Melissa Buron, associate curator for European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, will give a talk on the Pre-Raphaelites and Italian art at the University of Delaware Library at noon, Wednesday, Aug. 9.

Free and open to the public, the talk will take place in the Class of 1941 Lecture Room in Morris Library. A light lunch will be provided for attendees.

RSVPs are encouraged by Monday, Aug. 7, via email at rsvp-library@winsor.lib.udel.edu or by calling 302-831-6250. Walk-ins are welcome.

Buron will be speaking about her work on the upcoming exhibition, “Mastering the Masters: Pre-Raphaelites and Their Sources of Inspiration,” scheduled to open in San Francisco in 2018. As the 2017 recipient of the Amy P. Goldman Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies, sponsored by the University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum, Buron is spending a month in Delaware doing research at the two institutions.

Organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, “Mastering the Masters: Pre-Raphaelites and Their Sources of Inspiration” is the first major international exhibition to assemble works of art created by members of England’s 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) with the Early Italian and Early Netherlandish art pre-dating the High-Renaissance painter Raphael (1483–1520) that inspired them. The exhibition will demonstrate the PRB’s fascination with the Italian Old Masters, trace the PRB through the 19th-century “rediscovery” of Botticelli and illustrate the influence of Raphael and artists of the late Renaissance.

By presenting the varied sources that informed the Pre-Raphaelite’s aesthetic vocabulary in dialogue with their own 19th-century creations, “Mastering the Masters” will demonstrate the importance of the work that inspired the PRB and recast more broadly the definitions for the PRB’s style. It will highlight the nuanced paradoxes of the Pre-Raphaelite mission, namely, their efforts to be fundamentally modern by emulating the past, as well as their dichotomous criticism and veneration of Raphael and his artistic impact.

In 2005, Buron graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, where she earned a bachelor of arts with honors in art history. She also earned a master of arts with distinction in art history in 2007 from the University of London, Birkbeck College, where she is currently enrolled as a doctoral candidate. She joined the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in June 2008, and her contributions have supported over a dozen temporary exhibitions on subjects from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Buron’s forthcoming projects include a major monographic exhibition about James Tissot (1836–1902), scheduled for spring 2020.

About the Goldman Fellowship

The Amy P. Goldman Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies is offered jointly by the University of Delaware Library and the Delaware Art Museum. Funded by the Amy P. Goldman Foundation, the one-month fellowship, awarded annually, is intended for scholars conducting significant research in the lives and works of the Pre-Raphaelites and their friends, associates and followers. Research of a wider scope, which considers the Pre-Raphaelite movement and related topics in relation to Victorian art and literature, and cultural or social history, will also be considered. Projects that provide new information or interpretation — dealing with unrecognized figures, women writers and artists, print culture, iconography, illustration, catalogues of artists’ works or studies of specific objects — are particularly encouraged, as are those which take into account transatlantic relations between Britain and the United States.

Applicants whose research specifically utilizes holdings of the University of Delaware Library, the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, the Delaware Art Museum and the Helen Farr Sloan Library and Archives are preferred. The deadline for applications for the 2018 Fellowship is Nov. 1. For more information, contact Margaretta S. Frederick, Pre-Raphaelite Fellowship Committee, Delaware Art Museum, by phone at 302-351-8518 or by email at fellowships@delart.org.