Seminar: Two Italian Masters – between Renaissance and Baroque

Seminar hall

Tickets: with a museum ticket

70 seats. No advance registration. Please sign up at the service desk when arriving in the museum.

Seminar is held in English.

Programme:

14.00
Welcoming words
Dr. Kirsi Eskelinen, Director of the Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Professor Kirsi Saarikangas, Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, vice-chair of the board

14.15
Valentin de Boulogne: Allegory of Italy
Dr. Ira Westergård, Chief Curator, Sinebrychoff Art Museum

14.30
Dr. Keith Christiansen: Valentin de Boulogne – Beyond Caravaggio

Caravaggio’s flight from Rome in May 1606 left a void that was filled by the arrival of a new generation of young artists from Spain and northern Europe. Foremost among these was Valentin de Boulogne, who not only embraced the challenge of Caravaggio’s legacy but threw himself into the rough and tumble, bohemian world that characterized the community of foreign artists in the papal city. In this talk, Keith Christiansen, Curator Emeritus at The Metropolitan Museum and the co-Curator of the 2016–2017 exhibition on the painter, will trace Valentin’s rise and discuss the innovative achievements that led to recognition and the commission from Cardinal Francesco Barberini of one of the masterpieces of seicento painting: the Allegory of Italy.

A man´s face.Dr. Keith Christiansen.
Keith Christiansen is Curator Emeritus at The Metropolitan Museum, where he began his career as assistant curator in 1977 and between 2009 and 2021 was the John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of European Paintings. During the forty-four years he served at the museum, he collaborated in the organization of over twenty exhibitions, ranging from Painting in Renaissance Siena (1989) to The Age of Caravaggio (1985) and Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi (2002); from Andrea Mantegna (1992) to Tiepolo (1997); El Greco (2003) and Ribera (1992) to Poussin and Nature (2008); From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1998) to The Medici: Portraits and Power, 1512-1570 (2021). Raised in Seattle, Washington and Concord, California, he attended the University of California campuses at Santa Cruz and Los Angeles and received his PhD from Harvard University. He has taught at Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and was the Clarence and Ruth Wedgewood Kennedy Professor in Renaissance Studies at Smith College (1999) and guest professor at Vassar (2006). In addition to the many acquisitions he pursued that have enriched the Museum’s collection, he has published widely and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, conferred by the Ministry of Arts in France.

15.45–16.00
Break

16.00
Dr. Kirsi Eskelinen: Jacopo Bassano´s Four Seasons series

Jacopo Bassano and his workshop were busy in producing genre scenes with biblical subject matter in the 1570s. Jacopo also created series consisting of several paintings. One of the most popular series was the Four Seasons. It included four paintings representing peasants in a vast landscape working with the typical tasks of each season. Each painting also included a small-scale biblical scene in the background. What is the meaning of the biblical scenes in these paintings? Kirsi Eskelinen analyses the historical and interpretative context of the oldest of Jacopo Bassano’s Four Seasons painting series.

A woman is sitting on a chair.Kirsi Eskelinen. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen.
Kirsi Eskelinen is director of the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, since 2014 and has specialised in Old Masters. She has a long career in the art museum field in curatorial and management positions. In 2008 Eskelinen defended her PhD on ‘Jacopo Bassano as a fresco painter. The frescoes of the Cartigliano and Enego parish churches: context, reconstruction and interpretation’, at the University of Helsinki. She has also published several articles on Bassano.

The painting by Valentin de Boulogne Allegory of Italy is exhibited 6.9.2023–12.1.2025 on the second floor on the museum.

The exhibition Jacopo Bassano – Venetian Renaissance Master is open 12.9.2024–12.1.2025.