Fine Art Society Lectures & Martin Randall Travel

Upcoming Lectures

  • The Arts Society Surrey Hills: Tuesday 9th of December, join Leslie on his lecture; The Journey of the Magi: Origins, Myth and Reality – the True Story of the Three Kings
    This lecture will attempt to unravel the myth and the iconography behind the proliferation of the Christian story of the adoration of the magi. To aid my examination of this story, and to trace the changes in iconography and depictions of the kings themselves, I shall be illustrating it with many references to the story as depicted in examples from Western European art spanning the Byzantine period (330 – 1453) through to and including the Renaissance period (ending approximately 1590’s). The lecture will begin by looking at the etymology behind the term ‘magi:’ how it has come down to us and what this now means in contemporary society.
  • The Arts Society Cavendish: Tuesday 27th of December, join Leslie on his lecture; Joseph Wright of Derby and the Men and Art of the Lunar Society.

    In an age of discovery where science and industry went hand-in-hand, 18th century England saw not only the flowering of the Industrial Revolution, but also that of the self-made man; who came not from money but from industry. It was a time of gentlemen’s clubs, in their true original meaning rather that the corruption of this term we unfortunately experience today, and one of these clubs would become synonymous with investigation and discovery characterised by the individuals that were associated with it. The industrialists amongst these men would be, in their time, referred to as philosophers practising what we would now call joined-up thinking, eventually we would invent a new name for them – scientists however, they would call themselves the Lunar Society.

  • John Hall Venice: Monday 23rd of February until Friday 27th of February 2026, join Leslie in Venice, where he will be delivering the following lectures:
    • Titian and the Venetian Masters
    • Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne and the Nude
    • Tintoretto, Veronese and the Venetian Late Renaissance 
    • Slavery in Venice
    • The Fabric of Venice: Vedute painting and the Rococo Master
  • Martin Randall Travel: Tuesday 28th of September 2026, until Tuesday 5th of October 2026 you can join Leslie on his lecture, The Heart of Italy – Umbria’s finest art and architecture.
    Also known as the ‘green heart of Italy’, Umbria contains a vast and varied array of what visitors most love about central Italy: ancient streetscapes crammed onto hilltops, exquisitely undulating countryside of olive, cypress and vine, and an abundance of wonderful art.

    Rarely can the spirit of the Middle Ages be so potently felt as in the hill towns of central Italy. That such small communities could have built each dwelling so massively, raised churches and public buildings of such magnificence and created works of art of such monumentality inspires awe bordering on disbelief among today’s visitors.

    This is also the heartland of the Renaissance, and several of the leading artists of the era were natives who worked here before being inveigled to the great metropolises of Florence and Rome.

    Many of the most important and beautiful of Italy’s incomparable patrimony of paintings and frescoes are included on this tour. The great Giottesque cycle at Assisi stands at the beginning of the modern era of art, and the Last Judgement frescoes by Signorelli in Orvieto are on the cusp of the High Renaissance. While in the field of architecture Romanesque and Gothic predominate, there are many major Renaissance buildings, including the centrally planned church at Todi.

    The man-made environment melds with the natural in a picturesque union of intense beauty. It is a landscape of rumpled hills, sometimes rugged and forested, sometimes tamed in the struggle to cultivate, always speckled with ancient farmsteads, fortified villages and isolated churches. Even from the central piazze of many of these towns there are views of countryside which seems scarcely to have changed for centuries.

  • The Arts Society Guildford Wey Valley: Thursday 2nd of April 2026; you can join Leslie on his lecture, The Art of Land, Wealth and Tulip Fever in the Low Countries.

    This study day will bring together a combined overview of Dutch Golden Age art, and Flemish art, looking at the history and growth of these particular strands of European art and examine the changing face of these multifarious forms of art from the late 14th century, through to 16th century Renaissance art. Along the way we will look at how and why the meaning and function of these various art forms have changed throughout the centuries and why artists were drawn to the particular subject matters. Furthermore, this course will explore some of the key work in the history of Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish art, bringing the student a more rounded and inclusive history of painting originating in the Low Countries.

  • The Brown Collection: Thursday 30th of April 2026 from 6.30 until 8 pm, you can join Leslie on his lecture, Myth vs Nature.

    Myth vs Nature will explore the Low Country painters’ responses to developments in the latter part of the Italian Renaissance, also known as the High Renaissance. The session will begin with the unveiling of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, a pivotal moment in art that would eventually be characterised as ‘Mannerism’. This style pushed representations of the human form beyond the anatomical precision of earlier Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci into unfamiliar and ultimately uncharted territory. These ideas soon evolved into idealised visions of nature and paradise rich in texture, detail, myth and abundance. The lecture will examine the reasons behind the proliferation of such images and their significance to contemporary viewers and patrons.

Bookings

Now accepting lecture bookings for 2026 and beyond.
If you would like a slide lecture for your local fine art society on a variety of subjects ranging from early Renaissance to Impressionism, this can also be arranged at £500.00 for a one hour lecture. My lectures are given in the PowerPoint format only, and although I can supply my own laptop, I would require the society to have their own digital projector that I can connect to.

Leslie Primo worked at the National Gallery in London for 18 years – from 2000 to 2018, and has also taught a variety of art history course at Reading University, including: Medieval to Renaissance (a survey course), Reading Pictures – The Hidden Stories in Art (a course on iconography) and Masters of the Renaissance – Leonardo and Michelangelo.

Leslie Primo currently lectures at the National Portrait Gallery, and teaches a variety of art history courses at the Imperial College, London, City Literary and Bishopsgate Institutes in London, including: A art history survey course called Styles in Art (spanning art from Byzantium to Victorian painting), The Mirror of Nature (looking at 17th Century art and Culture), The Renaissance and Beyond, Introduction to the National Galley and Introduction to the National Portrait Gallery, Introduction to Western European Art and many more.

Leslie Primo’s lecturing repertoire and subject areas include: Early Renaissance painting, High Renaissance painting, Baroque and Mannerism, 17th, 18th and 19th century artists such as Seurat, Monet and Cézanne, which also encompasses Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. This also includes many slide lectures across all these subject areas, such as Reynolds’s Portrait of Omai, lectures on the Lunar Society, lectures on the Court of Charles I, and Leonardo’s Portraits and Madonnas.