Art History Doctoral Student Receives Grants to Conduct Research in Europe

Megan Neely, Art History PhD candidate, was recently awarded both the Lamar Dodd School of Art Andrew Ladis European Travel Award and the University of Georgia’s Graduate School Summer Research Travel Grant. The funds allowed Neely to travel in the summer of 2018 to study works by the Venetian artist Titian in the Czech Republic, Austria, and the United Kingdom. In particular, these funds allowed Neely to visit Kroměříž, where Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas, the focus of her dissertation, is held in the collection of the Olomouc Archbishopric.

Neely’s research investigates the Marsyas’ meaning in the broader treatment of Titian’s oeuvre, linking poetry, punishment, and artistic identity. Titian is often discussed as a painter of poems, using Ovid’s Metamorphoses as inspiration for many of his mythological subjects—including those for the Habsburg family. Neely was able to see many of these works to establish how Titian used these poesie, or painted poems, to elevate his social status and manipulate his biographical mythos in the history of art.