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A lecture with Marianne Berardi, PhD in connection with the exhibition, Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art (on view through July 27 2025)
Although there were many gifted Dutch and Flemish painters of fruit and flowers during the 17th and early 18th centuries, none grew up in the wildly unusual household and circumstance that Rachel Ruysch did. Not only were her highly cultured parents able to give her the best practical training as an artist, but her scientist-father, a man of staggering drive and energy, built a vast personal natural history museum on the first floor of the family home. His massive trove of botanical and insect specimens, reptiles and amphibians, and notably human mummies—anatomical anomalies, fetuses, stillborn babies, and skeletons preserved by Dr. Ruysch himself—was open to the public and became a major tourist attraction in Amsterdam. But more importantly, the Museum Ruyschiana became a key sourcebook for imagery in Rachel’s paintings. This presentation will provide a look into this world that gave rise to a talent of her enormity—all within a realm of painting that was traditionally more accessible to women artists. Additionally, we will explore how Ruysch was able to take the successful formulas and conventions of previous talents and reshape them into compositions of tremendous inventiveness and originality owing to her vast knowledge of plants and the animal kingdom. Ruysch’s productivity and career path will be examined in relation to that of other women artists of her period, exploring what sorts of specific advantages she had and was able to use for nearly unprecedented professional advancement.
Dr. Marianne Berardi is a scholar of Dutch and Flemish flower painting of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the recognized specialist on the life and work of Rachel Ruysch one of Holland’s premier flower painters and its most successful woman artist. Her doctoral dissertation, Science into Art: The early still-life paintings of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), is the groundbreaking study on the artist. She is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles, essays, dealer catalogues, and auction catalogue notes on Rachel Ruysch. Her forthcoming monograph on the artist will be published by Lund Humphries, London. The essay she contributed to the current exhibition catalogue, Nature into Art, describes the characteristics of Ruysch’s art which distinguish it from paintings by other talented practitioners of her time.
Marianne Berardi holds a PhD in art history from the University of Pittsburgh, and was the recipient of the Samuel Kress, Andrew Mellon, American Association of University Women and Theodore Rousseau Fellowships in art history. Throughout her career, she has paid particular attention to the contributions of women artists who were traditionally left out of the art historical canon. Her professional experience includes teaching, museum work, and affiliation with the commercial art world. She taught at the University of Pittsburgh, the Kansas City Art Institute, John Carroll University, and Case Western Reserve University. She is a former director of the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, Missouri and the Cleveland Artists Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. She currently serves as Director of European Art at Heritage Auctions, Dallas, Texas.
Event information:
https://toledomuseum.org/events/events-info
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