The Director of the Netherlands Interuniversity Institute for Art History (NIKI) in Florence, Michael W. Kwakkelstein, has the pleasure to invite you to the conference "Artists’ Workshop Practice in the Renaissance", co-organized by Michelle O’Malley (Emeritus Professor at the Warburg Institute / NIKI-scholar-in-residence) and Lydia Goodson (independent scholar).

The workshop was the nexus of artistic production in the Renaissance, yet the idea of the workshop and its concomitant acknowledgment of many hands has never sat comfortably within an art historical tradition that continues to prioritise attribution. Our hybrid conference, to be held on 20-21 September 2023, will consider issues of the workshop context and its materials, and look both at how training worked on the ground and at how artists used or built on their training.

PROGRAMME

Artists’ Workshop Practice in the Renaissance
20 and 21 September 2023

SESSION 1: Context and Materials
Chair: Michelle O’Malley

Louisa McKenzie, Warburg Institute
Mapping Wax: the Locations, Contexts and Networks of Wax Workshops in Quattrocento Florence

Valentina Sapienza, Ca’ Foscari Università di Venezia
Norme e narrazione: l'apprendistato dei pittori a Venezia in epoca moderna (Regulation and Reality : Apprentice painters in Early Modern Venice)

Amanda Hilliam, University of York
Drapery Study in the Early Fifteenth-century Artist’s Workshop

Eckart Marchand, Warburg Institute
Material Choices in the Renaissance Workshop

SESSION 2: Training Practices and Absorption of Training
Chair: Aoife Brady

Daniel Wallace Maze, University of Iowa
Giovanni Bellini’s Use of Jacopo Bellini’s Drawing Books

Elizabeth Eisenberg, Morgan Library
Drinking at Verrocchio’s Spring: Leonardo’s Response to Verrocchio’s Investigative Training Practices

Rossella Monopoli, Warburg Institute
The Multimedia Workshop of Saturnino Gatti in L’Aquila: Considerations of the Unifying Means of Disegno

SESSION 3: Workshop Management
Chair: Lois Haines

Linda Wolk-Simon, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
“Quelli garzoni di Raphael da Urbino”: Some Observations on Raphael’s Workshop

Aoife Brady, National Gallery of Ireland
Lavinia Fontana: Workshop Management as a Woman Artist

Michelle O’Malley, Warburg Institute
Some Questions on Botticelli’s Early Workshop Practice

SESSION 4: Appropriation and Replication
Chair: Giorgio Tagliaferro

Lois Haines, Warburg Institute
Creative copies within the workshop of Pietro Perugino

Lydia Goodson, Independent Scholar
Beyond the Workshop Walls: Recreating the Image Bank of Berto di Giovanni

Victoria Jiménez, University of Barcelona
Tradition and innovation in Viceroyal Cusco: the “Life of St. Francis” series by Indigenous painter Basilio Santa Cruz Pumacallao

SESSION 5: Reconstructing Form and Function
Chair: Lydia Goodson

Guido Rebecchini, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Giulio Romano’s Drawings for Metalwork: Form and Function 

Giorgio Tagliaferro, University of Warwick
What’s in a Caption? The Problem of the ‘Workshop’ Painting

The conference is open to the public free of charge. Pre-registration is required to guarantee seating: nikinikiflorence.org.

Please click on the following link to register for online attendance: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a067a470-1bfd-4da7-9afe-890ac121da39d72758a0-a446-4e0f-a0aa-4bf95a4a10e7

The NIKI is located in Florence, Viale Evangelista Torricelli 5.