Art Transported
how did it get here from where it was made?
Who owned it before?
7 July 2021
Zoom lecture at 5 pm


We love standing in a museum gazing at a painting by Titian or Caravaggio, but we rarely question where it was before it came to be in that museum, or who in earlier times stood in front of it and gazed, nor by what practical means it got there. When Napoleon invaded Europe, he had the best of Europe’s works of art sent back to Paris for his new Musée Napoleon. But HOW did they get four life -size bronze horses of San Marco down from their place on the basilica in Venice, over the Alps and all the way to Paris? What practicalities did shipping a painting over 15 feet high, or a statue such as Michelangelo’s David, involve? This lecture will delve into the astonishing history of the movement of art works

Lecturer: Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe
MA in History of Art from Edinburgh, PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. With 40 years’ experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and as a freelance lecturer for a number of societies in London, Italy and America. Having also trained as a paintings conservator, she brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lectures and study sessions