Irene Brooke received her BA in Classics from Brown University, and her MA and PhD from the Courtauld. Her PhD, completed in 2011, examined the Venetian cardinal, Pietro Bembo’s involvement with the visual arts. Her research interests are focused primarily on the intersections between artistic and intellectual culture in early sixteenth-century Venice. She has published articles on Cardinal Pietro Bembo’s patronage and collecting strategies, and on different aspects of the career of the humanistically educated engraver, Giulio Campagnola. She has also recently co-edited a volume on the portrait cultures of Early Modern cardinals.
Besides teaching on the arts of Renaissance Venice at the Courtauld, she is also Head of Research at the Colnaghi Foundation and Editor of the Colnaghi Studies Journal.
Teaching
MA Italian Renaissance – ‘Versions of Antiquity in Renaissance Venice, ca. 1470-1550’
Research Interests:
- Collecting in Venice
- Early sixteenth-century Print Culture
- Portraiture
- Landscape
- Reception of Antiquity
- Cultural Exchange between the Italy and Northern European
Recent Conference Papers
- Renaissance Society of America, New Orleans, Portraying the Prince of the Church, joint panel organiser and speaker, Cardinals in Action: Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and His Friends after Trent, March 2018
- Università degli Studi di Padova, Il Paesaggio veneto nel Rinascimento europeo, invited speaker, The Evolution of Landscape in Giulio Campagnola’s Work and the Influence from the North, October 2017
- Courtauld Institute and the Royal Academy of Arts, In Age of Giorgione, joint organiser and speaker, Tratta da Zorzi: Rethinking Giulio Campagnola’s Artistic Evolution and his Place in Venetian Print Culture, May 2016
- Courtauld Institute, Research Forum, New Evidence for the Date of Giulio Campagnola’s Death and Reflections on Domenico Campagnola’s Early Career, February 2014
- Courtauld Institute, Conference on Renaissance Portraiture, From Poet to Cardinal: Pietro Bembo’s Iconography Reconsidered, April 2012
Publications
Books
- Co-editor with Piers Baker-Bates, Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal, Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2021
Articles
- ‘Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and His Friends after Trent’, in Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal, eds. Brooke and Baker-Bates, Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming 2021
- ‘The Evolution of Landscape in Giulio Campagnola’s Work and the Influence from the North’, in Il Paesaggio Veneto nel Rinascimento Europeo, eds. A. Caracausi, M. Grosso, and V. Romani, Officina Libraria, 2020
- ‘Tratta da Zorzi: Giulio Campagnola’s Copies after other Artists and his Use of Models’, in Not Only Copies: Memory, Authority and Creativity in the Transmission of Models, ed. M. Bellavitis, Brill, 2018
- ‘Giulio Campagnola, Landscape and Venetian Illumination’, Colnaghi Studies Journal 3 (2018)
- ‘Il molto cortese e gentile M. Giulio Campagnola’ and his ‘gargion’: New evidence for the Date of Giulio’s Death and Reflections on Domenico’s Early Career’, in Pietro Bembo: da Venezia a Roma, ed. V. Romani, The Univerisity of Padua Press, forthcoming
- ‘Pietro Bembo, the Goldsmith Antonio da San Marino, and designs by Raphael’, The Burlington Magazine 153 (2011)
- ‘Per farne poi di esse donationi […] per lasciar perpetua memoria a i posteri de i nomi di coloro: Gifts of Ancient Coins to Pietro Bembo’, in ‘Una insalata di più erbe’: A Festschrift for Patricia Rubin, The Courtauld Instiute, 2011
Reviews
- Titian’s Aretino: A Contextual Study of all the Portraits, by R. Waddington, 2018, book review, The Burlington Magazine 161 (2019)
- Aldo Manuzio, Venice, 2016, exhibition review in Renaissance Studies 32 (2017)
- Palma Vecchio, Bergamo, 2015, exhibition review in Renaissance Studies 31 (2016)
- Veronese, London, Verona, and Vicenza, 2014, exhibition review in Renaissance Studies 30 (2016)
- Pietro Bembo e le arti, book review, The Burlington Magazine 157 (2015)
- Pietro Bembo, Padua, 2013, exhibition review, The Burlington Magazine 155 (2013)