Essay competition success for second year History of Art student.

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.

An article written by Fabio Franz has been published in the latest issue of Brill's journal Experiment.

An Inspirational Milieu: St. Petersburg Cosmopolitan Collections of Old Masters focuses on the provenance, conservation history, and critical fortuna of some selected Western European paintings that were placed in Saint Petersburg between 1850 and 1917. It includes: a comparison between the visits to Russia made by the German expert Gustav Friedrich Waagen and the Italian connoisseur Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle; an investigation of Cavalcaselle’s alleged meeting with the Russian expert Fedor Antonovich Bruni regarding the paintings Saint Sebastian Barbarigo by Titian, Apollo and Marsyas Litta by Bronzino, and Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John, now attributed to Pontormo; and an exploration of the extent to which Russian galleries and private collections were accessible to Western scholars.

Experiment, Volume 23, Issue 1, pages 81 – 92

Nicola Viviani has published the book Mail Art Stories: the mail artist tells his own story, in collaboration with the mail artist Lancilotto Bellini. The book records a project conceived by Bellini in the mid-1990s, which collected work from mail artists around the world. This is the first time the project and the works it generated have been published.

Nicola will be joining the department as a PhD student in 2017-18, and will be writing his thesis on collector, patron, publisher and collaborator Francesco Conz, one of the most influential figures in the late-twentieth century neo-avant-garde art world.

Splendour! Art in Living Craftsmanship.

This exhibition celebrated the eightieth anniversary of the Georgian Group. Founded in 1937, the Group is a national charity dedicated to preserving Georgian buildings, gardens and landscapes between 1700-1840 in England and Wales. The exhibition featured over forty artists, craftsmen and architects who work in the Georgian classical tradition. Works on display included examples of pietra dure, scagliola, coade stone, stucco work, wood and stone carving, painted wallpapers and architects drawings.

The catalogue was edited by History of Art PhD student Adam Busiakiewicz, who wrote all of the catalogue entries and contributed an essay to the publication.

Adam is especially interested in the history and former collection of the Earls of Warwick and their ancestral home Warwick Castle. His research focuses on the life of Anne Greville, 4^th Countess of Warwick, who presided over the restoration of the castle in the late nineteenth century.

Recent PhD graduate and WATE award winner Ann Haughton has an article in the latest edition of Exchanges: the Warwick Research Journal. The article, 'Myths of Male Same-Sex Love in the Art of the Italian Renaissance', can be read online in the Exchanges journal.

Reference: Exchanges: the Warwick Research Journal, [S.l.], v. 3, n. 1, p. 65-95, sep. 2015. ISSN 2053-9665.