there is surprisingly little certainty about the scene it captures and its meaning. In his talk, Christiansen will review what we know of the painting's history and discuss the new kind of poetics of painting it proposes and the active viewer it requires.

Keith Christiansen joined the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an assistant curator of European paintings soon after earning his Ph.D. in Art History at Harvard in 1977. He steadily rose in the curatorial ranks to his current position as the John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings. He has taught Art History and Archeology at Columbia University and is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

The Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J.H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. “We are pleased to have someone of Mr. Christiansen’s caliber and experience as part of the series,” says Janson-La Palme. “He has risen to the top of his field at one of the great museums of the world, and we look forward to his insights into Bellini’s wonderful masterpiece.” For more information about the lecture series, please visit http://art.washcoll.edu/.

A reception sponsored by the College’s 1782 Society and the Department of Art and Art History will follow the lecture in the Underwood Lobby. Both the talk and the reception are free and open to the public.

Noted Expert on Italian Architect Palladio to Deliver Janson-La Palme Lecture in Art History

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Dr. Bruce Boucher, a distinguished expert on the highly influential 16^th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, will deliver the eighth annual Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History at Washington College on Wednesday, April 13.

Boucher, director of the University of Virginia Art Museum, will present "Palladio in a Cold Climate: The Pitfalls of Palladianism," at 5 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts. A reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

The illustrated lecture will survey the characteristics of the great architect’s designs and discuss examples of his buildings. Addressing the translation of Palladio’s theories into modern realities, Boucher will point out the changes in scale and floor plans that complicate the notion of a lineal descent from the villas and palaces Palladio designed in the Vicenza region to today’s widespread use of the style. The talk will conclude with American buildings strongly influenced by Palladio, including Drayton Hall in Charleston, S.C. 


Boucher’s career as an architectural historian, educator and curator spans more than 35 years. Prior to joining the University of Virginia Art Museum last spring, he spent seven years as curator of European sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago (2002-2009) and two years as a visiting researcher and curator at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (2000-2002). For the previous 24 years, he taught art history at University College London.

Author of numerous books, including Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time, Boucher lectures widely on Palladio and other Italian artists from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He was chief curator of the exhibition, "Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova," which was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2001-2002. He also co-authored the exhibition catalog.

Boucher earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in Classics and English from Harvard University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Before entering Oxford, he traveled to Italy and fell in love with the art and architecture there, an experience that led him to change his course of research. After Oxford he went on to earn a doctorate at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

A member of numerous professional organizations and advisory committees, Boucher has been recognized with many awards and honors, including the Alexander von Humbolt Fellowship and a fellowship at the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti. His monograph on the sculpture of Venetian architect Jacopo Sansovino won the prestigious Salimbeni Prize, awarded by the Fondazione Salimbeni in Florence to honor excellence in the writing of art history on an Italian subject.

The Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J. H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. For more information, visit http://art.washcoll.edu.

Third Annual Janson-La Palme Lecture to Address Animals as Metaphor in Romantic Art, March 30

Chestertown, MD, March 9, 2006 — Washington College is pleased to present the 2006 Janson-La Palme Annual Distinguished Lecture in European Art History, "Unbridled Passions: Animals in Romantic Art," a lecture by Robert Rosenblum, Henry Ittleson, Jr., Professor of Modern European Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The talk will be held Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 4:30 p.m. in the Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Professor Rosenblum's lecture will explore artists' changing attitudes towards animals, both domestic and wild, during the Romantic era, from 1760 to 1830. Whether in depictions of horses and dogs or lions and snakes, such major artists as Stubbs, Géricault, and Delacroix used animals as metaphors of everything from a harmonious state of nature to the unleashing of savage forces, mirroring the turbulence of their own emotions.

The author of some 20 books and exhibition catalogues, Professor Rosenblum has taught at Columbia, Yale, Princeton, and Oxford Universities, and at the Freie Universität, Berlin. His most recent books include Introducing Gilbert and George (2004), 1900: Art of the Crossroads with MaryAnne Stevens and Ann Dumas (2000), On Modern American Art: Selected Essays (1999), and The Paintings of August Strindberg: The Structure of Chaos(1995). Professor Rosenblum is the recipient of many academic and professional awards and was recognized in 2004 for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism by the International Association of Art Critics/USA and in 2005 with New York University's Distinguished Teaching Award. He was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1999 and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 2002.

The Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J. H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. In his retirement, Dr. Janson-La Palme remains active in historic preservation, participates in national and international conferences in his field, and frequently contributes toRenaissance Quarterly. The inaugural lecture in the series, held in March 2004, featured Nicholas Penny, Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art, on "Painting and the Third Dimension in Italian Renaissance Art." In 2005 the series hosted Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a leading historian of Hispanic art of the early modern period (1400-1700).

Second Annual Janson-La Palme Lecture Addresses The Spanish Palace As Mirror Of Spanish History, March 31

Chestertown, MD, March 4, 2005 — The Washington College Department of Art presents the second annual Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History, “The Spanish Palace as Mirror of Spanish History,” a talk by Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The talk will held Thursday, March 31, at 4:30 p.m., in the College's Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

The lecture will discuss the major palaces built and decorated by the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs of Spain from the 16th to 18th century and how they reflect the changing fortunes of the Monarchy during this period, as it gradually evolved from the leading world power to the lesser status of an important European state. Among the palaces to be discussed are the Escorial, the Alcazar of Madrid, and its successor, the New Royal Palace, Madrid, which still stands in the western part of the city.

Jonathan Brown is a leading historian of Hispanic art of the early modern period (1400-1700). He has been a member of the faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts since 1973. Professor Brown is the author/co-author and editor/co-editor of 25 books and catalogs devoted to Spanish and Latin American art. Much of his work has centered on Spanish painting of the 17th century and includes monographic studies of Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo, and Ribera, among others. His book, Velazquez. Painter and Courtier (Yale University Press, 1986), was a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Professor Brown has also studied patronage and collecting at the court of the Spanish Habsburgs. He is now preparing an exhibition on Goya's last works for The Frick Collection.

In recent years, Professor Brown has been promoting the study of the colonial art of Spanish America. He was co-organizer of a major exhibition in Madrid, Los Siglos de Oro en los Virreinatos de América (1999). More recently, he contributed the lead essay to the catalogue of an exhibition of Mexican colonial painting opening in Denver in April 2004. He is now co-editor of a history of painting in colonial Spanish America.

Professor Brown has lectured widely in the museums and universities of the United States and Europe. In 1981-82, he was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford, and in 1994, Andrew W. Mellon Lecturer in Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His contributions to the study of Spanish art and culture have been recognized by Spanish government, and he has been awarded the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Alfonso X el Sabio; Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Católica; Medalla de Oro de Bellas Artes; and, by the Universidad de Salamanca, the Premio Antonio de Nebrija.

The Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J. H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. In his retirement, Dr. Janson-La Palme remains active in historic preservation, participates in national and international conferences in his field, and frequently contributes to Renaissance Quarterly. The inaugural lecture in the series, held in March 2004, featured Nicholas Penny, Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art, on “Painting and the Third Dimension in Italian Renaissance Art.”

Inaugural Janson-La Palme Lecture Addresses The Third Dimension In Italian Renaissance Art, March 24

Chestertown, MD, March 2, 2004 — The Washington College Department of Art presents the inaugural Janson-La Palme Annual Distinguished Lecture in European Art History, “Painting and the Third Dimension in Italian Renaissance Art,” a talk by Nicholas Penny, Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, March 24, at 4:30 p.m., in the Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Nicholas Penny was named Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art in September 2002, shortly before the public opening of the Gallery's 21 newly constructed sculpture galleries on the ground floor of the West Building. Penny assisted in the installation of more than 800 works in the new galleries and continues to oversee the growth of the sculpture department. Prior to joining the National Gallery in 2000, as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Penny served as Clore Curator of Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery in London. From 1984 to 1989, he was keeper of the department of Western art at the Ashmolean Museum and was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, 1980-1981. His publications include The Materials of Sculpture (Yale University Press, 1993); Raphael, co-authored with the late Roger Jones (Yale University Press, 1983); and Taste and the Antique, co-authored with the late Francis Haskell (Yale University Press, 1981).

In his lecture, Penny will address some aspects of the relationship—and rivalry—between sculpture and painting in the Italian Renaissance. In particular, he will explore the painter's practice of employing studies of different views made from the same model. Artists discussed will include Antonio Pollaiuolo, Perugino, Raphael, Titian and Tintoretto.

The Janson-La Palme Annual Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J. H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. In his retirement, Dr. Janson-La Palme remains active in historic preservation, participates in national and international conferences in his field, and frequently contributes to Renaissance Quarterly.

For more information on upcoming lectures and events at Washington College, visithttp://calendar.washcoll.edu.