Kindly supported by The Italian Cultural Institute
FOR BIS MEMBERS and 1 guest only
To book please contact the Secretary: elisabetta@www.british-italian.org
Tel: 020 208 2288
We are all familiar with the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas and his scenes of ballerinas and dancers and of the world of race-courses and jockeys. But few are aware that Degas had close ties with Italy, and that he was greatly influenced by Italian art and artists, especially the Tuscan Impressionist artists of the Macchiaioli School working in Florence in the 1850s-60s, whom he befriended during one of his frequent visits to Italy. Moreover, Edgar’s grandfather, a wealthy international banker, had transferred his family from Paris after the outbreak of the French Revolution, in 1789, to Naples, where Edgar’s father was born. His grandfather owned a splendid Palazzo in Spaccanapoli and a villa at Capodimonte. It was in Naples that Degas made some of his earliest sketches and drawings; and he was instinctively drawn to Italian art. He began copying works by the Italian Masters, especially Da Vinci, Botticelli and Mantegna, in the Louvre.
Edgar visited Italy yearly from 1854 to 1886, except for 1872-3, when he visited America, where he painted the Office of the Musson Cotton Traders in New Orleans. He spent three productive years in Italy from 1856-58, first in Naples, where he painted his grandfather’s portrait, views from his villa and Vesuvius, and then in Rome, copying works by Bronzino and other Italian Masters, and sketching members of the Roman working classes. Then, travelling via Orte, Orvieto, Perugia and Assisi (to see Giotto’s frescoes), he arrived in Florence. Besides finding inspiration in the Uffizi, it was in Florence that Degas met the Macchiaioli School. They encouraged Degas to paint plein air subjects realistically and to explore the close relationship between man and horse. This instilled in Degas a life-long love of horses, and inspired his celebrated paintings and drawings of race-course life. Italy, especially Naples, held a special place for Degas; and Italy, and Italian culture, particularly the art of the Macchiaioli, were formative influences on him. This lecture, containing new research on Degas, will be accompanied by illustrations of some of Degas’ most important work.
Dr Denis V Reidy has had a life-long interest in nineteenth-century culture, especially Anglo-Italian relations. He graduated in Italian and French from Leeds University, where he was awarded the Lucy Whitmell Prize. He then taught at Leeds University, and was a Lecturer in Italian Language at the University of Sheffield. In 1975, he was appointed Head of the Italian and Modern Greek Collections at the British Library, and was responsible for organizing many exhibitions, including on Sir Anthony Panizzi 1789-1879, The Italian Book 1465-1800, and The British Library’s Italian Collections. After completing an MA on The Influences of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy on Dante’s Convivio at Birkbeck College, he was made an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies, London, where he lectures on Italian printing. He was awarded a PhD from the Royal Holloway in 2015. He has published nine books, and over one hundred articles in scholarly and peer reviewed journals, and has delivered more than one hundred lectures at universities including Oxford, London, Milan, Reggio Emilia, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Caracas and Istanbul.
In 2017, Denis was awarded the Premio Barone Carlo Poerio con medaglia del Presidente della Repubblica Italiana at a ceremony in Naples in recognition of his contribution to research on Anglo-Italian relations, and especially for his publications on Italian Risorgimento history.
Drinks will follow the talk
This is a popular event and early booking is recommended.
In case of a waiting list, priorities will be given to BIS members.
Only one guest per member allowed.
Cellini’s most glamorous production is the high-point of Italian goldsmith work, featuring in almost every book on the History of Art. Its patron was King François I of France, whose fashionable new palace gave its name to this episode in the history of style – the School of Fontainebleau. Yet how well do we really know it?
New colour images taken in Vienna, after its recovery in 2006 from an audacious theft, reveal its intricate details in enamel, almost as if we had it in our hands. Its superb artistry and challenging intellectual content will be instantly apparent. Cellini himself gives a riveting account of its inception, and of its positive reception by the King and negative one by his mistress, Mme d’Etampes. Later it was used as a wedding present for a French princess.
It was then – with a change of owner’s taste – almost melted down, and the identity of the artist was lost, until a perceptive Austrian museum curator in the early 20th Century connected the anonymous, but distinctive, object with the masterpiece so lovingly described by its creator in Cellini’s famous Autobiography.
Formerly a Trustee of the British-Italian Society, Charles Avery is a specialist in European, particularly Italian, sculpture. A graduate in Classics from Cambridge University, he obtained a Diploma in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute and a doctorate for published work from Cambridge. Charles was Deputy Keeper of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1966-79) and a Director of Christie’s for a decade. Since 1990 he has been an independent historian, consultant, writer and lecturer.
Charles’ books include Florentine Renaissance Sculpture (1970), Donatello: an Introduction (1994), Giambologna, the Complete Sculpture (1987), Bernini, Genius of the Baroque (1997 – paperback, 2006), The Triumph of Motion: Francesco Bertos (1678-1741) and the Art of Sculpture (2008) and A School of Dolphins (2009). His latest book, Joseph De Levis & Company: Renaissance Bronze-Founders in Verona, was published in 2016.
