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.

Dr Rosie Dias’s book, co-edited with Dr Kate Smith (University of Birmingham), will be published by Bloomsbury Academic this week. British Women and Cultural Practices of Empire, 1770-1940 focuses on the ways in which British women, through engagements with material culture, sketching, collecting, curating, writing and display, contributed to constructions of empire in the modern period.

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.

Warwick University has joined the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership which will offer 100s of studentships for subjects in the Arts and Humanities, including support for engagement with cultural, creative & heritage organisations. See the University of Warwick news item.

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).

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)