Carol Barbour is a doctoral candidate at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE-PSL). Her research project, which is supervised by Professor Sabine Frommel, studies the iconography of the Tabula Cebetis, an ekphrastic text from the 1st – 2nd century CE that was re-examined by humanist scholars in the Renaissance. Subsequently, artists created miniatures, paintings, prints, frescoes, and embroideries of the subject, and in doing so a distinctive iconographical program evolved. The images of the Tabula Cebetis depict the cycle of human life through an architectural construction of three circular rings, each part signifying a phase of development. It begins at the portal of life located at the foot of a mountain, continues to the second ring, which pertains to education and skill, and ends in the third area at the summit where Happiness (Felicitas) reigns.

In order to study the works in person Carol travelled to collections including the British Museum and Library, the Louvre, the Longhi Foundation (Florence), Wawel Palace (Krakow), Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Albertina (Prints and Drawings, Vienna), Vassar College (Poughkeepsie), Dona dalle Rose Collection (Venice), Besançon musée des beaux arts, Capodimonte museum (Naples), Kassel Art museum, Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Rouen musée des beaux arts, Uffizi (GDSU, Florence), Musée Jacquemart-André (Paris), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Aurelli Hypogeum, Rome, and more. She is currently working on a comparative analysis of the figures, and compositions with the aim of identifying evidence of imitation, synthesis and innovation.

Creative Writing and Art

Throughout her life, Carol has worked as a visual artist, creating drawings, paintings, sculptures, and artist books. Her work has been exhibited at galleries, libraries, and books fairs in Canada, USA, and Europe. Recent creative writing projects are the poetry collection Infrangible (2018) and the artist book Alter Pieces (2019 More). Poems and essays are published by Scintilla, Canthius, The Fiddlehead, Sein und Werden, among others. Below is a selection of artworks by Carol based on her research of the Tabula Cebetis, and a couple of details from the case studies.