Dressing a Picture

Abstract

I n May , the University of Cambridge hosted the conference ‘Dressing a Picture: Reimagining the Court Portrait –’. Ana Howie (Cambridge) and Alessandro Nicola Malusà (Cambridge) came up with the original idea for the conference, organised and convened it. The initial plans were to host the conference in May  in Cambridge, but the disruption by the pandemic meant that we met a year later online. This was not of detriment to the conference, which gathered well over one hundred participants from all over the world. The aim was to explore the realities of costume and courtly life through portraiture, focusing on how the material culture of dress and adornment reflected social, cultural and political contexts. The framework of the conference was unusual in that each themed panel — courtly bodies, gender, global considerations, the court as a stage, and the figure of the artist — was introduced by a thirty-minute panel keynote. This worked well, enabling in-depth explorations of the themes in the allotted discussion time. The conference brought together scholars working on both European and non-European subjects, giving it a genuinely global reach. We heard papers on representations of the early modern Japanese court by Alejandro M. Sanz Guillén (Universidad de Zaragoza) and the Qing imperial portraits by Mei Mei Rado (LACMA). For scholars of Europe like myself, this was a fantastic opportunity to learn about Asian royal cultures and representations of authority and gender; the wonderful images shown by both scholars were truly a feast for the eyes. Two papers drew attention to how fabrics and gestures were used to denote early modern racial hierarchies, particularly relating to female attendants of colour. Marina Hopkins (Warburg Institute) discussed the portrait representing María Luisa de Toledo, daughter of Antonio Sebastián de Toledo, viceroy of New Spain between  and , together with her indigenous companion. This paper provoked a lively discussion about race, imperialism and representation in portraiture in the early modern period. There was some disagreement about whether the portrait represents the affectionate relationship between the two women or is a manifestation of racial hierarchies. Ana Howie’s paper examined a similar relationship in the European context through Anthony van Dyck’s portrait of Marchesa Elena Grimaldi-Cattaneo of Genoa with a black attendant. Howie argued that the red and black fabrics in which Cattaneo appears dressed were used both to contrast and emphasize her white skin, while the yellow fabrics chosen for Cattaneo’s black attendant detract attention from her and even make her melt into the background. The discussion of European topics also went much beyond the traditional focus on Western monarchies and principalities. We heard a broad range of papers about Eastern and Central