PROGRAMME

29 October

Rachel King, Curator of Renaissance Europe and the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum, London.

lecture of 40 minutes followed by discussion

Purchases from Prague: Buying Rudolph II and Bohemia in Nineteenth- Century England

Monday March 12, 1860, marked the beginning of a notable sale in London. That afternoon ‘the rooms of the fashionable auctioneers, Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Woods [were] crowded with amateurs of wealth and taste’. People were flocking to the dispersal of, in one newspaper’s words, that ‘celebrated collection, known under the designation of the “Vienna Museum”. The catalogue, a tome of over 130 pages, has been of interest for its revolutionary employment of salt-print photographs. When lot 1291 was finally reached, ten days later, a sum equivalent to around three quarters of a million pounds had been raised. The sale lifted eyebrows across England.
Correspondents in the regions were aghast at the prices achieved for the types of objects local authorities had been ignorantly jettisoning as ‘old silver’. A surviving annotated copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France records which lots were sold, remained unsold, who bought, and the hammer prices paid. My paper will study the sale, its history, and its legacy as one route to understanding British engagement with the history and material culture of Rudolph II and East Central Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.

Rachel King, PhD is Curator of Renaissance Europe and the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum, London. She has previously held curatorial positions at The Burrell Collection, National Museums Scotland, and the Bavarian State Museums and Galleries. Rachel’s work is being undertaken as part of a British Museum publication celebrating the 2022 exhibition ‘Printmaking in Prague: Art from the Court of Rudolf II’ curated by Dr Olenka Horbatsch.

26 November

Presentation by Petra Trnkova, PhD, Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

museum presentation of 20 minutes followed by q & a and discussion

The collection of (historical) photographs of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences
The photographic collection was established at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAH CAS) in Prague in 2008. It was created by separating photographs from more than forty archival fonds held by the IAH. In a way, photographs then followed graphics and drawings, which had received their autonomy and recognition there much earlier. The talk will not only shed light on the specific circumstances of the collection’s foundation, which happened just sixteen years ago, but also on what followed. It will outline both specific steps that have been taken and the theoretical questions that have gradually arisen. Special attention will also be paid to the prehistory of the collection, particularly in the period before the photographs were transferred to the IAH, and to the consequences that the establishment of the collection – or rather the revival of the material in question – brought.

Petra Trnkova, PhD, is a photo historian and a research fellow at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. In addition to the history of 19th- and early 20th-century photography, she is interested in the history and historiography of photomechanical printing and other techniques of mechanical reproduction of artefacts in the 19th century. In 2023, she was a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where she investigated the history of mechanical reproduction of painting. Her research has been supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program (MSCA IF), the Czech Science Foundation, the Czech Academy of Sciences (Strategy AV21 program), and the Czech Ministry of Culture.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Petra-Trnkova | ptrnkova@gmail.com

17 December

presentations by Paweł Litwinienko, National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, Poland;  Martijn Manders (University of Leiden);

workshop with three ten-minute presentations followed by q&a plus discussion

When the Sun set at noon – artefacts from the “Solen”, 1627 Swedish shipwreck from the Gulf of Gdańsk
The year 1969 brought an unexcepted discovery during the works on a new Gdańsk harbour fairway. Just a few miles from the shore a shipwreck was found, with bronze cannons lying on ballast stones and wooden construction. The wreck was excavated by the divers and underwater archaeologists from the National Maritime Musuem in Gdańsk in years 1970-1981. It was soon revealed that the wreck was no other than “Solen”, the Swedish galleon sunk during the battle of Oliwa in 1627. The excavations yielded an impressive collection of finds – over 6,000 artefacts related with the every day life of  17th century sailors and soldiers onboard a warship in an active duty as well as the very art of sailing. The conserved artefacts form now a vital part of the exhibition of the NMM main building and are objects of continuous research. The presentation will focus on small sector of the collection, yet interesting in the eyes of both nautical and art historian.
Paweł Litwinienko is an underwater archaeologist working in the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk. His research interest are mainly the history of shipbuilding, sailing and the maritime culture. An active commercial diver involved in underwater research conducted by the Museum, and a PhD student exploring the topic of Early Medieval sailing and shipbuilding along the Gulf of Gdańsk viewed through archaeological sources.

