Eckart Marchand

Bio

Eckart Marchand studied History of Art at the Universities of Berlin, Bonn, and Basel, where he completed his PhD in 2000. He was Occasional Student at the Warburg Institute from 1993 to 1997 part-time lecturer at City University from 1995 to 2000. He also taught in the History of Art Department at UCL (1998-99, 2001-03), and was Director of the UCL History of Art Summer School (2003). From 2003 to 2007 he was Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art at the University of Reading. He joined the Warburg Institute Archive in 2008 and was Acting Archivist in 2010/11. Eckart also contributed to the edition of Vol. III.1 (Lectures and Essays) of Aby Warburg's Gesammelte Schriften (forthcoming) and, from 2014 to 2023, was a member of the Project ‘Bilderfahrzeuge: The Legacy of Aby Warburg and the Future of Iconology’.  

Research

For his doctorate, Eckart studied the representation of gestures in fifteenth-century paintings of saints, famous men and in portraiture, engaging with issues such as patronage, the status of the artist, requirements of devotional practices, and patterns of pictorial composition. This research has been published as "Gebärden in der Florentiner Malerei: Studien zur Charakterisierung von Heiligen, Uomini Famosi und Zeitgenossen im Quattrocento" (Münster 2004).

Presently he is working on the use of plaster casts in artists’ workshops from 1400 to ca. 1800, looking at Renaissance Italy, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France (with a particular interest in the role of the Bâtiments du Roi), and at British late eighteenth century sculptors in the context of the Grand Tour. In this context he has also edited several journals and sketchbooks of the British Neoclassical sculptor John Flaxman for the 2010 volume of the Walpole Society.

Having worked for years in the Warburg Institute Archive, Eckart has also published on Aby Warburg with a particular focus on Warburg’s engagement with the reproduction and display of images in two and three dimensions. 

Publications

Articles

‘Aby Warburg on Plaster Casts’, Sculpture Journal, 28/3, 2019, 397-407.

‘“Plaster of Paris” and Italian Formatori’, in Lucy Wrapson, Victoria Sutcliffe and Spike Bucklow, eds, Migrants: art, artists, materials and ideas crossing borders, Cambridge: Archetype Press, 2019, pp. 154-165.

‘The Materials of Ephemeral Sculpture in Renaissance Italy’ in The Art and Language of Power in Renaissance Florence: Essays for Alison Brown, edited by Amy Bloch, Luca Boschetto, Carolyn James, and Camilla Russell, (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies: Essays and Studies 42); Toronto, 2019, pp. 251-269.

‘Image and Thing: The distribution and impact of plaster casts in Renaissance Europe’, Sculpture Journal 26/1 (2017), 83-91

‘The Flaxman Gallery and the Rôle of Plaster Casts in the Workshop of John Flaxman 1755-1826’ in: M. Guderzo, ed., Il Valore del Gesso: Modello, Calco, Copia per la Realizzazione della Scultura, Possagno 2017, 311- 322

‘Artist and Grand Tourist: John Flaxman’s Italian Journals and Sketchbooks’ in T. Macsotay, ed., Antiquity Multiplied. Rome as a European Sculpture Workshop (1770-1820), Aldershot 2017, pp.179-95

‘Material Distinctions: Plaster, Terracotta, and Wax in the Renaissance artist’s workshop’ in C. Anderson, A. Dunlop and P. Smith, eds, The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750, Manchester 2014, pp. 160-179

‘His Master’s Voice: Painted Inscriptions in the Work of Domenico Ghirlandaio’, Artibus et historiae, 66, 2012, pp. 99-120

Books:

Gebärden in der Florentiner Malerei. Studien zur Charakterisierung von Heiligen, Uomini Famosi und Zeitgenossen im Quattrocento, Lit Verlag, Münster 2004

Co-authored volumes:

H. Brigstocke, E. Marchand and A. E. Wright, John Flaxman and William Young Ottley in Italy, (Walpole Society 72 (2010))

Edited volumes:

Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchand (eds), Plaster Casts: making, collecting and display, (Transformationen der Antike, 18) Berlin 2010

Eckart Marchand and Alison Wright (eds), With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage, 1434-1530, Ashgate Publishers, Aldershot 1998