Florence Gould Theater

Speaker: Dr. Gertrud Platz, Deputy Director (retired) of the Antikensammlung, National Museums of Berlin, and Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute

The excavations of the Etruscan cities and cemeteries in the first half of the 19th century brought to light the most sensational jewelry.  The delicate 6th-century BC goldsmiths' work was soon highly prized by collectors and museums. The “Etruscan gold-fever” led European high society to order jewelry in the Etruscan style for grand occasions, such as royal weddings. Consequently a flourishing industry in the restoration, completion, and forgery of ancient jewelry developed.

Image: Édouard Manet , At the Milliner's (La Modiste), 1881. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase, Mildred Anna Williams Collection.

Image: Charles Courtney Curran, Afternoon in the Cluny Garden, Paris, 1889. Oil on panel. Bequest of Constance Coleman Richardson.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Dukes of Burgundy —ruling the territory of modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and western France—were famed across Europe for the splendor of their court. They comissioned and used outstanding artworks to express their power and taste. The Mourners in the current exhibition represent one example of ducal patronage. This lecture will discuss a number of other arts—gold work, tapestries, manuscripts, music and multimedia pageants—that made the Burgundian dukes the preeminent and most admired rulers of the early Renaissance.

Marina Belozerskaya was born in Moscow and was imbued with a love of art, history, and time travel by her parents. She earned her PhD in Art History at the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston Universities. Her books explore art from antiquity to the present, the birth of archaeology in the Renaissance, and exotic animals.