The Society for the History of Collecting
Invites you to its Online Lecture

Shaping the Splendor of Italian Renaissance Art through Collecting and Patronage
Inge Reist
Director Emerita, Center for the History of Collecting

Thursday, 23 July 2020 at 6.30pm (BST)

For most of us, art patronage and collecting during the Renaissance and Baroque periods is thought to have been the almost exclusive province of princes, popes, and prelates. But in reality the personalities who shaped the art collecting landscape of the late 15^th 16^th and 17^th centuries were remarkably varied, representing a broad range of interests and professions that included connoisseurs and middlemen from all walks of life and social strata. This lecture will introduce some of the members of this varied cast, each of whom in his or her own way contributed to a fascinating moment in the history of collecting, when the modus operandi of the art market, more or less as we know it today, began to take shape. Many are indeed kings, princes, and prelates, but others are artists, who at times supplemented their incomes to serve as dealers, advisers, or experts called in for contract mediation, while still others are merchants, diplomats, or men and women of letters. All of them, to varying degrees, were willing to support and promote untested artists of their own time, unable to know the heights those artists’ reputations would achieve in later decades and later centuries.

Inge Reist is the Director Emerita of the Center for the History of Collecting, which she established at The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library in 2007. Prior to that, she was the Chief of Research Collections and Programs and Head of the Photo Archive at the Frick. In 2013, she was the founding president of PHAROS – An International Consortium of Photo Archives. Holding a Ph. D. in Art History from Columbia University, specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, Reist has published widely in that field in major journals and exhibition catalogues, as well as in the Blackwell Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art. She has edited or co-edited five publications of the Center for the History of Collecting and has contributed chapters to several volumes focused the history of collecting published by the Getty Research Institute, most significantly, Provenance: An Alternate History of Art co-edited with Gail Feigenbaum.  From 2005 to 2011 Inge was Chairman of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History. Since retiring from the Frick in 2018, she remains active in the field, publishing and presenting papers at conferences and continues to serve on the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Collections.

To register for this event please email events@societyhistorycollecting.org

Image Credit: The Portrait of Jacopo Strada (1567-68) by Titian, courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna