Rachel Healy
Title
PhD Candidate
Institution
University College Dublin - School of Art History & Cultural Policy
Current Research
PhD thesis title: "Portraits of Giorgio Cornaro and his Heirs:
Resolving issues of Identity, Authorship and Patronage in Renaissance Venice".
This project builds on Healy's recent identification of an early sixteenth-century painting in the National Gallery of Ireland as containing rare portraits of Giorgio Cornaro (c.1452-1527, brother of Caterina, Queen of Cyprus) and his son Cardinal Francesco (1478-1543). It attempts to resolve similar long-standing confusion regarding the identities of sitters in related works by Titian and his workshop, the Cornaro Triple Portrait in Washington DC and Man with a Falcon in Nebraska. In so doing, it will cast new light on Titian’s development as a portraitist and the extent to which important paintings commissioned by the Cornaro survived fires at two family palaces in Venice in the 1530s. An eighteenth-century painted Cornaro Family Tree will also be discussed as a long-overlooked tool for identifying these and other sitters in disputed portraits of one of renaissance Venice’s wealthiest and most influential patrician families.
Resolving issues of Identity, Authorship and Patronage in Renaissance Venice".
This project builds on Healy's recent identification of an early sixteenth-century painting in the National Gallery of Ireland as containing rare portraits of Giorgio Cornaro (c.1452-1527, brother of Caterina, Queen of Cyprus) and his son Cardinal Francesco (1478-1543). It attempts to resolve similar long-standing confusion regarding the identities of sitters in related works by Titian and his workshop, the Cornaro Triple Portrait in Washington DC and Man with a Falcon in Nebraska. In so doing, it will cast new light on Titian’s development as a portraitist and the extent to which important paintings commissioned by the Cornaro survived fires at two family palaces in Venice in the 1530s. An eighteenth-century painted Cornaro Family Tree will also be discussed as a long-overlooked tool for identifying these and other sitters in disputed portraits of one of renaissance Venice’s wealthiest and most influential patrician families.
Recent Publications
"A Portrait of two Venetian Gentlemen in the National Gallery of Ireland: A Question of Identity", Artefact, (Irish Association of Art Historians, 2016): 35-43.
Forthcoming Publications
‘Reidentifying the sitters in Titian’s Washington Triple Cornaro Portrait’.
‘Girolamo Cornaro: Titian’s Omaha Man with a Falcon’.
‘Raphael’s Wilton Head of a Cardinal and the Attila fresco in the Stanza di Eliodoro’.
‘Girolamo Cornaro: Titian’s Omaha Man with a Falcon’.
‘Raphael’s Wilton Head of a Cardinal and the Attila fresco in the Stanza di Eliodoro’.