Immersive Renaissance:

The project will involve research on the original settings and environment of selected works from the National Gallery (as case studies) together with an element of digital humanities research, exploring how digital 3D modelling might be used to understand the context and built environment which these artworks originally occupied (churches, palaces etc.).

This may for instance focus on religious/secular settings for paintings, perhaps for works by one artist or workshop, or related to a specific part of the city. This will involve traditional art historical research (archival and primary), which would in part be transposed into the 3D digital modelling process. The student would be able to learn these skills, but would not be exclusively responsible for this process; support at Exeter is assured.

The project will adopt and test the robust workflow developed for the ‘Immersive Renaissance’ project; this has already produced new findings and proposes new standards for the delivery of digital art history (including addressing issues of uncertainty modelling, annotation of models, use of CiDOC-CRM ontologies, etc.).

The studentship will benefit from running in parallel to an ongoing collaboration between the National Gallery and Prof. Nevola’s ‘Immersive Renaissance’ project (funded by the Getty Foundation Digital Art History initiative).

The main outcome would be new knowledge on artworks from the National Gallery, which would be both applied to and derived from creation of digital models; as such the student will also acquire skills that will be increasingly valuable for research in both HE and the wider heritage sector.