Boston Athenæum

March 21, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum. This year’s John Hubbard Sturgis Eaton Endowed Lecture will present the concept of reflectivity as it recurs in Italian painting from the 15th through the 18th centuries. Focusing less on the literal presence of the mirror in art—a topic widely explored—this talk will take on the more mysterious and intriguing connotations of the repetition of figure and pose in painted narratives from Piero della Francesca to Pietro Longhi. Artists considered will also include Botticelli and Caravaggio, each an insightful and original experimenter and exploiter of the human figure as mirror, as well as the potential of figural reflectivity.