Assoc ProfessorPhilip Cottrell

Philip Cottrell's research has primarily focused on sixteenth-century Venetian painting, with particular reference to Bonifacio de' Pitati, Tintoretto and Titian. He has published on such topics as the portraits of Baldassare Castiglione by Raphael and Titian, the depiction of vagrancy and disease in Venetian art, the market for Venetian pictures at the court of Philip II in Spain, and the portrayal of Petrarch's allegorical poem 'I Trionfi' in Venetian painting. A monograph on Bonifacio de' Pitati was recently published in collaboration with Peter Humfrey, and he contributed an essay on Pietro Aretino's relationship with the painters of Venice for the recently published 'Companion to Pietro Aretino' anthology (Brill, 2021). He has also written on Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and aspects of art collecting in mid-nineteenth-century Britain and America with particular regard to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. This relates to a project completed in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery, London, involving a database devoted to the sketchbooks of the nineteenth-century connoisseur Sir George Scharf. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/new-research-on-the-collection/scharf-sketchbooks/ His essay on Nicholas Stone's monument to John Donne in St Paul's Cathedral, London, and its relationship to transi tomb imagery, also appeared in a collection of papers that he co-edited with Wolfgang Marx: 'Death, Burial, and the Afterlife'. He serves on the committee of the Venetian Art History Research Group and his recent work includes a reconsideration of Tintoretto's nickname in the context of the craft of dyeing in renaissance Venice (in 'Jacopo Tintoretto: Identity, Practice and Meaning' - Viella, 2022). A further article, co-authored with Peter Humfrey, on new discoveries from Bonifacio de' Pitati's catalogue of works has recently been published in 'Artibus et Historiae' (2024). 

His recent research students include:

Frances Coulter (PhD - accepted 2025) - 'The Legacy of the Caesars: Reconstructing the work of Giulio Romano and Titian in the Gabinetto dei Cesari at the Ducal Palace in Mantua'. See also Frances Coulter, 'Drawing Titian’s ‘Caesars’: a rediscovered album by Bernardino Campi', 'The Burlington Magazine' (July 2019); 'Supporting Titian's Caesars: Giulio Romano's narrative framework in the Gabinetoo dei Cesari' in 'Giulio Romano: pittore, architetto, artista universale' (forthcoming); 'Immortalising the Gonzaga: new links between Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi and Titian’s Gabinetto dei Cesari' - Renaissance Society of America Virtual Conference - 22 April 2021 - see https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/21virtual/meetingapp.cgi/Session/4815.

Mark Tully (PhD - accepted 2025) - 'Parrasio Micheli and Painting in Renaissance Venice'. Conference papers include: Parrasio Micheli: A Sixteenth-Century Painter Adapting to Thrive in a Changing Venice', Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, April 2022.

Rachel Healy (PhD - accepted 2024; IRC funded) - 'Portraits of Giorgio Cornaro and his Heirs: Resolving issues of Identity, Authorship and Patronage in Renaissance Venice and Beyond' (2024). See also '"Portrait of two Venetian Gentlemen" in the National Gallery of Ireland: A Question of Identity, 'Artefact: The Journal for the Irish Association of Art Historians', 2016; 'Resolving issues of identity in Titian’s Cornaro portraits' - Renaissance Society of America Virtual Conference - 22 April 2021 - see https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/21virtual/meetingapp.cgi/Session/4815. This thesis was accepted pending minor corrections on 12 April 2024.

Previous research students:

Jessica Fahy (M.Litt, 2016; IRC funded) - 'Catching the Female Gaze': Representations of male religious figures and the female viewer in Renaissance art' 

Corinna Ricasoli (PhD - accepted 2014; IRC funded) - ''Non Omnis Moriar': Artists' Funerary Monuments in Baroque Rome'

Audrey Nichols (PhD - accepted 2011; IRC funded) - 'Temptation and Transgression: Images of Christ and the Adulteress, and of Adulteress, and of Susanna and the Elders, in Renaissance Venice

Philip Cottrell is on sabbatical in 2025-26.