FABRICATING THE WORLD SERIES 2023 (4) | KINGS AND QUEENS AND CATERPILLARS: Women's Agency and a 17th century Embroidery in the NGV with Professor Anne Dunlop

This lecture focuses on an embroidered panel with two royal figures surrounded by birds, animals, and flowers in many different scales.

The panel has been studied as a kind of hidden Royalist message after the execution of Charles I in 1649. Yet in the early modern period, such embroidery was widely made by aristocratic girls and women.

We will explore the ways in which such embroidery work can be tied to female artistic production, and their participation in an emerging culture of natural history and science.

PROFESSOR ANNE DUNLOP FAHA holds the Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. She is a specialist of medieval and early modern European art.

The FABRICATING THE WORLD SERIES 2023 has been curated for and continues a series of lectures especially convened by Dr. Susan Scollay for TJC.

This lecture is presented ON-SITE at TJC. Please see your ticket for details.

This lecture is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

image| unknown maker
(King Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France) (England) (mid-17th century)
silk, linen, paper, metal and silk (thread), mica, pearls, coral, wood, cotton (wadding)
433 × 543 mm
collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1733-D4, purchased 1957
image courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne