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Art Dealing, Taste and Politics: Photographs from the archives of Florentine art dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922)

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Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

No booking required

This presentation explores the importance of photography in the nineteenth-century art market and for art-historical studies at large. Looking at images of paintings, sculptures and mediaeval and Renaissance crafts can be simultaneously revealing and deceiving. Time, place and users can change their connotations, raising important questions about their relationship to the original works. Intertwining photography, art collecting and art dealing, considered within an historical framework, this talk begins with Stefano Bardini's show-room, to introduce his use of photographs for art dealing purposes by exploring the case study of a photograph of Allegory of Love, a c.1508 painting by 'Il Sodoma' (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi), and its acquisition of various meanings through its European journeys.

Hosted by the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre.

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