The Royal Studies Podcast - Exhibition Feature: Six Lives (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Exhibition Feature: Six Lives (National Portrait Gallery, London)

08/23/24 • 21 min

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Charlotte Boland, the curator of the Six Lives exhibition currently running at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In this interview we discuss the inspiration behind the exhibition, new approaches to the history of the Six Lives and the unusual and diverse selection of visual and material culture in the exhibition.
The exhibition is running until 8 September 2024--click here for more information or to book tickets.
If you are not in the UK or are listening to this episode after the exhibition has finished you can purchase the exhibition catalogue, which includes all of the material exhibited and features a range of articles from academics in the field on the Six Lives.
Guest Bio: Dr Charlotte Bolland is a Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery—she joined in 2011 as Project Curator for the Making Art in Tudor Britain project. Her role combines responsibility for the acquisition, research and interpretation of portraits dating from the sixteenth century, with co-ordination of research activity within the curatorial department. She has co-curated a number of exhibitions at the NPG, including The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered (2014) and The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt (2017).

Charlotte studied for her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, in collaboration with The Royal Collection as part of an AHRC funded CDA—her doctoral thesis was entitled Italian Material Culture at the Tudor Court. It explored the many items that were owned by the Tudor monarchs that had been brought to England by Italian individuals, either through trade or as gifts.

Selected Publications:

C. Bolland and T. Cooper, The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt (National Portrait Gallery, 2017)

C. Bolland and T. Cooper, The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered (National Portrait Gallery, 2014)

Selected Publications:

C. Bolland and T. Cooper, The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt (National Portrait Gallery, 2017)

C. Bolland and T. Cooper, The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered (National Portrait Gallery, 2014)

Previous Episode

Interview with Alexandra Forsyth on Medieval French Dauphines

CONTENT WARNING: Please be aware that there are brief discussions of infant and child mortality in this episode.
In this episode Susannah Lyon-Whaley interviews Alexandra Forsyth on her fascinating research on the dauphines of late medieval France.
Guest Bio: Alexandra is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Auckland. Her doctoral thesis examines the fertility, maternity, and childlessness of the ten Valois dauphines from 1350-1559. She is particularly interested in how the dauphines may have sought to enhance their fertility through the use of magical-medicinal and religious remedies. Alexandra holds a Master of Arts and BA (Hons) in History, both with First Class Honours.

Alexandra is currently working as an Editorial Advisor for the Powers 1100-1550 section of Routledge Resources Online: Medieval Studies and has two forthcoming encyclopaedic entries on this platform, namely, Margaret of Scotland (1424-1445); Salic Law and French Royal Succession.

Alexandra’s recommended readings:

Translated primary source: The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine. Translated and edited by Monica H. Green. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Book on the Conditions of Women was discussed.

Susan Broomhall. The Identities of Catherine de' Medici. Leiden: Brill, 2021.

Jennifer Evans. Aphrodisiacs, Fertility, and Medicine in Early Modern England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014.

Kristen L. Geaman. Anne of Bohemia. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2022.

Kristen L. Geaman, "Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive, Social History of Medicine." Social History of Medicine 29, 2 (2016): 224-244.

Daphna Oren-Magidor. Infertility in Early Modern England. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Regina Toepfer. Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Premodern Views on Childlessness. Translated by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Next Episode

Exhibition Feature: Untold Lives

In this episode, host Ellie Woodacre interviews Dr Mishka Sinha, co-curator of the Untold Lives: A Palace at Work exhibition at Historic Royal Palaces (running until 27 October 2024). In the interview we discuss how the development of the exhibition. the ways it which it reveals the hidden histories of palace courtiers and servants and the unexpected modern twist which brings the past and present inhabitants of the palace together.
Episode Notes:

Polly Putnam is co-curator of the exhibition
Clarification--during the discussion of fires at Kensington Palace it should be noted that the palace nearly burnt down three times

Guest Bio: Mishka is a cultural and intellectual historian of global and imperial history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Her interdisciplinary research interests include the histories of universities, knowledge, texts, oriental languages, cultural and material heritage, women’s history, and underrepresented people and cultures in Europe, the United States and Asia. Mishka received her B.A. degree from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, an M.Phil from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She has taught at several UK and continental European universities and received several research grants and fellowships including a British Academy PDF at Cambridge, a Max Weber Fellowship in Florence, and others at Edinburgh, Oxford and Berlin. Mishka has worked with museums and heritage in India, and collaborated as an actor and performer with a contemporary Indian artist on multiple projects since 2003.

Blog Posts written by Dr Sinha
- HRP: The tale of Abdullah and 'the Shah Goest'
- HRP: Searching for the young Black man in the portrait of William III, with Camilla de Koning
  - Part I
  - Part II
- St. John's College, Oxford