Drinks will be offered after the talk
We will not be able to give refunds for cancellation later than 48 hours before the event
La Dolce Vita is one of the most famous films ever made, a scandalous hit that gave the world not only the phrase and idea of its title but also the term paparazzi. It is a film about gossip and news that was itself news, and is based in the news stories, fashionable people and actual fashions of its time. This talk looks at this whole process, the real and fictional images of Rome, which La Dolce Vita draws on, the way it relates to neo-realist cinema in its use of non-actors, location, shooting and episodic structures, and the way that it transmutes them into symbol and spectacle. La Dolce Vita is rooted in the real, and yet refuses to present itself as realist, always conscious of the way the media constructs our perception of reality.
Richard Dyer studied French at St Andrews and Cultural Studies at Birmingham Universities. He taught Film Studies at Warwick University and King’s College, London. He has been a visiting scholar in Antwerp, Bergamo, Chicago, Copenhagen, Naples, Melbourne, New York, Salerno, Stanford, Stockholm, Vienna, Weimar and Zürich, and has lectured widely. His books include Stars, Only Entertainment, White, The Culture of Queers, Pastiche, Nino Rota and La Dolce Vita. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and has received honours from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, University of Turku, Harvard University and the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.
Drinks will be offered after the talk.
We will not be able to give refunds for cancellation later than 48 hours before the event
Photo: Dr. Christopher Thorpe, Exeter University
What have the Italians ever done for us?
Italy, Culture and Representation: Lessons from the Past for Imagining Britain’s Future, a talk by Dr Christopher Thorpe
The history of British representations of Italy, and appropriations of Italian culture, is a rich and enduring one. From Shakespeare’s use of Italy as a metaphor for addressing the social and political issues of the day, the aristocratic grand tourists of the 18th century, the centrality of Italian models for architects and painters such as Wren and Turner through to the 21st century tourists and travel writers who quit Britain for Chiantishire, Italy has meant very different things to different groups at different times, albeit in ways that demonstrate underlying and recurrent patterns. This lecture draws on cultural sociological ideas and ways of thinking to critically reconsider these patterns, the questions leading out from them and what this means for Anglo-Italian cultural relations today. The questions are as follows. Why have Italy and the Italians been understood and represented in such wide-ranging and often contradictory ways over time? How have representations of Italy and the Italians informed British cultural identity? And what can the history of British representations of the peninsula and its people tell us about Britain’s relationship to Europe more generally today?
Dr Christopher Thorpe is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Exeter. As an undergraduate student he spent his summers ‘working’ on a campsite at Lake Garda. His research interests concern the sociological analysis of culture generally, and the history of Anglo-Italian inter-cultural exchange specifically. His forthcoming book, published by Routledge, is a cultural sociological analysis of British representations of Italy from the English Renaissance to the present day.
We have decided to name our June lecture each year in honour of our former Chairman (2005-15), who passed away in April 2018. This will be the first Charles de Chassiron Memorial Lecture.
The talk will begin (following a short pause after the AGM) at 7 pm
Drinks will be offered after the talk
Members who wish to attend the AGM at 6.30pm, but not stay for the lecture at 7pm, are not required to pay a fee or book online. But they are requested to contact the Secretary by e-mail or telephone to confirm their place.
AGM Papers will be distributed separately
Visit to
Strawberry Hill House
Our visit will begin promptly at 2.30 pm. Please arrive by 2.15
A 90 – minute guided tour of the house will be followed by coffee/tea, biscuits and cake.
Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill House is the earliest and finest example of Gothic Revival architecture and interior decoration in Britain. Walpole developed the eccentric style (which was also used, a century later, for the Houses of Parliament) as a reaction against classicism and Palladian architecture. He had just returned from an inspirational grand tour of Italy, during which he had acquired many objets d’art.
Walpole, son of Britain’s first Prime Minister, was a writer and author of the gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. He built the house partly to house his vast collection of paintings, books, antiquities, furniture and ceramics. One room, the Tribune, is named after the Tribune in the Uffizi Palace in Florence. Sadly, Walpole’s collection was sold and dispersed in 1842. Some of it has been reassembled in the United States; but a few items have been re-acquired or reproduced and restored to the house. The building itself, and most rooms, have recently been fully restored to look exactly as they would have done in the Georgian period, when Walpole died in 1797.
Twickenham was extremely fashionable in the 18th Century, occupying a point on the Thames half-way between the royal palaces at Richmond and Hampton Court. The town attracted many writers and artists, including Alexander Pope, whose villa was only 200 yards away from Strawberry Hill.
Silvia Davoli, Research Curator at Strawberry Hill, will act as our guide.
Please book by May 1st
DIRECTIONS TO STRAWBERRY HILL
By Train:
– to Strawberry Hill station. Two trains per hour in each direction on a circular route from London Waterloo via Richmond or Kingston/Wimbledon. The house is a five to ten minute walk from Strawberry Hill station. Follow the signs at the end of each platform.
– to Richmond (by South Western trains, District Line or London Overground). Then catch an R68 (Kew to Hampton Court) bus outside the station – or a 33 (Kew to Fulwell) bus from Richmond Bus Station. Alight at Michelham Gardens (R68) or Waldegrave Road (33).
By Car:
There is a free car park at the house.
The Thames Path is only three minutes away from the house. A pleasant riverside walk can be combined with an afternoon visit to Walpole’s fantasy villa.
We regret that we will not be able to give refunds for cancellation after 7 May