Dr. John Marciari, Curator of Italian and Spanish Painting at the San Diego Museum of Art, will deliver a lecture at UCSB entitled “Velazquez in the Basement: Connoisseurship and the Politics of Art History.” Co-sponsored by the departments of the History of Art and Architecture, Art, and Spanish and Portuguese, the lecture is part of the “Moralities in Art and Architecture” series at UCSB.
Dr. Marciari made international headlines when he recently attributed a painting at Yale University Art Gallery to Velazquez. Depicting “The Education of the Virgin Mary,” the painting was damaged, had no known provenance and had never been on public view. While the reattribution to Velazquez began with a connoisseurial judgment, the case is supported by further research on Sevillian painting, the study of provenance and by technical examination in the conservation laboratory. Marciari’s detective work is also a commentary on the art world’s reluctance to admit new works to the canon. (See LA Times article here; also our earlier posting about the discovery here. )
When and where: Tuesday, November 2nd at 5:00 pm in HSSB 6020, McCune Conference Room. Refreshments will be provided.