History of Art student Charity Culley has been awarded a prize by Warwick's Centre for the Study of the Renaissance for her Finalist Dissertation. The Dr Greg Wells Undergraduate Essay Prizes, now in their third year, are awarded for the best undergraduate intermediate-year and final-year essays and dissertation.

Charity was was awarded for her dissertation focusing on ‘Disguised Symbolism In Lucas Cranach’s Salome At The Feast Of Herod’

On Wednesday July 22 we are delighted to be welcoming artist Oraib Toukan to speak about her work, in particular When Things Occur: a 'desktop film' based on Skype conversations with Gaza inhabitants over the summer of 2014. This powerful and topical film probes the face of mourning and grief – its digital embodiment, transmission, and representation. It asks how the gaze gets channeled within the digital realm, how empathy travels, who is 'local' in the representation of war, and what it means to view suffering 'at a distance'.

The film will be made available ahead of the event via a protected Vimeo link for all those who register.

Dr Karen Lang has recently returned from Moscow where she delivered a lecture entitled 'The German Past and the Painter's Hope: Gerhard Richter at the Jewish Museum, Moscow'. The event took place on 26th January at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.

Our photo (right) shows Karen with Liya Chechik, Director of Education at the Museum. Liya studied for her History of Art MA here in the Department just a few years ago.

Alumni, friends and former staff are gathering in Venice this weekend to celebrate 40 years of teaching History of Art in Venice. Special events include tours and talks led by current and former staff, a careers session led by our alumni for current students, and an evening reception for all at the Warwick Palazzo. Our alumni can see more about this event on the Facebook group page: Warwick History of Art Alumni.

Dr Claire FitzGerald will give a talk today on the early twentieth-century stained-glass artist Margaret Rope. It will take place at Shrewsbury RC Cathedral at 2pm in front of some of Margaret's greatest works. The lecture is one of the activities complementing the Margaret Rope ‘Untold Story’ exhibtion at the Shrewsbury Art Gallery.

Congratulations to Philip Zidarov, an MA student in the department, who has won a scholarship from the Cini Foundation in Venice to pursue research at the Vittore Branca International Center for Studies of Italian Culture. Philip’s project, Visual Documents of Two Volcanic Eruptions: The Journeys of Images, examines the use and re-use of images of Etna and Vesuvius by artists, engravers, and printers through the 17th and 18th centuries.

Department of History of Art former PhD student Nora Gietz will deliver a special legacy lecture in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo and the 50th anniversary of St.John's International School, Waterloo. She will speak about her doctoral thesis: The Effects of Napoleonic Rule on Venice's Artistic Patrimony.

Nora completed her PhD in summer 2013 and was examined in September 2013.

Thursday October 2 at 19:30, reception from 18:30, Theater of the Performing Arts Center, St. John's International School, Waterloo, Belgium.

Free admission, donations to the scholarship fund gratefully accepted.

Three Warwick graduates have been back to work on the Pontigny project with Dr Jenny Alexander of the History of Art department and Prof. Terryl Kinder of Pontigny. Rosie Harris Adamson and Lucy Henderson were awarded scholarships for the URSS Pontigny Project in 2011 and they were joined by Agatha Gomolka, a MA student from the department, who is now working on her PhD. Another Pontigny Project team member, Roo Alexander-Jones, the team's film maker, who graduated from Oxford Brookes university last summer, completed the team.

The team was trying out some new equipment derived from the optics used by bird-watchers and for the first time it was possible to find and record the marks made by the stonemasons who built the vaults high up in the building. The results are now being processed, but it is already clear that the team's work has provided vital new evidence about the relationship between the high vaults and the main stucture of the building, and this will resolve a long-standing question about Cistercian builders and their place in early-Gothic architecture.