Renaissance and Baroque Cluster

Overview

About the Renaissance and Baroque Cluster

The History of Art Department at the University of York constitutes a centre of remarkable academic strength for the study of art and architecture of the Early Modern period.

We are not formally constituted as a research school, but we have close ties to the University's Centre for Renaissance and early Modern Studies (CREMS).

Our research

We have research expertise in the following fields:

  • Italian Renaissance art and architecture
  • 15th- and 16th-century Netherlandish and German painting
  • Flemish and French 17th-century painting
  • British early modern architecture
  • Italian baroque architecture
  • Sculpture and urbanism
  • English 18th-century visual culture

This range, together with the diversity of our approaches, places us at the forefront of the early modern art historical field.

Postgraduate study

Such a cluster of overlapping and complementary research expertise within the Department makes for a particularly stimulating and supportive environment – especially for postgraduate study.

There is no requirement of residence in York.

Staff

Research staff

A friendly and approachable group of staff, we encourage students’ individual intellectual interests, while building on students’ previous experience, and fostering their development through sustained engagement with their work.

We also offer training and preparation in palaeography, and archival work, and engagement with theoretical and methodological problems.

Our staff

  • Anthony Geraghty
    British early modern architecture, architectural drawings and the practice of architecture
  • Helen Hills
    Baroque architecture, sculpture and painting; 17thC architecture’s relationships with urban politics, religious devotion; gender, sexuality and architecture; architectural theory
  • Amanda Lillie
    15th and 16th century Italian art and architecture, including palaces, villas, and patronage of the arts; concepts of place, air, and the environment, memory of place, landscape and mentalités
  • Jeanne Nuechterlein
    15th century and 16th century Netherlandish and German painting, Holbein, interactions between different art forms, devotional practices and the impact of the Reformation
  • Cordula van Wyhe
    17thC art, particularly of the Habsburg Netherlands and France, especially in relation to political imagery, visualization of female spirituality, and early modern Court culture

Students

Research students

Current students

  • Helen York
    The Meaning of Hans Memling’s Landscapes

Recent students

  • Caroline Anderson
    Domestic Devotion and the Material Culture of Religion in Post-Renaissance Florence
  • Joanna O’Hara
    18thC British Architecture with special attention to the architectural drawings of Colen Campbell
  • Charlotte Poulton
    • Paintings of Music and their Liberation from istoria in 17thC Italy
  • Marie Prior
    Destruction, Rejection, Revival: The Gothic Bridge and Civic Identity in York and London, 1750 - 1881
  • Matthew Walker
    Architecture and Experimental Philosophy in Restoration England: The Case of Robert Hooke