Rococo Enlightenment: Art, Decoration, and Science in eighteenth-century France and its Empire.
Supervisor: Professor Katie Scott
Funded by the Courtauld Scholarship and Clark Library/ UCLA Center for Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Studies
Education
2020–25 Courtauld Institute of Art, London, U.K. PhD, History of Art. “Rococo Enlightenment: Art, Decoration, and Science in Eighteenth-Century France and its Empire”; Supervised by Prof. Emeritus Katie Scott, Advised by Dr Esther Chadwick, funded by The Courtauld Scholarship; Defended in October 2025
2024–25 MIT, Department of Architecture, History, Theory + Criticism, Cambridge, USA. Visiting PhD candidate, invited by Prof. Kristel Smentek
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, Carole. ‘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, Carole. ‘Tasteful Science and Networks of Knowledge at the Jardin du Roi: Madeleine Françoise Basseporte’s Shell Paintings on Vellum (1747–68)’, in Images and Institutions: The Visual Culture of Early Modern Scientific Societies, ed. Matthijs Jonker and Katherine Reinhart. Turnhout: Brepols, 2026 (forthcoming, March 2026).
Nataf, Carole. ‘The Aesthetics of Deep Time: Unearthing Georges‐Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s Rococo Shell Grotto and Porcelain Room.’ Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 49, no. 1 (2026): 85–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/1754-0208.70018.
Nataf, Carole. ‘Commercial Space and Amateur Identity in Eighteenth-Century Paris: At Gilles Demarteau’s Print Shop La Cloche‘, immediations 4.3 (2018).
Other
Nataf, Carole. ‘Land and Loom: Louis de Noailles’ Nouvelles Indes tapestries’, Colonial Networks (February, 2026), https://www.colonialnetworks.org/?p=941.
Nataf, Carole. ‘Flaunting Red and Blue: Reframing the Nouvelles Indes Tapestries through Gobelins Dyestuffs’, The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust (February 13, 2026). h
Conferences and invited talks
- ‘From Senegal to Parisian Salons: The Shiny Invisibility of Gum Arabic’, CAA 114th Annual Conference, Hilton Chicago, 18-21 February 2026
- ‘Artisanal Epistemologies and “Useful Knowledge” in the Sèvres porcelain Service aux oiseaux (1779–1796)’, Making Early Modern Materialism(s), ENS de Lyon, 30–31 January 2026
- ‘Les services aux oiseaux Buffon (1779–1794): les décors ornithologiques de Sèvres’, Société des amis du musée national de céramique, October 8 2025
- ‘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
2026-28 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
2025 Stacy Lloyd Fellowship at Oak Spring
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
2025 Art of Europe, Decorative Arts, Graduate Research Intern, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
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.