Portraying Patrons: The Marchesa Luisa Casati, Isabella Stewart Gardner and their Collections
Cordova, Cristiana
Cordova, Cristiana
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Abstract
Collecting is usually understood and recognized as a personal and subjective activity in which collectors gather, according to personal criteria, a collection of objects. Following my interest in the figure of the collector and the collecting activity, the dissertation focuses on analyzing how the collectors are visible through their collections to the point that they themselves become part of them. The research highlights this dynamic as recurrent in this practice. I considered two women collectors, the marchesa Luisa Casati and Isabella Stewart Gardner, their collections, and two portraits of them to see how their characters shaped the collection and how the latter was referenced in the portraits of the collectors. The portrait analyzed to study the Casati Collection is The Marchesa Luisa Casati as Euterpe by Alberto Martini, while the portrait considered from the Gardner Collection is Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner by John Singer Sargent. The collectors prove to have had two different approaches both to collecting and to their collections, but they equally show an interest in the representation of their image, be it through artworks or display.
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Thesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Entrepreneurship)--John Cabot University, Spring 2017.
Date
2017
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Keywords
Luisa Casati Stampa, 1881-1957, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Art collections, Private collections
Citation
Cordova, Cristiana. "Portraying Patrons: The Marchesa Luisa Casati, Isabella Stewart Gardner and their Collections". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2017.