Rachel Healy
Title
Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution
Trinity College Dublin
Current Research
PhD thesis UCD (2024): "Portraits of Giorgio Cornaro and his Heirs:Resolving issues of Identity, Authorship and Patronage in Renaissance Venice".
This project builds on Healy's recent identification of an early sixteenth-century painting in the National Gallery of Ireland as containing rare portraits of Giorgio Cornaro (c.1452-1527, brother of Caterina, Queen of Cyprus) and his son Cardinal Francesco (1478-1543). It attempts to resolve similar long-standing confusion regarding the identities of sitters in related works by Titian and his workshop, the Cornaro Triple Portrait in Washington DC and Man with a Falcon in Nebraska. In so doing, it will cast new light on Titian’s development as a portraitist and the extent to which important paintings commissioned by the Cornaro survived fires at two family palaces in Venice in the 1530s. An eighteenth-century painted Cornaro Family Tree will also be discussed as a long-overlooked tool for identifying these and other sitters in disputed portraits of one of renaissance Venice’s wealthiest and most influential patrician families.
This project builds on Healy's recent identification of an early sixteenth-century painting in the National Gallery of Ireland as containing rare portraits of Giorgio Cornaro (c.1452-1527, brother of Caterina, Queen of Cyprus) and his son Cardinal Francesco (1478-1543). It attempts to resolve similar long-standing confusion regarding the identities of sitters in related works by Titian and his workshop, the Cornaro Triple Portrait in Washington DC and Man with a Falcon in Nebraska. In so doing, it will cast new light on Titian’s development as a portraitist and the extent to which important paintings commissioned by the Cornaro survived fires at two family palaces in Venice in the 1530s. An eighteenth-century painted Cornaro Family Tree will also be discussed as a long-overlooked tool for identifying these and other sitters in disputed portraits of one of renaissance Venice’s wealthiest and most influential patrician families.
Recent Publications
'Three Men & an Abbey: The Cornaro Triple Portrait', Renaissance Studies, 2025, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/rest.12989
"A Portrait of two Venetian Gentlemen in the National Gallery of Ireland: A Question of Identity", Artefact, (Irish Association of Art Historians, 2016): 35-43.
"A Portrait of two Venetian Gentlemen in the National Gallery of Ireland: A Question of Identity", Artefact, (Irish Association of Art Historians, 2016): 35-43.
Forthcoming Publications
'Giorgio Cornaro & the Cloth of Gold', Source: Notes in the History of Art, 2025.
'Recasting Titian’s Falconer: From Zorzone to Girolamo Cornaro'
'A portrait drawing of Cardinal Marco Cornaro by Raphael?'
'Portraits of Power: Myth and Truth in the Cornaro Family Tree'
'Recasting Titian’s Falconer: From Zorzone to Girolamo Cornaro'
'A portrait drawing of Cardinal Marco Cornaro by Raphael?'
'Portraits of Power: Myth and Truth in the Cornaro Family Tree'