Susan Russell

My undergraduate years were spent at La Trobe University, where I went on to write my MA (1990) on the early work of Pietro da Cortona (1597-1669). I wrote my PhD (1999) at the University of Melbourne on the fresco friezes of Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona, during which I attributed a room of frescoes to the Dutch landscape artist, Herman van Swanevelt (c. 1603-1655) on whom I have published in 'The Burlington Magazine' (1997, 2001), 'The Melbourne Art Journal' (2003) and in the conference papers 'Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) e il suo tempo' (2010). With the assistance of a British Academy Small Grant for 2010-12 I researched a book on his Roman years, c. 1629-1641, material from which was delivered in 2017 at the University of California's Rome campus as part of the Early Modern Rome 3 conference.
During the 1990s while researching my PhD I taught sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Art History at Monash, La Trobe and Melbourne universities and received various awards including an Australian Foundation for Studies in Italy Award (1995), a Grant in Aid of Research (1994) and a Rome Award (1997), both from The British School at Rome.
From 2001-2003 I held a post-doctoral fellowship at La Trobe University for a project on the reception in seventeenth-century Rome of the artist, architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio (c. 1513-1583), on which an article appeared in 'The Papers of the British School at Rome' in 2007.
From 2003-2011 I was Assistant Director at The British School at Rome, responsible for the programme of Art History lectures, conferences and events, one of the highlights of which was co-organizing, with David Marshall and Karin Wolfe, the conference '"Roma Britannica": Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome', the co-edited papers of which appeared in 2011.
I have  published a number of articles, conference papers and essays in collected volumes on Pamphilj art and patronage, including on the Villa Pamphilj and antiquarianism in the 2014 issue of 'The Papers of the British School at Rome' and in 'Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice' edited by Alice Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker (Ashgate, 2012) which was presented at The British School at Rome.
I returned to live in Melbourne in 2012 and as well as completing work on my Swanevelt manuscript, began a new project on the eighteenth-century dealer and connoisseur, Dr Robert Bragge, with the support of a Paul Mellon Centre Research Grant for 2013-14. I gave a paper on this subject at the 2013 Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference, in 2014 at the University of Reading, and in 2016 at the conference 'Human Kind.Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits 1700-1914', University of Melbourne & National Gallery of Victoria. In the same year an article, 'Dr Robert Bragge (1700-1777), Gentleman Dealer' appeared in the 'British Art Journal'.
Other activities include contributing to the National Gallery of Victoria's public arts programme and to the catalogue of 'Italian Masterpieces from Spain's Royal Court, Museo del Prado', the National Gallery of Victoria's Winter Masterpiece Exhibition, May-August, 2014. In 2016 a chapter on the fresco friezes of Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona appeared in a volume on the palace published by the Brazilian Embassy in Rome/Umberto Allemandi, Milan.
My book on Swanevelt's Roman years was published by The Royal Netherlands Institute, Rome/Edizioni Quasar in 2019 and an essay on the storm landscapes of Herman van Swanevelt and Gaspard Dughet appeared in 'Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy: Art and the Verdant Earth', edited by April Oettinger, Karen Goodchild and Leopoldine Prosperetti, (Amsterdam University Press, 2019). I recently contributed catalogue entries on Jacques Callot, Annibale Carracci & Giovanni Francesco Romanelli to 'Emerging from Darkness: Faith, Emotion and The Body in The Baroque', an exhibition at Hamilton Gallery, Victoria, curated by L. Bevan, D.R. Marshall, and L. Benson - Dec 23 - 14 Apr 24 2023-24. An article on Herman van Swanevelt and his French patron, Tallemant des Reaux appeared in 'Oud Holland' in June, 2024.