Runciman Lecture at King’s College
“Philhellenic Images as Pictorial and Political Statements» is the title of the 17th Runciman Lecture next Tuesday at King’s College, London. Fani-Maria Tsigakou will argue that such images shed light not only on 19th-century artistic trends but also on ideological concepts. Tsigakou is the curator of the Department of Paintings, Prints and Drawings at the original Benaki Museum in Athens. She did her doctoral dissertation for London University on Edward Lear, more than 1,000 of whose drawings are in the collection of the Gennadius Library in Athens. The British Embassy in Athens and the British School of Archaeology also have original drawings by Lear. Lear’s Greek works are a «complete record of the Greek landscape in the mid-19th century,» Tsigakou notes in her book «Athens through the Eyes of Foreign Artists-Travelers, 16th-19th Centuries,» which came out recently in a bilingual Greek-English edition from Oistros Technis publishers. During her postgraduate studies, Tsigakou met Sir Steven Runciman, who wrote the introduction to her book «The Rediscovery of Greece,» published by Thames and Hudson in 1981, which has been translated into Greek, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
