Sydney J. Freedberg Lectures on Italian Art

The Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art features distinguished scholars presenting original research. This annual lecture series offered by the National Gallery of Art began in 1997 and is named after the great specialist of Italian art Sydney J. Freedberg (1914–1997). Since 2017, the lecture series has been organized by the Center. Professor Freedberg earned his PhD in 1940 from Harvard University, where he taught for 29 years until he was appointed chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in 1983.

2023
Sofonisba Anguissola: Recent Discoveries and Debates
Michael Cole, Columbia University

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A woman and two children, all with pale skin and flushed cheeks, sit together in a landscape in this round painting. The woman takes up most of the composition as she sits with her right leg, to our left, tucked under her body. Her other leg, on our right, is bent so the foot rests on the ground, and that knee angles up and out to the side. She wears a rose-pink dress under a topaz-blue robe, and a finger between the pages of a closed book holds her place. Her brown hair is twisted away from her face. She has delicate features and her pink lips are closed. She looks and leans to our left around a nude young boy who half-sits and half-stands against her bent leg. The boy has blond hair and pudgy, toddler-like cheeks and body. The boy reaches his right hand, on our left, to grasp the tall, thin cross held by the second young boy, who sits on the ground next to the pair. This second boy has darker brown hair and wears a garment resembling animal fur. The boy kneels facing the woman and looks up at her and the blond boy. The trio sits on a flat, grassy area in front of a body of water painted light turquoise. Mountains in the deep distance are pale azure blue beneath a nearly clear blue sky.

2022
Michelangelo, Raphael, and the Genius Paradox
Cammy Brothers, Northeastern University

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2021
“More perfect and excellent than men”: The Women Artists of Bologna
Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University
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A woman sits and supports a baby standing on her lap, both against a gold background in this arched, vertical painting. The woman and baby’s light skin is shaded with faint green, and they have pale pink cheeks. The woman’s body faces us. She tips her head toward the baby who stands on her knee, to our right. The woman looks at us with light brown eyes under curving brows. She has a long, straight nose, and her small pink lips are closed. Her blond hair is mostly covered by a midnight-blue robe that drapes over her shoulders, across her lap, and pools on the floor. The robe is lined with goldenrod yellow, edged with bright gold, and has gold starburst-like designs on the shoulder we can see and top of the head. The dress she wears underneath has more gold stars creating a pattern across the pearl-white fabric. A sky-blue scarf wraps over her head and loops across her shoulders. The baby holds one end of the scarf, and his other elbow rests on the woman’s shoulder. She props him up with both hands. He has a cap of blond curls and chubby cheeks with delicate features. His geranium-red garment falls over a pale blue skirt that reaches his bare feet. In the hand near the woman’s shoulder, he holds a scroll with the letters “EGO S.” The floor beneath them is mint green and has gold writing across the front, reading, “AVE.G ANN O.D M.CCCC.XIII.” The woman and baby’s disc-like gold halos blend into the gold background, which is visibly cracked in some areas. The panel comes to a pointed arch at the top.

2020
Telling the Past Differently: Italian Renaissance Art in the Hands of the Beholder
Megan Holmes, University of Michigan
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2019
Andrea Mantegna’s Stones, Caves, and Clouds
Gabriele Finaldi, National Gallery, London
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2018
Against Titian
Stephen J. Campbell, Johns Hopkins University

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2017
Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice? Titian’s Portrait of Clarice Strozzi
Beverly Louise Brown, The Warburg Institute
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2016
The Aesthetics of Water: Wellheads, Cisterns, and Fountains in the Venetian Dominion
Patricia Fortini Brown, Princeton University
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2015
Canova and Color
David Bindman, University College London
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2014
Venice 1548: Titian Looking at Tintoretto’s Miracle of the Slave
Miguel Falomir, Museo Nacional del Prado
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2013
Circa 1515: Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo
Carmen C. Bambach, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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2012
“Not a painting, but a Vision!”: Raphael's Sistine Madonna Turns Five Hundred
Andreas Henning, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
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2011
Bernard Berenson and Lorenzo Lotto
Carl Brandon Strehlke, Philadelphia Museum of Art
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2010
Thoughts on the Caravaggisti
Michael Fried, Johns Hopkins University
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2009
Ghiberti and the Painters of Florence
Keith Christiansen, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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2008
To Live with Myths in Pompeii and Beyond
Paul Zanker, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
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2007
Aunt Gertrude to Sydney J. Freedberg: My Provenance
Bruce Cole, National Endowment for the Humanities

2006
Modernity is Old: The Landscape of Italy as Seen by the Painters of the Early Nineteenth Century
Anna Ottani Cavina, Università di Bologna
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2005
Illuminated Choral Manuscripts of the Italian Renaissance
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
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2004
The Third Italian Renaissance: Art of the Lombard Plain
Charles Dempsey, Johns Hopkins University
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2003
Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the Art of the Renaissance and Baroque Masters
Paul Barolsky, University of Virginia
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2002
The Turning Figure
Nicholas Penny, National Gallery of Art
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2001
Michelangelo and the Medici
Caroline Elam, The Burlington Magazine, London
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2000
The Fashioning of a Public Persona: Duchess Eleonora di Toledo’s Ceremonial Dress and Her Portraits by Bronzino
Janet Cox-Rearick, City University of New York
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1999
Art and Science in the Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
James S. Ackerman, Harvard University (emeritus)
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1998
A Carpaccio Masterpiece Rediscovered
William R. Rearick, University of Maryland (emeritus)
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1997
The Young Michelangelo
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
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