The Department of History of Art and Architecture invites you to The James and Susanne Wilkinson Lecture on Outstanding Scholarship in Premodern Art
Professor Christopher Nygren
"Coins, Cabinets, and Christ: On Agency in Titian's Christ with the Coin"
September 25, 2014
4:00pm in Room 202 Frick Fine Arts Building
Titian’s Christ with the Coin was painted for Alfonso d’Este in 1516. The picture is usually read as a commentary on politics and taxation. However, focusing on the picture’s function allows a new line of interpretation to emerge. The painting served as the cover-piece for Alfonso’s collection of ancient coins. By delimiting a threshold, the picture reconfigures how beholders interact with the coins it conceals and thus transforms the everyday activity of the collector into an occasion of enlightenment and personal reformation. Professor Nygren will underline how the painting signals the nexus of two regimes of virtue – one Christian, one classical – both of which turn upon of an understanding of coins as manifold objects.