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Department of History of Art
HomeDepartment of History of ArtResearchPeriods: Medieval to ModernMedieval Art and Medievalisms

Medieval Art and Medievalisms

One of the largest concentrations of medievalists in the world, our cluster's expertise extends from the late Roman Empire to the Renaissance and Reformation.

We cover much of Europe and the Islamic world with particular strengths in the material culture of the British Isles.

Our research encompasses medieval revivals, involving many colleagues from later periods and encouraging transhistorical work. We maintain close links and collaborate with medieval scholars in departments across York through the interdisciplinary Centre for Medieval Studies.

Medieval York

York researchers benefit from the extraordinarily rich array of local resources for medieval and medieval revival art studies. These include:

  • Museums within York and the surrounding area, which are home to many internationally important collections of sculpture from the early Anglo-Saxon period onwards.
  • The Minster and city churches of York, which contain the largest collection of medieval stained glass in Britain.
  • Significant monuments in the surrounding region including the great Cistercian abbeys of Fountains and Rievaulx, and a large number of 19th-century revivalist churches in the Yorkshire Wolds.

People

Staff
  • Professor Tim Ayers
    • Later medieval art and architecture in England, especially stained glass; Art and architecture in the medieval university
  • Sarah Brown
    • The art and architecture of the English Cathedral (especially Salisbury and York); stained glass in the medieval tradition
  • Professor Jane Hawkes
    • Anglo-Saxon art and architecture, especially figurative sculpture; Iconography; Medieval revivals in 19th-century England and Ireland
  • Professor Amanda Lillie
    • Art and architecture in Italy 1300-1600, especially the palazzi and villas of secular patrons, including the Medici
  • Dr Richard McClary
    • Islamic art and architecture; the architecture and ceramic arts of the wider Iranian world from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries
  • Professor Christopher Norton (Emeritus Professor)
    • Art and architecture of the religious orders in England and France in the 12th to the 14th centuries; Medieval decorated pavements; Art and architecture in northern England, especially Durham and York
  • Dr Jeanne Nuechterlein
    • Flemish, Netherlandish and German art of the 15th and 16th centuries; Van Eyck, Dürer, Holbein
  • Professor Liz Prettejohn
    • Receptions of ancient, medieval and Renaissance art; Victorian painting and sculpture, including the Pre-Raphaelites; Victorian Aestheticism; art criticism
  • Dr Hanna Vorholt (Director)
    • Illuminated manuscripts, and the representation of Jerusalem in the medieval West.

This is a large and active research community. We warmly welcome students who wish to join us for postgraduate research in medieval art.

Research students

Current students

  • William Mead Cheek
    Anglo-Saxon architectural sculpture in its social, aesthetic, and theological context

  • Jordan Cook
    Settings and Subjects in Early Netherlandish Painting

  • Nausheen Hoosein
    From Umayyad Madinat al-Zahra to Almohad Seville: The Reuse of Caliphal Capitals in the Twelfth Century

  • Layla Lozano
    Early British Women Travellers to Ravenna and Their Impact Upon Early Studies of Byzantine Art

  • Aikaterina Perdiki
    A cross-cultural examination of late medieval circular world maps from the western and eastern traditions

  • Natalia Polunina
    Reflections of European Medieval Revival styles in Russian nineteenth-century architecture
  • Candace Reilly
    The Eye of Its Beholder: A Medical and Scientific Study of Religious Visuality and Image Agency in Thirteenth Century England

  • Madeline Salzman
    The Meaning, Iconography and Role of Angels in Anglo-Saxon England

Past students

  • Rachel Alban
    • English Portrait Miniatures from Holbein to Hilliard: merely 'painting in little' or a distinct art form?
  • Blair Apgar
    • Medieval and Romanesque Architecture in Lombardy
  • Maria-Anna Aristova
    • The Problem of Ornament in Early Modern Architecture
  • Karen Brett
    • Spitting on an Angel, Trampling a Saint: Reading the Medieval English Pavement
  • Cherissa Casey
    • Sacred skulls, textiles, and medieval veneration: exploring the Holy Head reliquaries of Cologne
  • Koching (Ellen) Chao
    • The spatial-visual capacity of public sculpture, and its influence on spectators’ sensibility to spatial configuration in Piazza della Signoria, Florence
  • Amanda Doviak
    • At Cross Purposes? Sacred and Secular Figural Iconographies of the High Cross in the Northern Danelaw, c. 850-1000
  • Oliver Fearon
    • Glittering Beasts: The Patronage and Craft Culture of Heraldic Stained Glass in England c.1300-1540 (AHRC funded CDA)
  • Katharine Harrison
    • Illuminating Narrative: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of the fifteenth-century St Cuthbert Window at York Minster
  • Megan Henvey
    • The Northern Group of Irish High Crosses: Simply a Geographical Term?
  • Claudia Jung
    • Visual translations of Jerusalem in the Early Modern Netherlands
  • Rebecca Mencaroni
    • The vestibule underneath the Duomo of Siena and thirteen-century devotional practices
  • Niko Munz
    • Forms of architecture in early Netherlandish Painting

 

 

 

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