Art History Doctoral Student Receives Grants to Conduct Research in Italy

PhD student Lindsay Doty’s doctoral research examines the patronage and production of rare Italian Renaissance images that portray the Virgin Mary as an extremely aged mother; in particular, those made by Andrea Mantegna and his circle while he served as court artist to the Gonzaga family in Mantua.  Within this framework, she is also exploring the artist-patron relationship between Mantegna and Barbara of Brandenburg, who was a formidable, yet understudied matron of the Gonzaga dynasty, and arguably the perfect patron of these unusual Marian images.

Doty received a grant from the Lamar Dodd School of Art’s Art History Department to fund a fall 2018 research trip to Northern Italy, where she observed paintings by Mantegna that include aged Madonnas, such as the Lamentation over the Dead Christ at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. Doty also visited museums in Mantua that are associated with the Gonzaga family and their collections, including the Palazzo Ducale and the Museo Francesco Gonzaga. Within the Palazzo Ducale, she studied the Camera degli Sposi, a famous frescoed room by Mantegna that contains a revealing portrait of Barbara as an aged, dignified matron surrounded by her large family and court. At the Museo Francesco Gonzaga, she viewed a famous missal commissioned by Barbara that includes several depictions of the Virgin as an old mother.  

Upon her return from Italy, Doty moved from Athens to Savannah, Georgia, where she is continuing work on her dissertation.