Ang Li

Research Topic

Foregrounding the Background of Italian Renaissance Painting, c.1450 - c.1550

Supervisor: Geraldine Johnson

Ang Li is a D.Phil candidate in Italian Renaissance art and architecture, with a focus on the theory and practice of painting of the Quattrocento and early Cinquecento. His doctoral thesis, entitled 'Foregrounding the Background in Italian Renaissance Painting of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries', will provide a previously unavailable critical understanding of the reasons for diverse choices of backgrounds in Italian Renaissance paintings roughly between 1450 and 1550. In order to complement previous selective approaches focusing on one key type of painted or gilded background, the current thesis will adopt a broader approach by looking at a range of backgrounds of various types individually and inter-connectedly, including gold grounds, monochromatic grounds, landscapes, architectural vistas and textile backgrounds. It will complicate our understanding of the teleology from gold grounds to painted backgrounds in Italian Renaissance paintings by considering in turn a variety of such backgrounds in the period in question. His doctoral research is supported by Inger Lawrance Prize, China Oxford Scholarship Fund, GBCET, Isaiah Berlin Scholarship and CSC. Beyond his dissertation, Ang is generally interested in the beholder, meaning, reflexivity, temporality and materiality of Italian Renaissance art. Before coming to Oxford, he held a BA from Zheda and did two MSc degrees in Early Modern Studies and History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.