Holbrook Lecture: Elizabeth Currie: “Everyday People: Dress and Art in the Italian Baroque”

Caravaggio and his followers are famous for what art historians have sometimes described as “low-life genre scenes” — portrayals of street life and taverns featuring a cast of characters including soldiers, beggars, sex workers and fortune tellers. From the mid-16th century on, the same groups appeared in numerous other art forms, indicating the power they held in the early modern cultural imagination.

This talk will focus on styles of clothing, materials and accessories to show how stereotypes developed surrounding their physical appearances. Drawing on visual sources, social histories, surviving garments and textiles, it will discuss how dress can shed light on contemporary perceptions of social groups who were often marginalized and offer up vital clues about their lived experiences.

Dr. Elizabeth Currie is a lecturer and author based in London, specializing in the history of fashion and textiles. She has published widely on dress, gender and Renaissance decorative art for general and specialist audiences. Her work includes the edited volume “A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion: The Renaissance” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) and “Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), as well as contributions to numerous Victoria and Albert exhibition publications. She teaches at Central St. Martins and the Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art.

This program is presented in conjunction with the special exhibition “Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence,” on view through April 24, 2022.

Light refreshments will follow the lecture. RSVP at https://bit.ly/holbrook-2022.