Spotlight on Alumni

(opens in a new window)Dr Rachel Healy received her BA from University College Dublin in 2013, her MA in Art History in 2014. She returned to UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy to undertake her PhD as a Government of Ireland Irish Research Council doctoral scholar, graduating in 2024.

She is now a Research Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin.

Tell us about your time at UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy?

I went to UCD as it was the only university where it was possible to do a BA in Art History and Music at the same time. I loved my time there so much that I came back to do my MA and PhD there too. My MA was in Art History, and the trip to Rome and Venice was life changing – I ended up living and working in Venice for a time. My MA dissertation concerned the previously anonymous sitters in a sixteenth-century Venetian double portrait in the National Gallery of Ireland - a major work in its Renaissance collection. I acted on overlooked documents in the National Gallery of
Ireland which led me to decipher the identity of the sitters as Giorgio and Francesco Cornaro. I subsequently published my findings in Artefact – the peer-reviewed Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians (IAAH). The NGI accepted my identification of the sitters in its portrait and has since relabelled and adapted its public information on the work due to my research. I came back to UCD as an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Scholar to do my PhD research on sixteenth-century Venetian painting, particularly concentrating on the Cornaro family.

Throughout my journey as an undergraduate and postgraduate student at UCD the faculty at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy were always so friendly, encouraging and inspiring – I definitely learned a lot from my time in UCD and it shaped who I am today.

What did you do after you left UCD?

After completing my PhD, I lectured in University College Dublin, University College Cork and The Red Door Gallery, as well as working in a number of auction houses around Dublin. Currently I am lecturing at Champlain College, and at Trinity College Dublin where I am a Research Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History of Art and Architecture where I am continuing my research on the sixteenth-century Venetian Cornaro family as patrons.

What is the relationship between the study and research you engaged in at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy?

As part of my postdoctorate, I have written up a number of articles to showcase the findings from my PhD thesis, Portraits of Giorgio Cornaro and his Heirs: Resolving issues of Identity, Authorship and Patronage in Renaissance Venice and Beyond which presented a connoisseurial analysis and comparison of Cornaro portraits in relation to the under-utilized seventeenth-century painted Cornaro Family Tree. I am now in the process of writing a monograph related to my work. The study presents a new appreciation of a key historical actor, and the founding figure of the dynasty, Giorgio Cornaro (1454-1527). The monograph reveals the dynastic ambitions of the Cornaro family and traces how individual members were continually responsible for projecting their power and wealth through art, sculpture and architecture. Individual Cornaro careers and their associations with artists and architects are addressed in what will be the first extensive survey of major members of the Cornaro family from the first half of the sixteenth century. Overall, the monograph involves a case study of a family with immense religious and political significance in sixteenth-century Venice, with the ultimate aim of redefining the Cornaro family as leading patrons of the arts in the sixteenth-century Venetian cultural landscape.

If you could offer one piece of advice to current students what would it be?

The harder you work, the luckier you get!