Category: Research

Better known as ‘Lizzie Siddal’, the model who posed for John Everett Millais’s painting Ophelia, Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti is now finally recognised as a Pre-Raphaelite artist in her own right, working alongside her male colleagues on equal terms. Elizabeth’s designs were truly original, the creation of her own imagination. They embodied the essence of Pre-Raphaelitism that her husband Gabriel and other members of the circle were striving to achieve. The male members of the group shamelessly copied the ideas from Elizabeth’s small sketches to create their own large masterpieces which have since become the epitome of Pre-Raphaelite art. The exclusion of women from the narrative has had a major impact in creating the perception of the Pre-Raphaelites as a predominantly male artistic movement; in Beyond Ophelia Dr Glenda Youde shows Elizabeth not as a pathetic drowning figure, but as the initiator of a directional change in the visual development of Pre-Raphaelite art. Featuring a unique collection of photographs of Elizabeth’s work commissioned by her husband after her death, this book highlights the critical importance of her role within the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and one which ultimately led to the evolution of the Aesthetic Movement.

This is an excellent opportunity that will enable a recent PhD graduate or Early Career Researcher to gain experience in a thriving cultural and research institution, as well as the opportunity to develop their own research portfolio in a supportive and well-established research environment.

The successful candidate will be a pro-active and knowledgeable postdoctoral researcher, whose expertise in the histories of sculpture will complement that of the Research Team at the Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, and will form a key element of our public programmes.

You will be required to contribute lectures and tutorials on our first-year survey modules. You will also be expected to offer attractive and accessible research-led undergraduate courses, giving students as much first-hand experience of works as possible. For the Academic Year 2025-26 you will be required to teach two of our current available modules. These include: AH3106 Experiencing Sculpture in the Early Modern World; AH3107 Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasties from a Global Perspective; AH3235 Spanish Painting in the Age of Velázquez; AH4176 Early Modern Cities; AH4182 Principles and Protagonists of Italian Renaissance Architecture; AH4183 The Senses, Objects, and Buildings in Early Modern Europe; AH4185 Michelangelo: Sculptor, Painter, Architect; AH4206 Raphael and His Reception; AH4222 Art, Theatre and Performance in France 1600-1800; AH4236 Images of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe; AH4241 Leonardo da Vinci, 500 years later. [...]

Conducted in collaboration with the Oskar Reinhart Collection, ‘Am Römerholz’, Switzerland, the unknown artwork was discovered when The Courtauld took x-ray and infrared images of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto – a portrait depicting Picasso’s sculptor friend painted in 1901 and one of the earliest examples of the artist’s Blue Period – ahead of its display as part of the upcoming The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, opening 14 February. 

The Courtauld’s analysis of the painting reveals it played an important role at a crucial stage in the young Picasso’s stylistic development, at a time when he was moving away from colourful, Impressionistic paintings towards a distinctly more melancholy artistic style which became the defining phase of his career known as his Blue Period. 

An Islamic tent in S. Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara - By Federica Gigante

Lucchese patronage in Papal Avignon: the chapel of Carlo Spiafame in Notre-Dame-des-Doms - By Geoffrey Nuttall

Two paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Potsdam collection of Frederick the Great - By Franziska Windt

The elder sisters of the ‘The Campbell sisters’: William Gordon Cumming’s patronage of Lorenzo Bartolini - By Lucy Wood & Timothy Stevens

‘Victory at San Pietro in Casale’ in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome - By Stephanie C. Leone & Alessandro Serrani

Ménage de Pressigny and his art collection - By Yuriko Jackall

Lusieri’s mysterious ‘Wooded lake’ identified- By Dyfri Williams

Angelica Kauffman was one of the most renowned and recognizable artists in the eighteenth century. Her oil paintings, prints, and engravings were widely reproduced for and by British consumers. This project seeks to reexamine the reproduction, retranslation and consumption of Kauffman’s visual artworks, focusing on three-dimensional, small-scale works including ceramics, needlework, textiles (embroidery and needle pictures), and fans, among others. Drawing on the National Trust's extensive collections, including print and manuscript sources, the project will show, for the first time, the rich and varied depth of Kauffman's influence on aesthetics and the domestic interior. 

This project is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield and the National Portrait Gallery. It investigates an overlooked aspect of female artistic practice: the portrait miniature. During the period 1680 to 1840, miniature production was increasingly dominated by women, yet there is no definitive study of the female miniaturist: her importance obscured by a focus on male counterparts, and her achievements sidelined by an increasingly institutionalised art world. In reconstructing the lives and practices of female miniaturists in the period, the project will draw on the National Portrait Gallery’s rich collection of miniatures and archival material as well as a range of literary and non-literary sources. The result will be an important contribution to the history of art and culture in the period.   

This landmark scholarly biography of Hans Holbein the Younger (c.1497–1543), court painter to Henry VIII, is the first in more than a century. This definitive account breathes new life into Holbein’s story. From his early days in Augsburg and Basel to his lasting impact on British art and culture, Holbein sheds light on the artist whose paintings would shape perceptions of the Tudor court for five hundred years. [...]