Stone blocks, pillar dollars and coconuts. They immense variety of objects collected from the VOC ship Rooswijk as anchor points of different narratives
This presentation will be about the different narratives we can tell about the Rooswijk ship that sank in 1740 ion front of the British Coast, based on the objects that were found on the wreck. By examining the context we can trace the stories of individual objects that together make up a complex history of a ship and its crew.

Martijn Manders

25 January

Oskar J. Rojewski, Assistant Professor of Art History at the Institute of Art Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland

lecture of 40 minutes followed by discussion

The History of the Courtier Painter of Queen Isabella of Castile and the
Habsburg Dynasty:  Michel Sittow’s Activities
Michel Sittow (ca. 1469-1525), a painter originally from Reval (present-day Tallinn, Estonia), trained in his craft in Bruges, possibly in the workshop of Hans Memling. Sittow emerged as a significant innovator in Early Modern painting, mainly in portraiture. This presentation focuses on the studies on Michel Sittow and on the significance of the written records about his life. It launches a new hypothesis on the works he executed during his stay in Castile and his service to the Habsburg dynasty.
Despite the sources related to his biography, few specific works are directly attributed to Sittow. This painter is renowned for his extensive travels and residencies at various European courts, including those of Isabella of Castile, Philip the Fair, Margaret of Austria, Christian II of Denmark, and Charles V. His itinerant life highlights the exchange of ideas and patronage among the European elite in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. An itinerant artist and economic migrant, Sittow was esteemed as a painter already during his lifetime. Notably, he is one of the few artists referenced in records from the Castilian court and in the inventories of Margaret of Austria's art collection in Mechelen from 1516 to 1523/4. These inventories have been instrumental in identifying Sittow's works, such as the Assumption of the Virgin from the Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic (National Gallery of Art in Washington) and other lost pieces.

Oskar J. Rojewski is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the Institute of Art Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Valencia and the University Jaume I in Spain. His research focuses on the migration of Flemish artists to the Mediterranean world in the fifteenth century and on court culture, with a particular emphasis on the role and position of court artists. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Instituto Moll. Centro de Investigación de Pintura Flamenca in Madrid, a member of several research groups, and has completed postdoctoral work at the University of Copenhagen in the Centre for Privacy Studies and at the University Rey Juan Carlos in the research team CINTER.

25 February

Martyna Łukasiewicz, National Museum in Poznan

museum presentation of 20 minutes followed by q & a and discussion

Challenges and Complexities of the European Painting Collection in the National Museum in Poznan
This presentation examines the historical factors that shaped the development of the European Paintings Collection at the National Museum in Poznań, while addressing the current challenges it faces. A key issue stems from insufficient documentation and inventory, particularly related to looted objects during World War II and post-war nationalization. These gaps have resulted in ongoing difficulties in verifying provenance and determining rightful ownership.
The case studies presented will illustrate the scale of provenance challenges, including missing or incomplete records, complex ownership claims, and efforts to restitute looted items. The analysis investigates the legal and political complexities surrounding Poland's demands for the restitution of cultural losses from the Second World War, and, more broadly, its pursuit of war reparations. This is contrasted with the issue of artworks from German state museums that are now housed in Polish collections. The paper further explores the broader context of national and transnational ownership disputes, revealing how political dynamics influence museum restitution processes and complicate resolution of collection disputes.

Martyna Łukasiewicz is an art historian and curator at the National Museum in Poznan. She is a PhD candidate in art history with a dissertation dedicated to 19th century Danish museology. Her research interests encompass the 19th-century European painting, museology, and the history of collecting. She curated the first exhibition of Vilhelm Hammershøi in Poland (2021/2022). She presented her research findings at various international conferences, including the University of Copenhagen, University of Oxford, Humboldt University of Berlin, and University of Geneva. She is a member of CODART, the Association for Art History, the Association of Art Historians in Poland.