A Long-Lost Italian Portrait Miniature from Horace Walpole’s Miniature Cabinet, with Adriana Concin from the V&A
A Long-Lost Italian Portrait Miniature from Horace Walpole’s Miniature Cabinet
Talk from Adriana Concin, Assistant Curator of Paintings and Drawings at the V&A
Wednesday 12 February, Doors open 6.45pm and a glass of fizz, sit down for talk 7pm-8pm.
Horace Walpole (1717–1797), 4th Earl of Orford and a key figure in 18th-century English culture, coined the term serendipity—inspired by The Three Princes of Serendip, a 13th-century Indo-Persian tale—to describe accidental yet fortunate discoveries. He first used the term in a 1754 letter to his friend Sir Horace Mann (1706–1786), British Envoy to Florence, recounting how the arrival of a portrait of the Medici Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello (1548–1587) coincided with his own chance discovery of her coat of arms.
Walpole owned three portraits of Bianca Cappello, and in 2024, one of these—a long-lost highlight of his collection, missing since 1842—has resurfaced serendipitously. This presentation traces the miniature's journey: from Walpole's acquisition, its display in the celebrated miniature cabinet at Strawberry Hill, his Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London, to its rediscovery in the present day. It further explores Walpole’s enduring fascination with Cappello and investigates the implications of the portrait’s rediscovered provenance. Particular attention is given to the sitter’s identity and the work's attribution, initially ascribed by Walpole to Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572) but now identified as the work of Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614).
Adriana Concin is Assistant Curator of Paintings and Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She completed her doctoral studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2021 with a dissertation focused on the 1565 wedding of Francesco I de’ Medici and the Habsburg Archduchess Johanna of Austria and its wider cultural implications. She has been the recipient of several fellowships, including the Eva Schler fellowship at the Medici Archive Project in Florence and the Studia Rudolphina fellowship in Prague at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Adriana has also held the Ayesha Bulchandani graduate internship at the Frick Collection in New York. She has written catalogue essays for exhibitions and has published her research in several leading academic journals including the Burlington Magazine. Most recently, she contributed to a forthcoming exhibition on Moghul Miniatures at the V&A.
Tickets £15
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A Long-Lost Italian Portrait Miniature from Horace Walpole’s Miniature Cabinet
Talk from Adriana Concin, Assistant Curator of Paintings and Drawings at the V&A
Wednesday 12 February, Doors open 6.45pm and a glass of fizz, sit down for talk 7pm-8pm.
Horace Walpole (1717–1797), 4th Earl of Orford and a key figure in 18th-century English culture, coined the term serendipity—inspired by The Three Princes of Serendip, a 13th-century Indo-Persian tale—to describe accidental yet fortunate discoveries. He first used the term in a 1754 letter to his friend Sir Horace Mann (1706–1786), British Envoy to Florence, recounting how the arrival of a portrait of the Medici Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello (1548–1587) coincided with his own chance discovery of her coat of arms.
Walpole owned three portraits of Bianca Cappello, and in 2024, one of these—a long-lost highlight of his collection, missing since 1842—has resurfaced serendipitously. This presentation traces the miniature's journey: from Walpole's acquisition, its display in the celebrated miniature cabinet at Strawberry Hill, his Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London, to its rediscovery in the present day. It further explores Walpole’s enduring fascination with Cappello and investigates the implications of the portrait’s rediscovered provenance. Particular attention is given to the sitter’s identity and the work's attribution, initially ascribed by Walpole to Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572) but now identified as the work of Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614).
Adriana Concin is Assistant Curator of Paintings and Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She completed her doctoral studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2021 with a dissertation focused on the 1565 wedding of Francesco I de’ Medici and the Habsburg Archduchess Johanna of Austria and its wider cultural implications. She has been the recipient of several fellowships, including the Eva Schler fellowship at the Medici Archive Project in Florence and the Studia Rudolphina fellowship in Prague at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Adriana has also held the Ayesha Bulchandani graduate internship at the Frick Collection in New York. She has written catalogue essays for exhibitions and has published her research in several leading academic journals including the Burlington Magazine. Most recently, she contributed to a forthcoming exhibition on Moghul Miniatures at the V&A.
Tickets £15
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