Beautifully illustrated, and including rarely seen paintings from private collections, this volume weaves the latest research – including new archival discoveries and scientific analysis – into a fresh examination of Holbein’s life and work.

The Frick Collection is pleased to announce the availability of a six-month fellowship for an outstanding candidate who wishes to pursue research in the field of medals with a chronology spanning from around the year 1400 to 1900. The fellowship offers invaluable curatorial training and provides the scholarly and financial resources required for completing the assigned research project. Internationally renowned for its exceptional collection of western European art from the early Renaissance through the end of the nineteenth century, The Frick Collection—complemented by the equally significant resources of the Frick Art Reference Library—offers a unique opportunity for object-based research. The fellowship is best suited to a scholar pursuing research that contributes to expanding knowledge in the field of medals, and ideally around one or more objects included the vast collection of medals donated to the Frick by Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher. 

An editor-in-chief is sought to lead the team at British Art Studies (BAS). Working collaboratively with authors and colleagues at the journal, the editor-in-chief will set the direction for future issues. They will proactively commission material for publication and carry out hands-on editorial work such as line editing texts and developing projects with authors. This is an exciting new opportunity to develop the future of BAS.

About the Journal
BAS is a peer-reviewed and open access journal for new research on the histories of British art, architecture and visual culture. Opening and testing the boundaries of “British” as a category, and reflecting critically on methodologies for British art history, are core areas of focus for the journal. As a digital-only platform, the journal also explores how to present research in novel ways online, experimenting with new tools and feature formats. In 2025, an updated design will mark the tenth anniversary of BAS.

Among the renowned Old Master paintings at the Wallace Collection in London is an important group of 27 eighteenth-century views of Venice, known as vedute, by Canaletto and his followers, including Francesco Guardi. They hang together in a dedicated gallery known as the Canaletto Room, but until recently the majority had not been cleaned since the nineteenth century and their original beauty was obscured by multiple layers of discoloured varnish.

The paintings have now been restored, following a multi-year conservation and research project, and this book presents them in their renewed splendour. It features essays and commentaries by Charles Beddington, the global expert on vedute, and by Wallace Collection curator Lelia Packer, which provide fresh insights into the artists’ creative processes, the dating of pictures and their authorship. Canaletto and Guardi is a gorgeous celebration of the beauty of Venice that these paintings convey.

Histories are also stories of forgetting. How do we go about recovering long-lost voices and stories to fill the gaps and silences? How do works of art dwelling on the periphery transform and unsettle our understanding of what is in the dominant center? In images sacred and profane from Venice and Genoa, to Florence and Livorno, Antwerp and Lisbon, Black Africans were largely marginalized in Renaissance imagery – often literally so, represented as they typically were as bystanders, nurses, kitchen maids, pages, musicians and entertainers, boatmen and gondoliers, executioners, and servants in crowded banquet halls. Still starker inequalities are impossible to ignore in contemporary lived realities – nowhere more so than that of the slave trade. The international conference Hidden in Plain Sight: Black African Lives and Visual Histories in Early Modern Europe is conceived with these inescapable truths firmly in mind. Hosted by the Dutch University Institute of Art History (NIKI) and NYU-Florence, the three-day event will bring together scholars in a wide-ranging conversation spanning a multiplicity of disciplines. The latter will range broadly, embracing global art history, African and African diasporic studies, anthropology, history, literary culture, and musicology. By necessity, ours must be a collective inquiry, drawing on contributions from specialists in different fields, working on different lands, practices, and knowledge systems.

Worcester College and the Department of History of Art are looking to appoint an Associate Professor with research and teaching expertise in the Art of the Americas (North and/or South) after 1500.

The appointee will bring together students and scholars working across the University, including in its libraries and collections, through a consideration of the visual and material cultures of the Americas that expands Art History’s traditional geographic, material and methodological boundaries.

This position provides exciting opportunities for the postholder, who will conduct advanced research and build research networks within and beyond Oxford; give lectures, classes, and tutorials; supervise, support and examine students at the undergraduate and graduate levels; play an important part in the academic life of Worcester College; and take on leadership and administrative roles in the Department of History of Art and, as required, in the History Faculty and College.

The Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums is offering a Curatorial Cataloguing Fellowship with the European Paintings department. This fellowship program aims to support the Museums’ strategic goal to significantly enhance the scope of information available about works of art in the Museums’ collection, and make this information digitally accessible to a wider public. The two-year paid Fellowship program, onsite in San Francisco from September 2025-August 2027, is designed to provide an important professional development opportunity for eight emerging art museum professionals. We strongly encourage applicants from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the art museum field. This fellowship will advance participants’ curatorial training through rigorous research and cataloguing experience.

The StoryPharm project, which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action – Doctoral Networks – Grant Agreement 101169114 (https://www.ucy.ac.cy/storypharm/). The focus of the project will be on premodern narratives and images involving medicine, health, and healing. These will be studied from a transdisciplinary and comparative perspective, across linguistic and cultural borders.