Curated by Dr Amanda Sciampacone (University of Warwick-Leverhulme Early-Career Fellow), Art, Air and Illness sheds new light on significant relations between art and science in shaping how we perceive and experience the impact of the environment on human health, culturally, societally, and through the very air we breathe.

Fashioning Victoria: curating the royal image for dynasty, nation and empire is a collaboration between Historic Royal Palaces and University of Warwick, funded by an AHRC Research Networking Grant. Project partners include the Royal Collections Trust, Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, the Bodleian Library, and TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities).

The exhibition of works created by students taking the History of Art Practical Art course ends tomorrow (Wednesday 27th June).

Location: Millburn House foyer.

Open Days are an opportunity to visit our Department, meet staff and students, attend a presentation, and tour the campus. You can find out more about booking a place on a future open day on the University of Warwick Open Day information page. We look forward to meeting you!

The workshop taking place this afternoon in Coventry will feature new research and presentations on the theme of air, environment, and embodied and cultural experiences of breath by Dr Amanda Sciampacone, George Saxon (Coventry University), Jane Macnaughton and Jayne Wilton (Life of Breath project: Durham-Wellcome Institute).

Recent doctoral graduate Stefano Columbo will be presenting a paper of his research at this year's Association for Art Historians Summer Symposium (being held 26-27 June). His paper is entitled Baldassarre Longhena’s Funerary Monument to Doge Giovanni Pesaro and the Rhetoric of the Living Sculpture and the theme of the Symposium is (Re-)Forming Sculpture.

PROGRAMME of the Symposium.

Contemporary artist sends signed exhibition catalogues to students who took part in a seminar with him in Venice last year.

On 7 March, students had the opportunity to try out ancient painting techniques at two specialist workshops led by Jevon Thistlewood, paintings conservator at the Ashmolean Museum. The sessions were organised by the Classics department through IATL, with help from History of Art. Students painted their own mummy portraits using tempera on gesso and encaustic work with cold and hot wax.

First year Art History student, Matthew White, said “It did feel very authentic and the use of wax on painting was a very new idea and good fun…I was especially interested in mixing wax with pigment. This was completely novel to me.”

The History of Art Department recently joined other institutions at the annual ARTiculation Finals event at Clare College, Cambridge. ARTiculation is a public speaking competition for 16-19 year olds, offering a chance for pupils from state and independent schools all around the country to engage with art and architecture in a way which encourages looking, thinking and speaking. Nearly 200 people attended the competition.

Our department had a stall at the University Fair which received many interested visitors, and Dr Sarah Walford presented a seven-minute taster lecture on the Sèvres ‘Copenhagen Vase’, from the Waddesdon collection.

Sarah Walford - “It was a wonderful opportunity to take an object that our first-year students have studied and to show the many ways in which it can be interpreted. It’s important to show that art history can encompass everything from politics to manufacturing process and science to social history.”

Dr Sarah Walford has been speaking to Trish Adudu on the BBC Coventry and Warwickshire radio Breakfast Show about the campaign to raise funds for the repair of the bell tower of St Oswald’s Church, Tile Hill. The church is one of a group of three parish churches in Coventry designed by the architect Basil Spence. Sarah was asked about Spence and his architecture, and why the tower is important. It was noted that many Coventrians are unaware that these churches in the Coventry suburbs (also Wood End and Willenhall) were designed by the same architect as the Cathedral, and that the campaign is raising awareness of their significance. The three churches have all been listed for their architectural quality and technical innovation.

You can find out more about The Life and Work of Sir Basil Spence on our project pages.

(Image credit: cc-by-sa/2.0 © Robin Stott geograph.org.uk/p/5345926)

A few days ago, third-year PhD student Benedetta Pacini visited the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice where Vittore Carpaccio’s Legend of Saint Ursula cycle, a group of nine large-scale canvases, is being restored. In connection with her research, she interviewed chief restorer Egidio Arlango (seen with Benedetta in the photograph), who is working alongside CBC (Conservazione Beni Culturali) on the project. The work, scheduled for completion by 2019, is being carried out with the support of Save Venice Inc.

Benedetta’s doctoral thesis is entitled Navigating the Canals. Making and Moving Venetian Renaissance Paintings, and is a joint research project between the University of Warwick and the National Gallery in London. Her research focuses on the making and transportation of large-scale paintings in sixteenth-century Venice, with particular attention to those in the National Gallery.

History of Art PhD research student Delia Moldovan has presented a paper at this year's Newbery Graduate Student Conference entitled The Calendar of a Printed Book of Hours and Its Impact on Sixteenth-Century Italian Illumination. In the paper, the iconographic impact of incunabula on the production of illuminated Italian calendars is considered using the 'Officium beate Marie virginis: ad usum Romane ecclesie' as a case study. The Officum was printed in Lyon in four editions between 1499 and 1501 by Spanish and Piedmont printers, and edited by Bonino de Boninis. It is demonstrated that the woodcuts were used as iconographic models for two luxury manuscripts created in Ferrarese and Florentine, respectively.

Her REPORT can be viewed online.