Helen Glanville

Having first read Modern Languages at Somerville College, Oxford went on to train as a conservator of easel paintings at the Courtauld Institute of Art and has been a practicing conservator for 20 years (Agrée au Musée du Louvre et les Musées Régionaux de France). She is fully devoting her time to the research and teaching of technical art-history, specialising in the 16th, 17th centuries in Italy and the 19th century in France and England.

Helen Glanville’s particular research interests are the links between the materials used by the artist, and the perception of these by the beholder, in particular in the 17th century in Italy and France. Research includes data obtained from paintings, as well as research into published and unpublished scientific, literary and musical material. The influence of Leonardo’s observations on the painterly practice and theory in 17th century Italy and France are also areas of research. More generally, the advances in the understanding of neural pathways and colour perception as applied to the cleaning of paintings is very much another active area of research and future publications.

In 2010 she was Invited Guest Scholar of the J.Paul Getty Museum to further her research in these areas, and has received three CHARISMA – Archlab grants to have access to the technical data available on Poussin in the Louvre and the Prado.

She has worked (and published) collaboratively on Titian with the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence and ENEA in Rome, and is currently working on a collaborative article on Caravaggio with the Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg.