Eckart Marchand

Bio

Eckart Marchand joined the Warburg Institute in 2008. Before that, he was Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art at the University of Reading (2003-2007). He also taught in the History of Art Department at UCL (1998-2003), was Director of the UCL History of Art Summer School (2003) and taught in the Department of Continuing Education at City University London (1995-2001, 2008-09). 

At the Warburg Institute Eckart was Assistant Archivist from 2008 to 2024 and from 2014 to 2023 he was part of the International Research Project ‘Bilderfahrzeuge: The Legacy of Aby Warburg and the Future of Iconology’, funded by the German Federal Government.  

Research

Eckart studied History of Art at Berlin, Bonn, and Basel where he obtained his PhD on the representation of gestures in fifteenth-century paintings of saints, famous men and in portraiture. This research engaged with issues such as patronage, the status of the artist, requirements of devotional practices, and patterns of pictorial composition. It is published as "Gebärden in der Florentiner Malerei: Studien zur Charakterisierung von Heiligen, Uomini Famosi und Zeitgenossen im Quattrocento" (Münster 2004).

Presently Eckart 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 rôle of the Bâtiments du Roi), and 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.

During his work in the Warburg Institute Archive, Eckart has also published on Aby Warburg with a particular focus on Warburg’s engagement with image reproduction and displays. 

Publications

Articles

‘The beginnings of cartapesta and papier mâché: Material choices, recipes, and makers in Italy and Germany’, Sculpture Journal, 33/3, 2024, 323-353

‘“The best laid schemes ...”: The politics of the Universal Museum and the vicissitudes of their plaster cast collections at the turn of the twentieth century’, in Miriam Szőcs and Márton Tóth, eds, Casting a New Light: Plaster Casts & Cast Collections in Europe and Beyond, Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, 2024, pp. 12–25. 

‘Aby Warburg and the Volksheim exhibitions of 1902 and 1905’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 164, no. 1429, April 2022, pp. 362-373. 

‘Apostles of Good Taste? The Use and Perception of Plaster Casts in the Enlightenment’, Journal of Art Historiography, 25, December 2021, 16 pp., https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/marchand.pdf 

‘“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

‘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