Murray Seminar: ‘African coastlines, the Manueline Style and Changing Perceptions of Nature’ with Scott Nethersole, Birkbeck, 10 June 2025, 5-6.30pm (BST)

10 June 2025, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, Keynes Library and Online, 17:00 — 18:30

Please join Birkbeck for the final Murray Seminar of this academic year with Scott Nethersole, ‘mai non vidi la più bella costa de quel che me parse questa: African coastlines, the Manueline style and changing perceptions of nature’.

Portuguese and Italian explorers, who from the mid-fifteenth century had been edging their way down west Africa and eventually around the Cape of Good Hope, frequently found beauty in the coastline that they surveyed from their boats. In their journals and rutters, they often comment on the ‘bellezza’ of the landscape, especially once they had passed the Sahara and Sahel. Such perceptions are surprising. This open-ended paper will explore what art historical consequences there might be to finding beauty in African coastlines in the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. It will locate these comments about beauty in changing perceptions of nature in Europe, especially evident in the development of the Manueline architectural style in Portugal and new approaches to the depiction of landscape.

Scott Nethersole is Hoogleraar Kunstgeschiedenis, 500-1500 at Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen.

Book your tickets and find out more on Birkbeck’s website.