Between Reality and Imagination: Early Modern Landscapes and Gardens in Print with Dr Katrina Grant

Historical gardens and landscapes are a form of art subject to rapid change, decay and complete destruction as fashions change. Historians of gardens and their cultural history of landscape often need to recreate the design and experience by tracing it through representations in printed or painted views, drawings and letters. These sources often present an idealised view, one that needs to be carefully studied to understand where reality ends and imagination begins. Yet, at the same time, they can tell us something about the way that early modern visitors experienced the natural world, and the way they imagined it as a place of escape, of love and of control.

This lecture will explore the representation of landscape and gardens in art, looking at the range of different sources we have to understand the appearance and use of early modern European gardens. It will explore how we can decode maps and ‘birds-eye’ views, and explain what printed and painted views can tell us about the role of gardens in daily life, from Versailles in France to the Boboli gardens in Florence, and the villas scattered around the hills of Rome.

Dr Katrina Grant is a Research Fellow in Visual Understanding at the Power Institute for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney, and also an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Australian National University. Her research is based in the fields of Digital Art History, Digital Humanities and the art history of early modern Italy. Recent projects include a focus on the application of visualisation and mapping technologies to art history research, as well as the use of digital technologies in the galleries and museums sector for outreach and engagement. She is an expert on the representation of landscape in early modern Italy and the visual cultures performance and spectacle. Her recent book ‘Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture’ was published by Amsterdam University Press (2022).

Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the lecture, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.  NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our exhibition-house, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.

This lecture is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

Image: Marcantonio Dal Re, View of a Garden, from Villas in the State of Milan, 1726.