Early Modern

The section runs a regular series of research seminars, which provide a forum for the presentation of work by scholars at different stages of their careers from doctoral candidates to senior academics. We regularly organise conferences and study days which complement the seminars and regular talks by leading scholars from the UK and elsewhere.

The Courtauld’s own book library has particularly strong holdings in the early modern field. Apart from an important group of seventeenth-century publications on art and architecture bequeathed by Anthony Blunt, students and other researchers have access to the microfiche of the Deloynes Collection of eighteenth-century French art criticism, as well as to the largest single collection of press cuttings (both originals and microfiche copies) relating to the early exhibitions of the Royal Academy. The Courtauld website Picturing the Netherlandish Canon provides access to a crucial early modern publication on Netherlandish art and culture: Hendrick Hondius the Elder’s 1610 publication of 68 portrait prints of artists.

The Courtauld is also fortunate to possess truly exceptional photographic resources, still not superseded by digital resources: the Witt Library, an unsurpassed collection of photographs of works of art, and its equivalent for architecture and sculpture, the Conway Library, in which British works are particularly well represented. The libraries’ photographic collections span a wide geography including urban and architectural views from Morocco to India.

Thanks above all to the Princes Gate Collection, The Courtauld Gallery possesses a world-class collection of seventeenth-century Flemish paintings, supplemented by important holdings in English and Italian art from c.1600 to 1800; the Gallery’s enormous collection of works on paper is also especially strong in the early modern field, and offers innumerable opportunities for original research.

Within walking distance are the marvellous resources of the Warburg Institute library, as well as the best specialist library on British art and architecture, at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Bedford Square. Sir John Soane’s Museum, which has an unparalleled collection of European architectural drawings of the period, is also minutes away from The Courtauld Institute of Art (as are the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery). The British Library furthermore houses one of the greatest collections of manuscripts from the Islamic world with a strong emphasis on early modern Persian and Indian holdings. These of course are in addition to London’s many outstanding research libraries: the British Library, the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and University of London Library, to name but the most obvious examples.

Teaching within the Early Modern section is directed by the research interests of its teachers, whether permanent members of staff or the visiting lecturers who allow us to expand what is already a wide range of methods, themes, and topics. Teaching, in turn, informs our research. Our teaching is dedicated to preparing students at all levels, from undergraduates to doctoral candidates, to join the ongoing and lively scholarly conversation about the art and architecture of an era which from our present-day perspective is as alien as it is familiar. The ‘early modern’ offers enormous scope for interrogating the relationships between works of art and the societies which both produced them, and were changed by them.