Essay on Leonardo's Map of Imola impressed judges with 'engaging and lucid writing style'.

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.

Call for papers on Architecture in the Arts: The Intersection of Artistic and Architectural Practice on a Global Scale. Open to postgraduate students, early career researchers and established scholars alike, papers focusing on the period between c. 1300 and c. 1600 will be presented at a study day and will be considered for publication in a special issue of Architectural History. 

Proposals of Max. 300 words for twenty-minute contributions and a brief CV should be sent to Livia Lupi (livia.lupi@warwick.ac.uk) by 13 March 2020

The Department of History of Art at the University of Warwick is inviting applications for the AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities PhD from students whose research interests connect with our fields of expertise. Deadline is noon on 14 January 2020.

For full details of eligibility, funding, research supervision areas and CDA projects, and for dates of our November application writing workshops, please visit: https://www.midlands4cities.ac.uk/ or contact enquiries@midlands4cities.ac.uk

PhD research student Delia Moldovan has published an article entitled ‘Astrology and Agriculture in the Calendar of the Offiziolo of Charles VIII (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, inv. 2502/4)’, in the periodical Rivista di storia della miniatura (22 2018). The article is an interdisciplinary approach to the miniatures of the calendar opening the Officium parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis per annum, held in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice. The study sheds new light on the zodiac signs and the occupations of the months depicted in the calendar, particularly investigating two key features characterising the Milanese court of the late fifteenth century: the interest in astrology and the importance given to agriculture.

An article written by History of Art research student Fabio Franz has been published in the Ca' Foscari University of Venice journal MDCCC 1800.

Disvelando pale, effigi e panneggi. Le ricognizioni danesi di Crowe e Cavalcaselle presents new research on a number of works housed in Danish collections, including celebrated portraits assigned to Titian and Parmigianino and altarpieces by Ortolano and Filippino Lippi. A comparison of the drapery and landscape painting in works by Mantegna, Leonardo, Giovanni Bellini and Jan van Eyck may to be of particular interest to those visiting Mantegna and Bellini, the exhibition currently on show at the National Gallery, London.

An essay written by Fabio Franz has been published in the proceedings of the prestigious conference on Andrea Schiavone which took place in 2016 at the Giorgio Cini Foundation and at the Marciana National Library (Venice).

In Schiavone nelle carte pietroburghesi di Cavalcaselle Franz argues that scholarship has never paid enough attention to Cavalcaselle's critical approach to Schiavone's work, and that archival sources indicate that even if he never published any article or book chapter on Schiavone, Cavalcaselle could have developed a broad and nuanced connoisseurship of Schiavone's oeuvre. During his stay in Saint Petersburg (1865), for example, Cavalcaselle drew some noteworthy sketches and took some important notes about the technique, the conservation, the attribution and the provenance of some specific paintings placed in Russia that were then assigned - by him or other contemporary experts - to Schiavone. These materials, now kept in the Marciana National Library (Venice), enhance the comprehension of the ways in which Cavalcaselle, as well as his editorial partner, the British connoisseur Joseph Archer Crowe (1825-1896), studied and evaluated Schiavone's drawing, painting and etching skills.

The paper aims to shed more light on the availability to 19th-century scholars of the Barbarigo Saint Sebastian by Titian (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg). Moreover, this essay’s purpose is to provide some unknown elements on the collecting and critical fortuna of some cassoni dipinti and other specific paintings on panel or canvas that were once assigned to Meldola in Russia and in Western Europe.

This work will help scholars to improve the understading on how Cavalcaselle's and Crowe's method challenged some other major 19th-century European experts of Old Masters, such as Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868) or Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891), in relation to Schiavone’s style and technique.

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.