A University of Texas at Dallas art historian has received a grant from the Getty Foundation to study a 14th-century panel painting that could provide insights into the devotional use of such art, as well as female patronage.
Dr. Sarah Kozlowski, clinical assistant professor of art history and associate director of the UT Dallas Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History (EODIAH), will study the “Diptych of Delphine de Signe,” which is housed at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The Getty Foundation’s $3,000 grant will allow Kozlowski to spend more than two weeks at the museum in February.
“Sitting down with conservators and conservation scientists at the Getty will help me understand more about the physical condition of this object — how it was held, touched, manipulated and used,” she said. “That’s where the magic happens for me as an art historian.”
Kozlowski, who is also the director of EODIAH’s Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples, Italy, said the “Diptych of Delphine de Signe” likely was created around 1340 in Naples by a workshop of painters who worked in Naples and Genoa. The piece consists of two panels, held together with hinges, and features painting on the front as well as the reverse side. She said it is among relatively few surviving examples of panel painting from Naples.
In addition to studying how the piece was folded, shown and transported, Kozlowski is interested in the patronage that allowed the piece to be created.
“It’s kind of a confluence of things — an object that seems to be a painting but not a painting, in a folding format, with a female patron, and the fact that it traveled from Italy to southern France,” she said.
Kozlowski’s research focuses on late medieval and Renaissance Naples in its broader geographic and cultural contexts, exploring how artworks’ mobilities, materialities and formats generate meaning.
The article above is a truncated version of a longer article by the Office of Media Relations, which originally appeared in the UT Dallas News Center.