Seminars, Workshops & Panel Discussions

Graduate Student Seminar

Caricature and the Grotesque: Early Modern Prints and Politics  

May 21 & 22, 2025

at the Lewis Walpole Library and Yale University Art Gallery

Professor Peter Parshall, former Jane Neuberger Goodsell Professor of Art and Humanities at Reed College and Curator of Old Master Prints at the National Gallery of Art

with Cynthia Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Paintings, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

and Freyda Spira, Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery

Distortion takes many different forms and plays a role in all artistic traditions. In one sense or another the pictorial response to the world has always shown an inclination to turn things inside out. Our task will be to consider this phenomenon as it evolves in the graphic arts from the Renaissance into the early nineteenth century. In this admittedly broad setting we shall concentrate specifically on the use of distortion in political and social contexts, especially in printmaking where the wide and efficient distribution of texts and pictures first became possible. How does the use of caricature, satire, and the grotesque inflect the message of an image? What lies behind its preference for the artist and its appeal to the viewer? Does a potentially “popular” medium like printing inevitably lead to the embrace of the grotesque and a conscious degradation of pictorial rhetoric?

We shall approach these questions through a discussion of original works of art, primarily works available in the Yale University Art Gallery and the Lewis Walpole Library. The main areas of study will be: Renaissance prints and the transformation of the grotesque; the invention of modern caricature with particular attention to anti-Semitism; the flourishing of British caricature in the eighteenth century; William Hogarth and social satire as political argument; and last, Francisco Goya and the relation between realism and fantasy.

There will be short readings for each session held over two consecutive days. The emphasis will be on group discussion conducted as an open forum and inviting all manner of inquiry pertinent to the questions being addressed and the objects at hand. 

Apply for this seminar

This graduate student seminar is sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Image caption: Nathaniel Dance-Holland. The Antiquarian. Pen, ink and watercolour. c1800

Professor Peter Parshall has written and lectured widely on early modern art with special emphasis on the history of prints, the history and the organization of collecting, and Renaissance art theory. He co-authored with David Landau The Renaissance Print (1994), recipient of the Mitchell Prize. Among exhibitions curated are: The Unfinished Print (2001); Origins of European Printmaking (2005) with Rainer Schoch; and The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850-1900 (2008). Since formal retirement he has pursued several topics of current interest and is presently writing a book on art and politics.