Michael John Partington holds a BA (Honours) in History and an MA in History of Art
(British and Irish) from the University of Nottingham, a Diploma in History of Art
(Renaissance and Baroque) from the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Arts and
Culture (Art, Architecture, and Interior before 1800) from Leiden University. His research
interests lie in British and Irish and early modern art and architecture. He has worked as a
tour guide at Speyer, Canterbury and Florence cathedrals, as a research assistant for English
Heritage, as a researcher and writer for the classic cultural guide book series Blue Guides,
and has taught as an instructor in history and history of art at the Council on International
Educational Exchange (CIEE) based at the University of Ferrara, Italy. He works as a
volunteer print cataloguer on the portrait print collection of the naturalist, collector and
entomologist William Frederick Hope (1797–1862) housed at the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford.
You can almost smell the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle emanating from the garden alcove in this full-length portrait by Peter Paul Rubens of Rubens and his new wife, Isabella Brant
In picturing Sarah Siddons as the Muse of Tragedy, Sir Joshua Reynolds helped make an argument for women’s equal standing with that of men within the acting profession.