How Europe Fell for the Natural World with Dr Belinda Scerri

This talk traces the transformation of nature in European art and interior decoration between 1650 and 1800: how religious symbolism yielded to pure aesthetic pleasure; how design crossed continents and centuries; and how the women who commissioned, collected and made these beautiful objects shaped the visual world we inhabit today. In the great houses of 17th and 18th century Europe, the most fashionable rooms didn't overlook nature; they were nature. From carved wall panels to printed Indian cotton, from the grandest royal garden in Europe to the private dressing rooms of fashionable collectors, nature was not merely a subject: it was a total environment – designed, curated and, above all, possessed.