Alumni event | Lecture
Room functionality, interiors and the experience of architectural space: The houses and gardens of Belle van Zuylen/Isabelle de Charrière and her protagonists
- Hanneke Ronnes (UvA/RUG)
- Date
- Thursday 18 February 2021
- Time
- Serie
- Interiors for Display: The art of the eighteenth-century interior in the Dutch Republic and Europe
- Address
- Online
- Room
- Online
About this event
It will not surprise that Belle van Zuylen is most extensively studied by literary historians focusing on her novels and plays. Van Zuylen’s correspondence has equally aroused great interest, to a lesser extent her political pamphlets and musical endeavours (composing) have been studied by (political) historians and musicologists. Although her letters, fiction and other publications regularly touch on the use and experience of architectural space - both outside, i.e. gardens and parks, and inside the house, both in town and in the country side – little study has been done in this direction. Publications on the places where she lived, such as Slot Zuylen in the province of Utrecht, on the other hand are also strictly disciplinary, which means that architectural historical research into the houses of Van Zuylen have only seldomly been contextualized by information on such places in her letters and work. This paper will study the room functionality, interiors and artefacts, and the eighteenth-century use and experience of architectural (indoor and outdoor) space by studying both the architecture of and the works by Belle van Zuylen.
Registration

Interiors for Display
This lecture is part of the 'Interiors for Display' lecture series. In the Spring of 2021, academics, curators and heritage professionals are brought together for a series of lectures that will cover various aspects of the eighteenth-century interior in the Netherlands and Europe.