Lecture: “Italian Renaissance Frescoes as Casualties of World War Two”
Cathleen Hoeniger (Queen’s University)
Today, military conflicts draw our attention to the fragility of cultural heritage. This paper will look back to consider the impact of WWII on Italian Renaissance art, focusing on the vulnerability of wall-paintings, which were damaged when buildings were struck. It will discuss not only remarkable rescues from the ruins, but also how restoration ethics dictated that scars of war remain visible, thereby affecting the aesthetics of paintings for years to come.
Professor Cathleen Hoeniger received her BA and MA from the University of Toronto and her PhD from Princeton. She is Professor of Art History at Queen’s University where she works on Italian Renaissance painting, the history of art conservation and heritage preservation. She has published two books with Cambridge UP, most recently, The Afterlife of Raphael’s Paintings (2011).
The Fifty-Fourth Season of the
TORONTO RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION COLLOQUIUM
Founded by Natalie Zemon Davis and James K. McConica in 1964