Our unique collaboration with the National Portrait" height="232" width="185" itemprop="contentUrl">Our unique collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust has attracted students to our course from Japan, Chile, Cyprus, Australia and the United States, as well as some of the most talented students from across the UK.
Dr Tatiana String
A new National Portrait Gallery display of unseen paintings of 16th- and 17th-century mystery figures opens at the National Trust?s Montacute House tomorrow. The exhibition draws on new research undertaken by History of Art MA students at the University of Bristol and provides the first opportunity to see these portraits, which have either been recently restored or not exhibited for over half a century. The students, working with Dr Tatiana String and supervised by the Gallery?s 16th Century Curator Dr Tarnya Cooper, re-examined the portraits which all feature men and women whose identities are no longer known. They appear to depict courtiers, musicians, writers, soldiers and others who hoped to preserve their memory by sitting for a portrait. The paintings were purchased by the National Portrait Gallery between 1858 and 1971. When the identity of the sitters was disproved or disputed, the paintings were often removed from display or lent to other collections. Recent conservation work and new research has meant that some portraits can now be re-identified.
