Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, 16 September 2021

Antonio Verrio’s Ceiling for the Banqueting House at Hampton Court (Historic Royal Palaces)

This interdisciplinary seminar will focus on mural painting and its place within the cultural life of Britain in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, highlighting new ways of looking at the work, its artists, and patrons. The aim is to stimulate interest in this often overlooked genre and its place in British art-historical studies. We hope to encourage curators, academics, and museum professionals to exchange ideas about the history, meaning, workshop practice, and iconography of mural art, as well as its significance within contemporary British and Continental visual cultures. The seminar is organised by the British Art Network Sub Group ‘British Mural Painting’. The event is free, but booking is essential; contact Lydia Hamlett, [email protected]

Confirmed speakers and themes include
• Stijn Bussels (Leiden) and Ute Engel (LMU Munich) on Continental parallels
• Andrew Pinnock (Southampton) on opera
• Richard Johns (York) and David McNeil (Dalhousie) on architectural typologies
• Nick Nace (H-SC Virginia) on country house poetry
• Julie Farguson (Oxford) on artist/patron case studies
• Stacey Hickling (UCL) on Antonio Verrio
• Lydia Hamlett (Cambridge) on Louis Laguerre
• François Marandet (IESA) on Louis Chéron
• Anya Matthews (ORNC Greenwich) on James Thornhill
• Laurel Peterson (Yale) on Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini