Charlene Vella from the Department of History of Art at the University of Malta, was awarded her Ph.D. degree on Monday 18 July at a graduation ceremony held at the University of Warwick. Dr Vella successfully defended her thesis on 13 January 2016. Her external examiner was Emeritus Professor Peter Humfrey, a renowned and acclaimed specialist art historian on Renaissance art in Venice.
Dr Vella commenced her Ph.D. at the University of Warwick in October 2011, where she attended both the Coventry campus as well as the University鈥檚 base in Venice at the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava. Her Ph.D. research was carried out under the tutelage of Dr Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge), and researched the followers of Antonello da Messina - Antonio and Pietro de Saliba, and Salvo d鈥橝ntonio, among others - and their work in Venice, Eastern Sicily, Calabria, Malta and beyond.
This meant that Dr Vella carried out her research in the Veneto, Umbria, Marche, and Sicilian regions of Italy, as well as libraries in London. She also visited several museums around Europe and the United States in order to have first hand knowledge of the paintings being studied.
Dr Vella will be publishing several research papers on topics pertaining to her Ph.D. in local and foreign academic journals.
Charlene Vella is the author of The Mediterranean Artistic Context of Late Medieval Malta: 1091-1530 (Midsea Books, 2013).
