Through both longer essays and shorter case studies, this book examines the relationship of European women from various countries and backgrounds to collecting, in order to explore the social practices and material and visual cultures of collecting in eighteenth-century Europe.
It recovers their lives and examines their interests, their methodologies, and their collections and objectssome of which have rarely been studied before. The book also considers womens role as producers, that is, creators of objects that were collected. Detailed examination of the artefactsboth visually, and in relation to their historical contextsexposes new ways of thinking about collecting in relation to the arts and sciences in eighteenth-century Europe. The book is interdisciplinary in its makeup and brings together scholars from a wide range of fields.
It will be of interest to those working in art history, material and visual culture, history of collecting, history of science, literary studies, womens studies, gender studies, and art conservation.
Part I Artificialia and Naturalia
Science, Gender and Collecting:The Dutch 18th century Ladies Society for
Physical Sciences of Middelburg
Anne Harbers and Andrea Gįldy
Between Art and Science: Portraits of Citrus Fruit for Anna Maria Luisa de
Medici
Irina Schmiedel
Anne Vallayer-Costers Still Life with Sea Shells and Coral
Kelsey Brosnan
Part II Travel, Borders, and Networks
Maria Sibylla Merian: A Womans Pioneering Work in Entomology
Katharina Schmidt-Loske
Sarah Sophia Bankss Coin Collection: Female Networks of Exchange
Erica Hayes and Kacie L. Wills
Conversing with Collecting the World: Elite Female Sociability and Learning
through Objects in the Age of Enlightenment
Lizzie Rogers
Portrait of Charlotte de France: from Naples to Sicily, a Collection in
Transit
Maria Antonietta Spadero
8. The Collecting Activity of Catherine II in 18th Century Russia:
Pioneering Action or Sheer Demonstration of Power? Charis Ch. Avlonitou
Part III Displaying, Recording, and Cataloguing
I made memorandums: Mary Hamilton, Sociability, and Antiquarianism in the
Eighteenth-Century Collection
Madeleine Pelling
Eleanor Coade, John Soane, and the Coade Caryatid
Nicole Cochrane
Anne Wagners Album (1795-1805): Collecting Feminine Friendship
Ryna Ordynat
An Art Cabinet in Miniature: The Dollhouse of Petronella Oortman
Hanneke Grootenboer
Part IV Beyond the Eighteenth Century
Collection, Display, and Conservation: The Print Room at Castletown House
Anna Frances ORegan
Olivia Lanza di Mazzarino (1893-1970): A Ladys collection of
Eighteenth-Century Folding Fans
Arlene Leis
Arlene Leis is an independent art historian who received her PhD from University of York.
Kacie L. Wills received her PhD in English from the University of California, Riverside, and is Assistant Professor of English at Illinois College.
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