Knowing nature: Savant artists, natural history specimens and ecological awareness in eighteenth-century France
Supervisor: Professor Katie Scott
Funded by the Courtauld Scholarship and Clark Library/ UCLA Center for Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Studies
Education
2018-2019: Master in History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, U.K.; MA Thesis ‘Prince Louis-François de Bourbon-Conti’s alternative court at the Château of L’Isle-Adam (1727-1776)’; Supervised by Prof. Katie Scott, Mark: 78, Distinction
2007-2010: Bachelor in Philosophy at Paris IV, La Sorbonne equivalency. Lycée Henri IV, Hypokhâgne, Khâgne, Preparatory Class to Grandes Ecoles, Paris, France
Publications
Peer-Reviewed
Nataf, C., ‘Rococo epistemology: Shell grottos and the aesthetics of deep time in Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s theory of the earth’ (in progress)
Nataf, C., ‘Gum arabic: Visualizing Transparency, from the West-African Sahel to Paris and London art studios ’, Material Metamorphosis, Natural Resources, Artmaking, and Sustainability in the Early Modern World, Brepols (in progress)
Nataf, C. ‘Tasteful science at the Jardin du roi: Madeleine Françoise Basseporte’s Shell Paintings on Vellum (1747-1768)’, Images and Institutions: The Visual Culture of Early Modern Scientific Societies, Brepols, Studies in Baroque Art (in progress)
Nataf, C. ‘Commercial Space and Amateur Identity in Eighteenth-Century Paris: At Gilles Demarteau’s Print Shop La Cloche‘, immediations 4.3 (2018).
Other
Conferences
- ‘Tasteful Science in the Jardin du roi: Madeleine Françoise Basseporte’s Shell Paintings on Vellum (1747–1768)’, Women in Art and Science in the Early Modern World, USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, USC, November 10 & 11, 2023
- ‘Gum Arabic: Visualizing Transparency in Charles-Nicolas Cochin’s engraving ‘Arabs and Moors trading gums in Senegal’ (1746)’, Europe c. 1580-c. 1830: Telling Histories, Imagining Futures, The Courtauld Institute, October 27, 2023
- ‘Rococo epistemology: Shell grottos and the aesthetics of deep time in Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s theory of the earth’, HECAA@30: Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century Boston, Cambridge, and Providence, October 12-14, 2023
- ‘Rococo epistemology: Shells, deep time, and imagination in Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s theory of the earth’, The Courtauld Third Year PhD Symposium, The Courtauld Institute, May18th-May 19th, 2023
- ‘Transporting America: The politics of import and export in the New Indies Gobelins tapestry set’, ‘Transporting Culture – Art, Objects, and ‘Early Modern Logistics’’, Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) Zoom Event Series, October 2022
- ‘Cataloguing the Courtauld’s fictile ivories’, Carole Nataf and Bella Radenovic, The Courtauld’s Fictile Ivories Study Day (Somerset House, London), June 2022
- ‘Nature transformed: Manufacturing America in the New Indies Gobelins Tapestry set (1737-1745)’, The Second Year Research Student Symposium, (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), May 2022
- ‘Drawing shells: Conchological expertise at the Jardin du roi and the Académie des Sciences’, ‘Images & Institutions: The Visual Culture of Early Modern Scientific Societies,’ (Accademia dei Lincei, Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR), Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome), September 2022
- ‘Observation and Experimentation in Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin’s Recueil de plantes copiées d’après nature (1736-1785)’, Carnets de notes, carnets de références, musées de papier: Regards croisés sur la culture visuelle des artistes et le processus de création du Moyen Âge à nos jours (Université de Strasbourg), March 2022
Awards and Fellowships
Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant, ‘Colors of empire: Tracing circum-Atlantic Networks of cochineal and Indigo dyestuffs in the “Nouvelle Indes” Gobelins tapestry set’, 2024
Dora Wiebenson Prize for the paper: ‘Rococo epistemology: Shell grottos and the aesthetics of deep time in Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s theory of the earth’, presented at HECAA@30, 2024
Enhancing Research England Grant, Courtauld Institute, 2024
Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art Research Support Grant for Gum Arabic: Visualizing Transparency from the West-African Sahel to Paris and London art studios in the eighteenth century, 2023
HECAA@30 Kress Travel Grant, 2023
Clark Library/ UCLA Center for Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Studies Fellowship, 2023-24
Mary Vidal Award, Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture (HECAA), 2022
Work Experience
2024 Associate Lecturer, Histories ‘Artists, Radicals, Mystics: European Art 1760-1830’
2022 Teaching Assistant, Foundations BA1, Autumn semester
2021 Research Assistant, Dr Esther Chadwick, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, U.K.
Feb 2020 – March 2021: Gallery Assistant, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K.
Jan-May 2020: Curatorial Intern, Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, U.K.