History of Art PhD Students

Take a look at what our current History of Art PhD students are researching.

Vivien Bird

Research topic: Richard Payne Knight (1751-1824): Antiquarian, Collector, Connoisseur (working title)

Vivien’s special interests include the reception of antiquity, the history of art and collections (art and antiquities), the history of taste and aesthetic theory, the history of antiquarian scholarship and numismatics, and the Age of Enlightenment. She is currently working on a PhD thesis on the collecting and scholarly activities of the antiquarian, numismatist, classical scholar, collector and art connoisseur Richard Payne Knight (1751-1824). Prior to embarking on her PhD research, she was the Anne Christopherson Fellow in the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings (2018), where she developed her interest in Richard Payne Knight and his collection of drawings and antiquities. She is a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art (BA, 2014) and Birkbeck College, University of London (MA, 2016). Her PhD supervisors are Dr Adriano Aymonino and Sir Nicholas Penny.

Publications

  • Review of Bernhard Woytek and Daniela Williams (eds), Ars Critica Numaria: Joseph Eckhel and the Transformation of Ancient Numismatics (London: The Royal Numismatic Society, 2023)
  • Richard Payne Knight as a Numismatist and Coin Collector (forthcoming)
  • Richard Payne Knight as a Collector of Drawings (working title, forthcoming)

Conferences

  • ‘The Enlightenment Gallery’ academic poster at the conference Displaying the British Museum: Past, Present, Future, 20-21 February 2025, The British Museum.

Upcoming talks

  • Royal Numismatic Society Lecture, 18 March 2025: ‘Coin Collectors, Art Connoisseurs, and the Development of Greek Numismatics 1764-1830’ (Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD)
  • Society for the History of Collecting Seminar, 2 June 2025: ‘Richard Payne Knight (1751-1824) as Collector: Antiquarianism and Connoisseurship in the Age of Enlightenment’ (working title) (time and venue TBC)

Albertina Ciani

Albertina CianiAlbertina holds a BA in Cultural Heritage from the University of Turin and received her Masters in History of Art from the Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna. Her final dissertation was focused on the Piedmontese sculptures of Baron Carlo Marochetti, for which she attended an internship at the Royal Collection of the Castello Ducale d’Agliè (2020/2021).

Albertina’s PhD research focuses on the analysis of the British sculptural production of Italian artists in the second half of the nineteenth century, beginning from the activity of Baron Carlo Marochetti (1805-1867) and Raffaele Monti (1818-1881). The two artists’ different and multifaceted prolific activities are an ideal lens to investigate the various trends in Victorian sculpture and their relationship with official patronage and innovative industry.

Her thesis aims at studying the production of public and private sculpture in mid-Victorian Britain from the point of view of the social history of art. Her goal is to investigate how the British milieu of second half of the nineteenth century influenced and changed the sculptural production of the Italian émigrés and, vice-versa, how the peculiar characteristics of these émigrés impacted on the production of sculpture in Britain in the age of the Empire and diffusion of public celebratory sculpture.