PHAIS Seminar Series Week 11: Dr Melissa Gustin (Art History)

The PHAIS Seminar Series meets weekly in term time to discuss a paper by a visiting Philosopher, Historian, Art Historian or a member of our academic staff.

Secular Conversazione: Watts, Titian, and the Court of Death

Dr Melissa Gustin, National Museums Liverpool

Although G F Watts is better known as England’s Michelangelo, in his lifetime he was more often compared to Titian, who was Watts’s most-cited model for painting and self-presentation. This paper develops those connections through Watts’s monumental semi-secular design The Court of Death, clearly modelled on Renaissance altarpieces and sacra conversazione. I further argue that two of the figures are heretofore unrecognised self-portraits. He placed himself within the frame of the painting much like a Renaissance donor or painter— in this case, possibly in the role of both as the painting was a gift to the nation..

Biography

Dr Melissa L Gustin is Curator of British Art at National Museums Liverpool, based at the Walker Art Gallery. She has recently curated two exhibitions on women artists in the collection, with Another View: Landscapes by Women Artists at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, and National Treasures: Velasquez in Liverpool at the Walker. She is currently curating an exhibition on JMW Turner and modern and contemporary art, due to open next autumn. She received her PhD from the University of York in 2018, and has held fellowships at the Henry Moore Institute, Watts Gallery Artists Village, and the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art Studies. She has published widely on sculpture and painting in the nineteenth century as well as contemporary 3D printing and scanning practices. She is currently (slowly) writing a book on George Frederic Watts as an artist whose practice was informed by art history. 

The seminar will be delivered in person, but a Zoom link will be available for those who wish to attend remotely.