The Early Modern Visual Culture Seminar returns for 2010.

Eugene Barilo von Reisberg

‘Garters and Petticoats’: Winterhalter’s 1843 Portraits of Victoria and Albert

Poster in JPEG - Click for larger version

What does official royal iconography tell us? What messages does it communicate about the sitters – and from the sitters? This paper deconstructs two official portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) in 1843. It outlines the complex semantic layering within this pair of British royal portraits, and explores in particular the emphasis on Prince Albert’s newly-acquired ‘Englishness’ and the notion of an iconographic ‘gender reversal’ within the context of traditional marital pendants.

March 8 2010 6.30pm

Room 150 Elisabeth Murdoch Building, Parkville Campus

All Welcome

Please RSVP Mark Shepheard (shepm@unimelb.edu.au) if you plan to join us for dinner in Lygon Street afterwards.

For further details on Eugene’s research on Winterhalter please visit his website http://www.bvram.com/WH/WH.html