Renaissance Revival enamel and diamond bangle bracelet
Save when you purchase the Lunch with a Curator fall series!
Join curator Elizabeth Lay, a regular lecturer on the topics of fashion, textiles, and American furniture, for an image-rich lunchtime lecture series focusing on decorative arts and design topics.
Session Information
The Revivalists: 19th-Century Jewelers of Rome, Naples, London and Paris
For collectors of 19th-century Revival jewelry, the names Castellani, Giuliano, Melillo, and Falize are magical and compelling. When many jewelers concentrated on the setting of ostentatious precious stones for the newly wealthy, these families of artists and visionaries dedicated themselves to the rediscovery of lost jewelry arts, including virtuoso gold work such as granulation and glowing polychrome enamels. Their exquisite, rarified, labor-intensive jewels represent the aspirations of European society to recapture the art, wisdom, idealism, and accomplishments of the ancients and the Renaissance. Yet these serene, classically inspired pieces are themselves artifacts of a time of revolution and upheaval. The infant science of archaeology, to which jewelers looked for inspiration, was still more of treasure hunt for art and curiosities and fed a thriving illicit market for antiquities. For creators and collectors, the jewels carried messages of imperialism and nationalism at once. Period jewelry specialist Sheila Smithie explores the lives of the most compelling Revivalists on their journeys of passion, failure, creativity, and triumph.
Other Sessions in this Series
Patron Information
- If you register multiple individuals, you will be asked to supply individual names and email addresses so they can receive a Zoom link email. Please note that if there is a change in program schedule or a cancellation, we will notify you via email, and it will be your responsibility to notify other registrants in your group.
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- View Common FAQs about our online programs presented on Zoom.
