Making Dwelling in Elizabethan England

This talk uses a set of Elizabethan domestic wall paintings to think about the status of habitation -- living, lodging, dwelling -- from the point of view of those whose access to dwelling was contested. Probably painted by an itinerant artist, the paintings in Pittleworth Manor show the story of Dives and Lazarus, emphasizing the sequence of dwellings from earthly to heavenly mansion and borrowing elements from contemporary country houses to create meaning in buildings. Like other English images of this period, they are particularly interested in Lazarus's status as a homeless beggar in his earthly life. Pittleworth Manor was owned by a prominent Hampshire recusant, and the second part of the talk discusses how he enabled his co-religionists to make prisons into dwelling-places.

Elizabeth Honig teaches the history of art at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of several books on Flemish painting, most recently Jan Brueghel and the Senses of Scale (Penn State 2016).