Laurea (University of Milan), MA, PhD (Courtauld, University of London)

Contact details

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House

Strand

London WC2R 0RN

francesco.lucchini@courtauld.ac.uk



Francesco Lucchini read Philosophy at the University of Milan, before coming to The Courtauld where he took his MA in Early Sienese Painting (2003) and completed his PhD thesis (2009) ‘Objects at work: A material and cultural history of the reliquaries of St. Anthony of Padua in the Basilica del Santo, ca 1231-1438’. He has been Visiting Lecturer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and at The Courtauld.  From 1 April 2011 he will hold a two years Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the Department of History of Art, University of Warwick.


research interests


Current research interests/projects include:

  • Late Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Italian Goldsmith’s Craft (Book Project)
  • The Materiality of Art – Evidence, Interpretation, Theory (Book Project)
  • Early Italian Panel Painting – Carpentry, Fragmentation and Reconstruction
  • Assemblage and Methods of Construction Across the Arts
  • Visualisation in the History of Art – Diagrams, Schemes, Plans
  • Disciplinarity, Interpretation and Resistance

 


Courses Taught in 2010-11


BA1/Diploma: Italian Altarpieces of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Events and Research Projects Organised at The Courtauld


The Clever Object Research Project (co-organised)  (2009 – 2010)

Research Project sponsored by the Research Forum. Bringing together art historians from different fields, from Europe and the US, this inter-institutional project seeks to enhance original collaborative scholarship on objects and their modes of cleverness, exploring and defining the category of the “clever object” as a tool of art-historical interpretation for scholars working across the discipline. Further information.

The Material Life of Things Research Project (2010 – 2011)

Research Project sponsored by the Research Forum. Drawing together researchers from different areas of expertise including curators and conservators, this research project aims to explore the material lives of artefacts in a variety of media, encouraging object-based, methodological and theoretical discussions relating to the shifting relationship between artefacts, people and environments throughout the life history of particular objects or classes of objects. Further information.


Frank Davis Lecture Series: Resistance and Interpretation: Disciplinary Perspective
(2011)

This series proposes a range of ways of approaching the specific resistance found in objects of enquiry, calling attention to the ways in which contemporary scholarship attends to the conditions that set up resistances with respect to disciplinary investigation. Distinguished scholars from different disciplinary traditions are invited to consider how the notion of resistance is dealt with in their field of research and reflect on the ways in which material and cultural factors inhibit or disturb smooth assimilation of artefacts and cultural activities into theory and predetermined categories of interpretation. Speakers include: Peter Burke, Tim Ingold, Peter Steward, Miguel Tamem and Christopher Wood.
Further information.

 


publications


In Preparation

“Aleardino’s Glass” (8000 words)

“The Interior of the Basilica del Santo in Padua and its Decoration Before Donatello” (10000 words)

“Accountancy and Accountability: The Commissioning, Making and Appropriation of the Fifteenth-Century Reliquary of the Tongue of St Anthony of Padua from the Basilica del Santo” (10000 words)

Recent/Forthcoming


Cover: Henrietta Simson, Where Jason Sowed the Dragon's Teeth, oil on panel, 2009

"Things that Are Not There. Crafting Nature, Making History” in Art and Nature: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, Immediations Conference Papers No. 1, edited by Laura Cleaver, Kathryn Gerry and Jim Harris (London, 2009)

“Face, Counterface, Counterfeit. The Lost Silver Visage of the Reliquary of St. Anthony’s Jawbone” in Meaning in Motion. Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by G. Freni and N. Zchomelidse (Princeton University Press, Forthcoming, 2010)

“The Making of a Legend. The Reliquary of the Tongue and the Representation of St Anthony of Padua as a Preacher” in Franciscan Preaching, edited by T. J. Johnson (Brill, Forthcoming, 2010)

“Circolazione di reliquie e committenza di reliquiari al Santo nel primo Quattrocento” in Cultura arte e committenza al Santo nel Quattrocento, edited by G. Baldissin Molli and L. Bertazzo (Padua, Forthcoming, 2010)