Dr Ben Thomas

Associate Professor in History of Renaissance Art

Research interests

I am an art historian and curator. My research focuses principally on the art of the Italian Renaissance, although I have also published on a wide range of topics including seventeenth-century prints, nineteenth-century sculpture, and modern and contemporary art. In 2017, I co-curated with Catherine Whistler the award-winning exhibition Raphael: The Drawings at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which was described by The Financial Times as ‘a game-changing presentation of graphic art’. I am also keenly interested in the historiography of art and, in particular, in the art historian Edgar Wind and his relationship with the iconographical tradition founded by Aby Warburg.

As a curator, I have worked with many leading contemporary artists including: Art & Language, John Blackburn, Stephen Chambers RA, Paul Coldwell, Stephen Farthing RA, Marcelle Hanselaar, Rose Hilton, Junko Theresa Mikuriya, Humphrey Ocean RA, Ana Maria Pacheco, Marcus Rees Roberts, and Richard Rome.

I am currently working on two books: Multiple Histories: Episodes in the History of Printmaking, and The Descent of Memory: Darwin, Westwood, Butler and Warburg.

Selected publications and exhibitions

Poetry & Magic: Celebrating Anita Seppilli, Italian Cultural Institute in London, 2023
Edgar Wind and Modern Art: In Defence of Marginal Anarchy, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020
Raphael: Drawing and Eloquence, edited with Catherine Whistler, Accademia Raffaello, 2020
Humphrey Ocean, Royal Academy of Arts, 2019
Drawing Together, The Courtauld Gallery, 2017
Raphael: The Drawings, with Catherine Whistler, Ashmolean Museum, 2017
‘“The Child is father of the man”: Alfred Drury and temporality’, Sculpture Journal, 24, 1, 2015, pp. 55-72
‘Disegno’ in Renaissance Keywords, edited by Ita Mac Carthy, Legenda, 2013, pp. 30-44
‘John Evelyn’s Project of Translation’, Art in Print, 2, 4, 2012, pp. 28-34

Teaching

For undergraduate programmes, I contribute to a wide range of modules at Freshman level and offer the Junior Sophister option The Art of the Renaissance and the Senior Sophister option Multiple Histories: The Print in Early Modern Europe.

I welcome PhD proposals and applications within the following areas of research: