Exemplary Women: Portraits of Female Patrons in Oxford and Cambridge Colleges
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: History Faculty
Abstract
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.
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.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Anna Clark (Student) |