Exemplary Women: Portraits of Female Patrons in Oxford and Cambridge Colleges

模范女性：牛津和剑桥大学女性赞助人的肖像

• 批准号: 2255373
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2255373
• 关键词: Exemplary; Women; Portraits; Female; Patrons

This doctoral project will investigate the function and legacy of portraits of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women in an institutional context. The thesis will address issues of acquisition, display, and conservation of such paintings in colleges at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, including the commissioning of copies and prints of the portraits for wider dissemination. The extent of early modern women's role in patronage of both the arts and educational institutions has been increasingly recognised. However, whilst current understanding includes both the commissioning, financing, and production of art objects, and the foundation of and donation to scholarly institutions, these two avenues of female patronage are often considered separately. This project will provide an integrated assessment, evaluating women's circulation of their own images in both painting and print in universities, moving towards a more comprehensive understanding of the identities and agendas constructed by these women, and the impact of their involvement on the institutions they supported.Initial research identifies a broad range of female patronage at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a time of rapid growth for both institutions. It was not uncommon for women donors to include evidence of their involvement through portraiture. Many of these portraits remain in colleges and their archives. Case studies will form a large part of the source base for this project, including the colleges' archival records relating to benefactors' portraits, their acquisition, display and conservation. Further study will be undertaken using the national records relating to portraiture in the Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery.The project will consider the function of these portraits, using an approach that integrates current trends in scholarship on Renaissance selfhood, where portraits are seen as more than simple commemorations, with the methodologies of art history. By developing an understanding of the iconography involved in these portraits, I hope to untangle the complex web of competing consciously created identities. Do references to family suggest women were proxies for larger dynastic endeavours? Religious devotion might motivate women to present an public model of female virtue. Portraits could additionally be a useful device to project a stable, idealised image of public womanhood, in a space in which their active involvement was prohibited. Portraits might actively subvert the homosocial spaces they occupied, or perhaps their iconography reinforced gendered societal roles.The project will address the reciprocal relationship between portraits and the spaces in which they are hung. Did portraits of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century female patrons perform their original function when the paintings were moved, with other paintings placed in proximity, or with changes to the colleges over time? The mutable identities of the sitters might have been perceived differently in the original painting in comparison to its copies, prints, and reproductions.An investigation into the legacy and afterlives of these portraits will aim to uncover the ways in which these portraits were understood by observers, and the extent to which this changed over time. The project aims to demonstrate how this has impacted the institutional identity of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.This project is an exciting opportunity to pursue a multidisciplinary approach to a subject on which there is very little scholarship. Combining local collegiate archives and the national records on portraiture, this thesis aims to expand our understanding of early modern women's articulation of their own identity and their complicated relationship with universities and institutional identity in this period.

这个博士项目将调查的功能和十六和十七世纪的妇女在制度背景下的肖像遗产。论文将讨论在牛津大学和剑桥大学的学院中获得、展示和保护这些绘画的问题，包括委托复制和印刷这些肖像画以进行更广泛的传播。早期现代妇女在赞助艺术和教育机构方面的作用越来越得到承认。然而，虽然目前的理解包括委托、资助和制作艺术品，以及建立和捐赠给学术机构，但这两种女性赞助渠道往往被分开考虑。该项目将提供一项综合评估，评估妇女在大学中以绘画和印刷品形式传播自己形象的情况，从而更全面地了解这些妇女的身份和所构建的议程，初步研究发现，在16世纪和17世纪，牛津大学和剑桥大学的女性赞助范围很广。世纪，这两个机构的快速增长的时间。妇女捐助者经常通过肖像画来证明她们的参与。这些肖像中的许多仍然在大学和他们的档案。案例研究将构成该项目资源库的很大一部分，包括学院与捐助者肖像相关的档案记录、其获取、展示和保护。进一步的研究将利用国家肖像画廊的海因茨档案馆中有关肖像画的国家记录进行。该项目将考虑这些肖像画的功能，使用一种方法，将目前关于文艺复兴时期自我的学术趋势与艺术史的方法相结合，其中肖像画被视为不仅仅是纪念。通过发展对这些肖像中所涉及的图像学的理解，我希望解开有意识创造的身份竞争的复杂网络。提到家庭是否意味着女性是更大的王朝努力的代理人？宗教奉献可能会激励女性向公众展示女性美德的典范。肖像画也可以是一种有用的手段，在一个禁止女性积极参与的空间里，投射出一种稳定的、理想化的公共女性形象。肖像可能会积极颠覆他们所占据的同性社会空间，或者他们的肖像强化了性别社会角色。该项目将解决肖像与悬挂它们的空间之间的相互关系。16世纪和17世纪的女性赞助人的肖像画是否在画作被移动、与其他画作相邻放置或随着时间的推移学院发生变化时发挥了其原始功能？与复制品、印刷品和复制品相比，在原作中，人们可能会对画中人物的身份有不同的看法。对这些肖像的遗产和来世的调查旨在揭示观察者理解这些肖像的方式，以及随着时间的推移，这种理解发生了多大程度的变化。该项目旨在展示这对牛津大学和剑桥大学的机构身份产生了怎样的影响。该项目是一个令人兴奋的机会，可以对一个几乎没有学术研究的主题进行多学科的研究。本文结合地方大学档案和全国肖像画档案，旨在扩大我们对早期现代女性自我身份的表达以及这一时期她们与大学和机构身份的复杂关系的理解。