Carl Villis - Correggio, Parma & the NGVs 'Madonna and Child'

The Power of Luxury: Art and Culture at the Italian Courts in Machiavelli’s Lifetime
The Australian Institute of Art History
The University of Melbourne
19 and 20 February, 2013

Session Two - The Decorative Arts at Court
Tuesday 19 February 5.30 pm

Carl Villis
Apart from the Courts: Correggio, Parma and the NGV’s Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist

Abstract

Antonio Allegri da Correggio was one of the most anomalous figures in sixteenth-century Italian painting.  Despite operating for almost all of his known career away from the courts and cities of northern Italy, he was able to produce some of the most sophisticated and ravishing paintings ever produced. This talk will examine the National Gallery of Victoria’s newly acquired Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist following conservation treatment, and examine the work in the context of Correggio’s smaller devotional works up to the early 1520s.

Livetweets

Villis | Placing NGV Correggio within context of artist's dramatic stylistic change c.1518/19: marked by Camera di S. Paolo #machiavelli
— Mark Shepheard (@shepm) February 19, 2013

Villis | Placing NGV Correggio within context of artist's dramatic stylistic change c.1518/19: marked by Camera di S. Paolo #machiavelli
— Mark Shepheard (@shepm) February 19, 2013

Villis | Asks how Correggio developed as such a skilled and innovative painter outside the traditional court setting #machiavelli
— Mark Shepheard (@shepm) February 19, 2013

Villis | NGV restoration removed earlier embellishments such as added whites to Madonna's eyes #machiavelli
— Mark Shepheard (@shepm) February 19, 2013

Carl Villis is a paintings conservator at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he specialises in the treatment of European paintings before 1800. A graduate from the University of Canberra, he worked in the United States between 1991 and 1995, both in New York and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Throughout 2001 he worked in Italy for the conservation firm Conservazione Beni Culturali on numerous projects, including Filippo Lippi’s frescoed chapel of St. Stephen in the Duomo in Prato. Since 1995 he has restored several key paintings in the NGV collection, including paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Gainsborough and Poussin. He teamed up with John Payne for the large-scale restoration projects of two works by Giambattista Tiepolo: The Banquet of Cleopatra (2002-03) and The Finding of Moses (2008-09). He is also active in the detailed technical examination of paintings. His technical research has contributed to the reattribution of works by Tiepolo, Bernardo Bellotto, Louis Tocqué, and the NGV’s renaissance portrait of Lucrezia Borgia. His most recent project has been the conservation treatment of Correggio’s Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist.

Image notes
Madonna and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist (detail). Correggio. source ngv blog link

nb. Entry created May 4 2013. Dated to Feb 19 (date of presentation) for indexing purposes