Carter Lyon
Research Student
History of Art, University of Glasgow
Current Projects
Carter’s research concerns the relationship between art theory and artistic practice in the Spanish Golden Age as evidenced in the works of Vicente Carducho (c. 1576-1638). At the core of her project are Carducho’s Self Portrait (c. 1633-38, Glasgow Museums) and his treatise Diálogos de la Pintura (1633). Adopting a technical art history methodology, she conducted a technical study of Self Portrait in 2019 that will be interpreted in light of Carducho’s presentation of painting as a liberal art and his proposals for its practice. Consideration of Carducho’s professional activities and contemporary Spanish paintings and treatises also inform her analysis.
The collection of Sir William Stirling Maxwell (1818-1878) serves as the contextual framework introducing Carducho’s portrait and treatise in her study. In the nineteenth century Stirling played a pioneering role in the modern historiography of Spanish art and united Self Portrait and copies of Diálogos in his collection, which is presently located in Glasgow’s Pollok House. Carter seeks to draw parallels between Carducho as a scholar-artist and Stirling as a scholar-collector by examining how theory impacted each man’s respective practice.
Biography
Carter holds a BA International Honours degree in History from the University of St Andrews and the College of William & Mary and an MLitt degree in Technical Art History from the University of Glasgow. She is now pursuing a PhD with Glasgow’s Technical Art History Group. Her project concerns works of art and literature in the Stirling Maxwell Collection and will entail analyses of seventeenth- and nineteenth- century texts and a technical examination of Vicente Carducho’s Self Portrait (c. 1633-1638).
Useful Links
For more details, please check out Carter’s university homepage.