Output details

Placing Faces: the portrait and the English country house in the long eighteenth century

This collection makes a contribution to the study of eighteenth-century British portraiture by shifting the emphasis from the public art exhibition to the country house as the social and material context for the production and reception of portraiture. It reviews the social, historical, political and aesthetic relationships between portraiture and the country house or estate. The contributors examine the shifting relationships between portraiture, patronage and architectural space in country houses such as Chatsworth, Stowe, Knole, Wanstead and Windsor Castle. The project arose from an international conference at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York. As co-author of the Introduction and chapter author, Perry has contributed new research on fluid notions of house, 'home' and gender and their representation in the content and positioning of feminine portraiture. She explores some of the complex relationships between gender, architectural space and power.

Perry's chapter explores the house at Knole as a densely coded space in which portraits contributed to both public and private meanings, and some of their gendered implications. Focussing on representations of one of Knole's most notorious celebrity occupants, the dancer Giovanna Baccelli, this chapter argues that there was a complex interaction between the spheres of English hereditary power and status and the brash, sexualised and trans-national culture of the eighteenth century theatre.

Drawing on archival, unpublished and published sources, Perry considers some of the less well documented aspects of Knole as both a repository of art and precious artefacts, and as a literal and symbolic representation of power and social relations. The study draws on material from Knole archives, art history, cultural history, theatre studies and literature in its exploration of the meanings of both painted and sculptural representations of this female celebrity and her brief status as the 'mistress’ of Knole.