Collaborative Doctoral Awards

The Gallery has been awarded two further Collaborative Doctoral Awards by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to begin in autumn 2012

Shifting Perspectives on German Renaissance Art

In 2010 the Department of History of Art at the University of York and the National Gallery established a research partnership between curators and scholars focusing on areas of mutual interest and expertise.

As part of this collaboration, the studentship focusing on ‘Shifting Perspectives on German Renaissance Art’ will investigate how perceptions of German Renaissance art changed between the era when it was made and the era when it was collected by modern institutions like the National Gallery.

The successful doctoral student will be supervised by Dr Jeanne Nuechterlein of the Department of History of Art at the University of York and Dr Susan Foister at the National Gallery.

Italian Altarpieces in Context: Spatial and Material Environments for Sacred Art in the Renaissance Church Interior

A new collaboration with the History of Art Department at the University of Warwick initiates the studentship focusing on 'Italian Altarpieces in Context: Spatial and Material Environments for Sacred Art in the Renaissance Church Interior'.

The project aims to identify and analyse the historic conditions of display for painted altarpieces in Renaissance Italy. It will clarify a range of perceptual factors that regulated viewing for Renaissance audiences (natural and artificial lighting, veiling practices, and the surrounding colours and textures of the Renaissance church interior). It will also investigate the broader spatial arrangements of church interiors in order to address fundamental issues of visual and physical access: who could see what, under what conditions, and when.

The successful doctoral student will be supervised by Dr Donal Cooper of the University of Warwick and Carol Plazzotta at the National Gallery.

Outcomes of the studentships

The two doctoral students will work at the Gallery for regular periods during their three-year projects. The Gallery’s public will benefit from these collaborative projects through talks, exhibitions and website features.

Current AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards:

The Virgin's House and other Architectural Narratives in Renaissance Marian Painting

A collaboration with the University of York, this project investigates the fictive architecture that surrounds and encases the Virgin Mary in Italian Renaissance paintings.

It will clarify the ways in which large-scale three-dimensional architecture is compressed and encountered in two-dimensional painting and relief sculpture, as well as furthering understanding of the cult of the Virgin's House in the context of the study of sacred representation and visualisation.

The project is supervised by Dr Amanda Lillie of the Department of History of Art at the University of York and by Dr Caroline Campbell at the National Gallery.

A Gallery for the Nation: F.W. Burton and his Trustees

This project, in collaboration with Professor Fintan Cullen at the University of Nottingham, will examine the role of the Trustees of the National Gallery who were active during the directorship of Sir Frederic Burton (1874-94).

The project will explore the tensions and areas of accord that existed between the Trustees and Director and will analyse how this relationship affected the running of the premier art gallery in the UK in the 19th century. One of the major issues was the Gallery’s perceived role in the later 19th century – its status as the ‘national’ treasure house for western paintings – since at this period its centrality was challenged by the creation of comparable institutions in Edinburgh and Dublin.

The National Gallery supervisor is Dr Susanna Avery-Quash.

Reframing the Italian Renaissance at the National Gallery

This project, in collaboration with Dr Alison Wright at University College London, takes as its starting point the Gallery’s remarkably diverse and important collection of Renaissance and Neo-Renaissance frames, which were either acquired with the paintings, or adapted or sometimes specifically commissioned.

Detail from Jacopo Bassano and workshop, 'The Purification of the Temple', probably about 1580

The Gallery’s archives will be used as material to reconstruct specific case histories of frames for Renaissance paintings, and for the elucidation of broader trends within the Gallery’s display policy.