Towards an Anti-Biography of Leonardo da Vinci
A Lecture by Dr. Stephen J. Campbell

Friday, September 23, 2022
4:30 p.m.
Radio-Television Building, Room 245
Reception to follow

The sensational $450 million sale in November 2017 of a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci has been a matter of concern for many invested in the study and interpretation, as well as the relevance, of pre-modern art. The constant spotlighting of Leonardo “discoveries” in popular media shows how “da Vinci” has become an increasingly fictive historical legitimation of our obsessions with art, genius, and technological innovation as a means of obtaining celebrity and wealth. The lecture will confront the “Da Vinci worlds” of the 21st century with the mysterious figure of the pre-modern artist whose life and work bear little relation to the Leonardo of modern myth.

Dr. Stephen J. Campbell is the Henry and Elizabeth Wiesenfeld Professor in the Department of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Campbell’s research and publication in the field of pre-modern Italian art have dealt with the role of art in courts, cities and state formation; the Renaissance literature and theory of art; the body, sex and gender; the histories of collecting and canon formation, and more recently the geographies of art in Italy and the Mediterranean.

Image credit: Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci 1452-Aboise 1519), The head of an old bearded man, c. 1517-18. Black chalk, 21.3 x 15.5 cm (sheet of paper), The Royal Collection.

 

Amanda Boetzkes

Friday, November 11, 2022
4:00 p.m.
Location TBD
Reception to follow

Dr. Amanda Boetzkes specializes in contemporary art history, theory and criticism, with an emphasis on the intersection of artistic practices with the life sciences and global systems of energy use. Her current project, Ecologicity, Vision and Art for a World to Come considers modes of visualizing environments with a special focus on Arctic landscapes.

Dr. Boetzkes is Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Guelph.