Bianca Capello: A Medici Legend in Walpole's Imagination

This lecture examines the cultural afterlife of Bianca Capello (1548-1587), the Venetian noblewoman whose ascent from scandalous elopement to Grand Duchess of Tuscany has fascinated collectors and scholars across centuries. The presentation will analyse how Horace Walpole's intellectual engagement with Capello transcended mere biographical interest, influencing both his literary production and collecting practices.

The research explores the documented connection between Capello's narrative and Walpole's gothic novel "The Castle of Otranto," while also investigating the understudied relationship between Walpole's pursuit of Capello's portraits and his coinage of the term "serendipity." Through critical analysis of Walpole's correspondence with Sir Horace Mann in Florence, the lecture will interrogate how this controversial Medici duchess became not merely a subject of antiquarian interest but a significant figure within 18th-century intellectual networks.

The presentation will introduce newly documented artworks from Walpole's collection that have been recently rediscovered, contextualising these findings within broader patterns of Renaissance reception history. Additionally, the lecture will trace the evolution of Capello's representation through subsequent cultural arbiters including William Beckford and Alexandre Dumas, examining how her narrative was transformed to accommodate changing conceptions of Renaissance Italy in the Victorian imagination.

This interdisciplinary investigation positions Capello at the intersection of Renaissance historiography, 18th-century collecting practices, and the development of gothic literary aesthetics, offering new perspectives on how historical female figures were appropriated and reimagined within elite intellectual circles. 

Dr. Silvia Davoli is an art historian specialising in eighteenth and nineteenth-century collecting practices and Anglo-Italian cultural exchanges. She currently serves as the Artistic Director of Strawberry Hill House, where she has led groundbreaking research on Horace Walpole's collection, resulting in numerous rediscoveries of his dispersed treasures. Her research interests span the cultural networks connecting Britain and the World, with particular focus on collecting, taste and connoisseurship. She has published extensively on these topics in both academic journals and exhibition catalogs. Dr. Davoli is also a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, where she is part of the "Jewish Country Houses" project.

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