Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Travel and Wonder, 1450-1750

You're invited to our conference which is running 27-28 April 2023. We will explore questions around the theme of 'Travel and Wonder'.

Ambivalent Neighbours: Living Together - or not - in Early Modern Tuscany

Professor Nicholas Terpstra joins us for this event discussing early modern Tuscany.

TBC

Professor Sinem Arcak Casale will be joining us from the University of Minnesota for this enlightening talk

Patrides Lecture: Thomas Nashe, Women, and Gender Slippage

Professor Jennifer Richards explores ‘gender slippage’ in relation to contemporary representations of Nashe (encouraged by him), and the foregrounding of reading as impersonation, and the experience this creates for us.

Erasmus’s Nose

Desiderius Erasmus was self-conscious about his nose. In caricatural self-portraits doodled in the margins of his working papers, he lampooned its size and shape. Unsurprisingly, it features prominently in the drawn, painted, engraved and sculpted portraits Erasmus commissioned from Quinten Matsys, Hans Holbein the Younger, and Albrecht Dürer. Yet while those images have attracted considerable attention, the sitter’s nose has been curiously overlooked. By situating this feature in the context of humanist metaphors that invoke the nasus, sniffing and wiping, a playful pictorial game is revealed: one which treats wittily of acumen, character and style. Professor Alexander Marr (University of Cambridge) will be leading this engaging talk.