At York, research into the Early Modern period encompasses the study of architecture, clothing, textiles, ceramics and interior design as well as painting and sculpture.

We have close ties to the University's interdisciplinary Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS). We also collaborate with the Neapolitan Network.

The range of our research paired with the diversity of our approaches places us at the forefront of early modern art history. Our expertise includes:

  • Italian Renaissance and baroque art and architecture
  • 15th and 16th-century Netherlandish and German painting
  • Baroque architecture, urbanism, cartography, sculpture and painting
  • British early modern architecture
  • Flemish and French 17th-century painting
  • Interior decoration, prints, furniture, clothing, food in Renaissance and baroque Europe
  • Baroque theory

People

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

Contact us

Professor Jeanne Nuechterlein
Cluster Director

jeanne.nuechterlein@york.ac.uk

  • Professor Anthony Geraghty
    British early modern architecture, architectural drawings and the practice of architecture
  • Professor Helen Hills
    Baroque architecture, urbanism, cartography, sculpture and painting; baroque theory; inter-relationships between materiality and spirituality; religious devotion, gender, sexuality and art/ architecture; architectural theory
  • Dr 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
  • Dr Cordula van Wyhe
    Early modern cultural history with particular reference to the seventeenth-century low Countries. major interests include the history of dress (including fashion), Rubens, religious and political imagery, royal patronage and early modern court culture.

Current students

  • Jordan Cook
    Settings and Subjects in Early Netherlandish Painting

  • John Dickinson
    The interpretive value of a humorous approach to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

  • Alexander Echlin
    The Architecture of Lord Burlington reconsidered

  • Dawn Faizey Webster
    To what extent did the architecture of the early modern grammar school affect, impede or complexify its formal educational and broader social learning functions?

  • Suzanne Heskin
    Reforming Female Autonomy: Fifteenth Century Sisters of the Franciscan Observant Reform in the Upper Rhine
  • Peter Kos
    Bartholomeus Spranger’s Mythological Paintings: Gender Play in Rudolfine Prague

  • Elizabeth Waring
    Most Women have no Characters at all': Gender and Agency in Godfrey Kneller’s Portraits of Women 1676-1723

Past students

  • Rachel Alban
    English Portrait Miniatures from Holbein to Hilliard: merely 'painting in little' or a distinct art form

  • Charlotte Davis
    The approaches of key carvers active in post-Restoration England: Francis Bird, Caius Gabriel Cibber, Grinling Gibbons, and Edward Pierce
  • Niko Munz
    Forms of architecture in early Netherlandish Painting

  • Adam Sammut
    Rubens and the Dominican Church in Antwerp, 1571-1648

  • Valeria Viola
    Architecture, Devotion, Family Life: chapels in aristocratic houses of baroque Palermo (ca. 1650 - 1770)

Contact us

Professor Jeanne Nuechterlein
Cluster Director

jeanne.nuechterlein@york.ac.uk