The Cook, the Marquis, his Wife, and her Maids: The Use of Dramatic Characters in Peter Greenaway’sPeopling the Palacesas a Way of Interpreting Historic Buildings

Abstract

Abstract As curators endeavour to offer new opportunities to look again at museum collections and heritage sites, technological interventions such as Peter Greenaway’sPeopling the Palaces(2007–2010) demonstrate a powerful way of giving voice and emotional realism to historic spaces.Peopling the Palacesis a video installation of 500 characters created for the seventeenth‐century Italian Palace, La Venaria Reale. Characters are projected onto the walls, ceilings, and royal bed, bringing back “life” to the historic interiors. In this article I examine the different types of characters created by Greenaway, looking specifically at how their words could help visitors engage with the lived human past of the palace and acquire factual information about day‐to‐day processes. Drawing on such fundamentals of human nature as love, jealousy, and gossip, these character‐led performances suggest ways that dramatic techniques can help to engender imagined and empathetic connections with the past.

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