Professor
Brendan Cassidy
Position: Head of School
Telephone: 01334 462370
Email: bfc1@st-andrews.ac.uk
Brendan Cassidy taught chemistry in Ghana, West Africa before returning to university to take his M.A. in Art History at Edinburgh and his Ph.D. at Cambridge. He has been Research Associate at the Warburg Institute, University of London (1985-88) and Director of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University (1988-95). He has taught at St Andrews from 1996 & offers courses on Late-Medieval & Early Renaissance Italian art and on cultural relations between Italy & Britain in the eighteenth century. His recent research has investigated painted & sculpted imagery as evidence of societal tensions in Italy c.1250-1400 and the ways in which it was employed by the political classes to influence public opinion & behaviour. With a particular interest in sculpture he is currently researching a social history of the craft in Italy from the thirteenth century to Michelangelo. He remains interested also in the phenomenon of the Grand Tour.
He would welcome research students with interests in any area of Italian art c1200-1500 or in Anglo-Italian relations in the eighteenth century.
Publications
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Iconography at the Crossroads |
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The Ruthwell Cross |
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Studies in the Illustration of the Psalter (Editor) |
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Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture in Italy c. 1240-1400
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Books
Gavin Hamilton (1723-98): Artist & Art Dealer in Eighteenth-Century Rome with an Edition of his Letters, 2 vols, London & Turnhout (in press)
Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture in Italy c. 1240-1400, London & Turnhout 2007, pp. 314
Studies in the Illustration of the Psalter, (ed. with R. Muir Wright), Stamford 2000
Iconography at the Crossroads, (ed.), Princeton 1993
Articles since 2004
In press
Alexander Cozens and the Patronage of the Grant Family, with a Recipe for Varnish and a Projected Treatise on Landscape, British Art Journal
Travelling Artists and Diplomacy in Tuscany c.1310-40: the Case of Giotto, Simone Martini, Andrea Pisano and Others, in: Travel and Movement in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. E. Coleman and W. Day
Images of Saints and Political Identity in Late-Medieval Italy, in: Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. S. Cardarelli, Cambridge
The Reception of Gavin Hamilton's Paintings in Britain, Italy and France, in: Neoclassical Principles, ed. L. Mulvin, Dublin
2010
Gavin Hamilton: A Scots Dealer in Old Masters in Eighteenth-Century Rome, in: Exiles, Emigrés and Intermediaries: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations, ed. B. Schaff, Amsterdam & New York, pp. 343-55
2009
The Fate of a ‘Missing Masterpiece’: Gavin Hamilton's Andromache Mourning the Death of Hector, The British Art Journal; 10, pp. 4-7
William Dyce, ‘Titian Preparing to Make his First Essay in Colouring’, in: On the Meaning of Sculpture in Painting, ed. P. Curtis, exh. cat. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, pp. 47-49
2008
The Tombs of the Acciaioli in the Certosa del Galluzzo outside Florence, in: Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages (Medieval Church Studies 14), ed. J. Luxford, Turnhout, pp. 323-53
A Note on the Later History of Raphael’s Ansidei Altarpiece, Burlington Magazine 150, pp. 672-75
2007
Simone Martini’s St Martin and the Emperor and Contemporary Italian Politics, Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 70, pp. 145-58
‘Come la carne al macello’: Butchering a Veronese, Burlington Magazine 149, pp. 483-85
Politics and Propaganda in Late-Medieval Italian Wall Painting: Some Themes, in: Out of the Stream: New Perspectives in the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Mural Painting, ed. L. U. Afonso and V. Serrão, Cambridge, pp. 260-90
Gavin Hamilton’s Hebe, Cantor Arts Center Journal 5, pp. 14-21
2006
An Image of King Robert of Naples in a Franco-Italian Manuscript in Dublin, Burlington Magazine 148, pp. 31-33
2004
Nardo di Cione, in: Medieval Italy, an Encyclopaedia, 2 vols ed. C. Kleinhenz et al, New York, II, pp. 760-61
Laughing with Giotto at Sinners in Hell, Viator: Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 35, pp. 355-86
Gavin Hamilton, Thomas Pitt and Statues for Stowe, Burlington Magazine 146, pp. 806-14Recent Activities
Pro-Dean, Arts & Divinity (Postgraduate 2001-2004)
Organised conference "Scots in Italy in the Eighteenth Century", St Andrews 2003
Conference Papers and Lectures
(2005) University of Limerick; Université Libre, Brussels; University of Szombathely, Hungary:
(2006) University of Cambridge; University
of Lisbon; Massa Marittima, Italy;
Columbia University, New York:
(2007) Leicester University; Leeds University; Lisbon University:
(2008) Courtauld Institute, University of London