School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemPaolo Uccello: the life and work of an Italian Renaissance artist( 2005-09)This thesis is a comprehensive assessment of the life and work of the Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello (c. 1397- 1475). It employs an interdisciplinary methodology combining the examination of archival evidence of the artist’s personal, social and professional lives, the scientific examination of his artworks, the interpretation of his iconography based on the contexts his works were made for, and an approach to attributions based on documentary, stylistic and technical evidence rather than tradition. Unpublished documents presented here shed new light on Uccello’s family and early career, underlining the importance of his extended family as a point of contact between the artist and the networks of patronage in and around Florence. New scientific analyses of three works conducted for this study, including infrared reflectography, X-radiography and microsampling, reveal the sophistication of Uccello’s technique and help to clarify the chronology of his works. New interpretations of Uccello’s works proposed here, relating in particular to his use of perspective, address the significance of their contexts, highlighting the subtlety and specificity of Uccello’s imagery. The catalogue raisonne is the most extensive survey of works attributed to Uccello to date, and presents unpublished documents for the provenances of two works attributed to Uccello. Contrary to the image of Uccello as an isolated and eccentric figure commonly encountered in the art historical literature since Vasari’s sixteenth-century biography of the artist, Uccello emerges from a detailed study of the documentary and physical evidence as an artist of his time, involved in Florentine society, religion and commerce, and an innovative artist, a creator of unforgettable images who was admired by his peers and subsequent generations of artists, ensuring his place as one of the protagonists in the field of early Renaissance art.
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ItemRe-examining Van Eyck: a new analysis of the Ince Hall Virgin and Child( 2001-10)The Ince Hall Virgin and child is a painting of the Virgin and Child in an interior that was attributed to Jan van Eyck by the leading historians of early Netherlandish art from 1854 to 1956. Between 1956 and 1959 the work was subject to a technical and art historical analysis in Europe, in the re-classification of the work as a copy by a follower of Van Eyck, and possibly a forgery. Subsequently, a number of art historians have suggested that not even the composition of the work is Eyckian, and that the work is a pastiche based on Van Eyck’s paintings. Nevertheless, some authors have doubted the arguments for these reattributions. Some authors maintain the attributions to Van Eyck, and others suggest that the work may be a copy. This thesis is the first comprehensive critical reappraisal of the scientific and art historical analysis to be conducted. In the first chapter it examines the provenance and bibliography of the work. In the second chapter it examines published and unpublished documents relating to the technical analysis found in Melbourne, Brussels, London and Amsterdam, which have been brought together for the first time. It also contains an interpretation of the work’s infrared reflectography that was produced, for the first time, for this thesis. It is argued that, contrary to the 1950's analysis, there is no technical impediment to an attribution of the work to Van Eyck. Furthermore, technical analysis reveals numerous correspondences to Van Eyck’s works, in the pigments, paint layer structures, underdrawing style and pentimenti. In the third chapter the relationship of the execution, composition and iconography to Van Eyck’s paintings is discussed. It is argued that the execution, composition and iconography are closely related to Van Eyck’s works. In the fourth chapter the attribution of the work as an original painting of Van Eyck, a copy, a pastiche or a forgery is discussed. It is concluded that the balance of the available evidence suggests the attribution of the work to Van Eyck, or his studio, is justifiable. The possibility that the work is a free copy is not excluded, but is undermined by the numerous correspondences to Van Eyck’s materials and technique and its relationship to the versions of the composition by other artists.