Ellen Sharman (University of Oxford): ‘Making Masculinity in Roman Villa Gardens: terraces, frescoes, and fountains, c.1550-1600’
Book for free via this link: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/a-material-world-ellen-sharman-2024
This talk will frame cardinals’ gardens in Renaissance Rome as a space in which masculine identities were expressed and negotiated during the Counter-Reformation. It will explore the ways in which the sculpting of earth and the organisation of water was used to convey masculine power and dominion by a group of uniquely positioned men. It will also consider how frescoes of finished or idealised gardens entwined with both of these ideas and were used to memorialise the time and labour involved in the physical process of sculpting a garden. A patron’s demands for monumental earthworks and terracing as well as the idea of water as a substitute for virility by celibate cardinals, will be used as tools to help us think about the relationship between masculine ideals of power and the function of cardinals’ gardens.
Ellen Sharman is a DPhil student at Oxford University and is currently researching the relationship between elite masculinity and gardening culture in 16th century Rome.
This event is part of the series ‘A Material World: Gender’, which brings together academics and heritage professionals from a wide range of disciplines to discuss issues concerning historical objects, their materials, forms, and functions, as well as their conservation, presentation, display, and reconstruction.
Organisers: Rembrandt Duits (Deputy Curator, The Photographic Collection, The Warburg Institute) and Louisa McKenzie (The Warburg Institute).
All sessions during 2023-2024 will be delivered online.
Image by M. Maselli (Flickr) via Creative Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). No changes have been made.