In this talk Charlotte Bolland discusses the recently published essay volume that has come out of the interdisciplinary research project Making Art in Tudor Britain at the National Portrait Gallery. The project brought together curators, historians, conservators and research scientists and Charlotte will talk about the collaborative research process that has shed new light on some of the most iconic portraits in the national collection and deepened our understanding of artistic practice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
Charlotte Bolland studied History at Durham University before undertaking an MA in History of Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She studied for her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, in collaboration with The Royal Collection as part of an AHRC funded CDA. Her doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Italian Material Culture at the Tudor Court’ and explored the many items that were owned by the Tudor monarchs that had been brought to England by Italian individuals, either through trade or as gifts. She joined the National Portrait Gallery in 2011 and her role as Project Curator for the Making Art in Tudor Britain project involved researching the Gallery’s collection of Tudor and Jacobean portraits and liaising between the various project members and external advisors. She is responsible for the online project database, and also for gallery displays relating to the research, such as ‘The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered’. She recently co-curated the exhibition ‘Les Tudors’ at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris.