Walpole, Catholicism, and the Visual Arts (Public lecture, 7th November)

Detail from The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, by Titian [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Discover how Horace Walpole brought Catholic culture back into fashion in Britain, at this next lecture in our series Walpole and His Legacies, given by Clare Haynes (University of East Anglia). This free public talk is on 7th November at 18.15, in Elvet Riverside 141. 

Walpole spent a great deal of his life engaging with Catholic culture in one way or another: collecting, and writing admiringly about, Catholic art; using Gothic ornament so extensively at Strawberry Hill and in his friendship with Roman Catholics, such as the Duchess of Norfolk. And yet, Walpole was very clearly not a crypto-Catholic. He sounded his antipathy to the church and its teachings frequently, and often stridently.

His position may therefore seem paradoxical, perhaps even perverse, but it was not. Focusing on his writings about art, this paper explores Walpole’s attitudes towards the past, and particularly the Reformation. It proposes that one of the central concerns of Walpole’s scholarship was to encourage the re-naturalization of art in post-Reformation Britain.

All members of the public are warmly welcome to this lecture series, looking at one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the eighteenth century. Booking is not required. Join the conversation online via #WalpoleLegacies, and find this event on Facebook.