Faculty Colloquium: Barbara Radziwiłł and Princess Tarakanova at the 1867 Exposition Universelle: Meanings Lost and Found in Cross-National Perceptions
Wednesday, October 15, 2025 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1P24 S8
At the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, a competition for public sympathy unfolded between two history paintings – The Death of Barbara Radziwiłł by the Polish artist Józef Simmler and The Death of Princess Tarakanova by the Russian artist Konstantin Flavitsky. The paper examines how these works conveyed the collective memory and political concerns of the Polish and Russian nations, and how their reception evolved across various national contexts.
Part of the Faculty Colloquium series. Open to the BCB community.
Maria Chernysheva primarily explores 19th-century visual culture, with a particular focus on national and pan-European dimensions of historical imagination in the arts and their connections to historical studies, historical fiction, and collections of historical artifacts. Her research also addresses the “feminization of history” in 19th-century culture, visual projects of Russian Orientalism in relation to Russian colonialism in Central Asia, and the concept of mimesis in European artistic theory. She is a participant in the Smolny Beyond Borders initiative.
Email: [email protected]