Elisabeth Narkin
National Gallery of Art, Department of Image Collections, Department Member
- Elisabeth Narkin is an art historian who specializes in early modern architecture, with a focus on France and digital... moreElisabeth Narkin is an art historian who specializes in early modern architecture, with a focus on France and digital methodologies. She is the architecture specialist at the National Gallery of Art Library.
Elisabeth's book project, “Building Dynasty: Architecture and the French Royal Family before Versailles," uses digital cartography and social history methods to analyze how the monarchy deployed architectural, geographical, and social spaces to advance a perception of the monarchy as natural, enduring, and benevolent in a period of political uncertainty.
The project has been supported by an A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Rice University, the Graham Foundation, and the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles. Elisabeth has taught courses on the history of art and architecture and digital humanities at Duke and Rice Universities as well as at NYU's DC Center.edit
Around 1604, Henri IV commissioned a cycle of mural maps depicting royal residences in Fontainebleau's newly constructed Galerie des Cerfs. The gallery was part of Henri IV's response to the dynastic disruption and civil war that had... more
Around 1604, Henri IV commissioned a cycle of mural maps depicting royal residences in Fontainebleau's newly constructed Galerie des Cerfs. The gallery was part of Henri IV's response to the dynastic disruption and civil war that had precipitated his ascendance and was designed to signal his authority over France as a unified realm. This article examines the Galerie des Cerfs in the context of contemporary cartography and architecture as an expression of continuity at a moment when the royal family's retreat to the Paris region threatened the political efficacy of the architectural network that had previously sustained the monarchy.
Research Interests:
The splendor of princely residences never ceases to intrigue contemporary visitors to Europe’s capital cities. This enduring symbolic value had been a key motivation for their construction, and even demolished buildings like London’s... more
The splendor of princely residences never ceases to intrigue contemporary visitors to Europe’s capital cities. This enduring symbolic value had been a key motivation for their construction, and even demolished buildings like London’s Whitehall or Madrid’s Alcázar continue to influence urban space. Throughout the sixteenth century the court’s itinerancy altered urban residences’ form and function. This was particularly true of the Louvre, whose residential role was overshadowed by the Loire Valley châteaux and, later, Versailles. Through comparisons to the urban palaces of England and the Holy Roman Empire—France’s primary dynastic rivals—this essay investigates how tradition, the choice of site, the experience of architecture, and magnificence assured the Louvre’s symbolic power even as it was only sporadically inhabited.
Research Interests:
Cet ouvrage est publié à l’occasion de l’exposition « Enfants de la Renaissance » organisée du 18 mai au 1er septembre 2019 au Château royal de Blois.
Research Interests:
Please apply here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2022/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html Contemporary discussions of the impact of globalization and digital processes on the practice of architecture often overlook the fact that the... more
Please apply here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2022/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html
Contemporary discussions of the impact of globalization and digital processes on the practice of architecture often overlook the fact that the transmission and adaptation of architectural concepts has a long history. Since the pre-modern age, the movement of people, materials, techniques, and ideas has informed architectural theory and practice. Architectural drawings, treatises, painted cityscapes, maps, travelogs, and other records suggest that the human and informational networks that undergirded this interchange were multi-direction and, ever-increasingly, geographically vast and that the implications for architecture were profound.
The mingling of indigenous knowledge and local materials in the colonial Americas is well-known, as is the diffusion and adaptation of Italian Renaissance forms across Europe. But recent scholarship and collaborative digital projects have begun to further unravel the complex modalities of pre-modern travel and its influence on architectural practices. This panel interrogates the role travel played in the circulation of people, architectural knowledge, materials, and techniques across the globe and examines the influences of travel and cultural exchange in the shaping of pre-modern spaces. This panel seeks papers focused on representations of the built environment, historical itinerancies, travel narratives, networks of architectural knowledge and publication, and the applications of geospatial technologies for architectural history. Questions to be explored include how styles and forms acted as agents of cultural identity, how architectural knowledge was transmitted across space and time, and what travelogs and related documentation might reveal about the pre-modern understanding of architecture that might otherwise be obscured.
Contemporary discussions of the impact of globalization and digital processes on the practice of architecture often overlook the fact that the transmission and adaptation of architectural concepts has a long history. Since the pre-modern age, the movement of people, materials, techniques, and ideas has informed architectural theory and practice. Architectural drawings, treatises, painted cityscapes, maps, travelogs, and other records suggest that the human and informational networks that undergirded this interchange were multi-direction and, ever-increasingly, geographically vast and that the implications for architecture were profound.
The mingling of indigenous knowledge and local materials in the colonial Americas is well-known, as is the diffusion and adaptation of Italian Renaissance forms across Europe. But recent scholarship and collaborative digital projects have begun to further unravel the complex modalities of pre-modern travel and its influence on architectural practices. This panel interrogates the role travel played in the circulation of people, architectural knowledge, materials, and techniques across the globe and examines the influences of travel and cultural exchange in the shaping of pre-modern spaces. This panel seeks papers focused on representations of the built environment, historical itinerancies, travel narratives, networks of architectural knowledge and publication, and the applications of geospatial technologies for architectural history. Questions to be explored include how styles and forms acted as agents of cultural identity, how architectural knowledge was transmitted across space and time, and what travelogs and related documentation might reveal about the pre-modern understanding of architecture that might otherwise be obscured.
Research Interests:
The O'Brien Medieval and Early Modern Studies Faculty Lecture Series