16 February - Mapping Space
Lisa Jardine
School of English, University London
This lecture is about the way the familiar landscape of art and culture
which we inhabit has, historically, formed our ideas of beauty and shaped
our aesthetic preferences. I am interested in the successive
transformations, and, indeed, deformations of cartographic space within
which our European forebears encountered, and sought ownership of the
exotic and rare, and the way artistic development was refracted through
the lens of territorial claims and aspirations to ownership. Like other
graphic representations, a map is not an innocent version of the relative
positions of places on the terrestrial globe. A Renaissance map records
the aspirations of the person for whom it is designed to be 'Lord of all
that he surveys'.
I shall base my discussion around a body of imposing sixteenth century
tapestries, some of which incorporate surprisingly precise contemporary
maps, and all of which make decisive interventions as claims to the
territorial supremacy of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and his dynasty.
These priceless art-works travelled from the Low Countries to Spain and
Portugal, from Spain to England and France, objects of wonder which
insisted graphically on the political supremacy of their owner. I shall
argue that unless we grasp the continuous involvement of art manufacture
and exchanges with contests between competing imperial powers, we will do
less than justice to the lasting importance of the European
Renaissance.
This lecture will start at 5.30 p.m. in The Lady Mitchell Hall,
Sidgwick Avenue. An adjacent overflow theatre is provided with live TV
coverage. Each lecture is typically attended by 600 people, and it is advisable
to arrive around half an hour early to ensure a place.
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