Isabel and Alfred Bader Lecture in European Art

Elmer Kolfin presents “Out of the shadow and into the light: Black figures in the art of Rembrandt’s time” for the 2021 Isabel and Alfred Bader Lecture in European Art. 

Sign up for this online lecture. ASL interpretation and live captioning available.

All major Dutch collections have paintings representing Black figures and the Bader Collection at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University is no exception. For a long time, Black presence in Dutch 17th-century art went unaccounted for and scholarship around this was thus absent in academic texts and museum exhibitions. However, research of the past 30 years has drawn increased attention to the ubiquitous presence and varying roles of Black figures in Dutch art as well as Dutch art’s entangled relationship to colonialism and class. In this lecture, Dr Elmer Kolfin examines why Black figures recur so frequently in Dutch art, and whether and why Rembrandt’s approach differed from that of his contemporaries.

Elmer Kolfin teaches art history at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on Dutch art of the seventeenth century and has a special interest in images of Black figures. He recently co-curated the acclaimed exhibition Black in Rembrandt’s Time at the Rembrandt House Museum (Amsterdam 2020).

Digital Agnes
Collection highlight: Elisabetta Sirani, The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist, around 1650–1660.
Take a closer look at Elisabetta Sirani’s (1638–65) evocative etching The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist. Acquired in 2018, this work of the mid-seventeenth century represents the earliest work known to have been created by a female artist to enter Agnes’s European art collection.

This highlight elucidates the artwork through the lens of three distinct perspectives presented in the form of an essay and two audio segments. Listen as art historian and renowned Sirani expert Dr Babette Bohn (Texas Christian University) situates the print in the context of the cultural networks of the artist’s dynamic hometown of Bologna, based on the most recent insights from her new book Women Artists, Their Patrons, and Their Publics in Early Modern Bologna (Penn State University Press: 2021). Canadian printmaker and arts educator Rebecca Cowan brings a maker’s perspective to the work’s finest details by talking about the staged etching process and technical skill evident in the print’s composition. In her discussion of the print, Queen’s University’s MA student Madeline Legg explains how emphatic representations of biblical subjects such as this one contributed to Sirani’s unique oeuvre and professional reputation.

This rare etching is one of only ten known compositions that Sirani produced in print. Sirani was a remarkable talent who achieved great success as an exceptional painter during her lifetime, when few women artists were celebrated in the same way.

These programs are made possible through the generous support of Bader Philanthropies, Inc.