Théo de Luca

Théo de Luca is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art at Yale University. His dissertation, advised by Professor Nicola Suthor, reexamines the work of Nicolas Poussin, the seventeenth-century French painter who made Rome his lifelong home.

Educated in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Théo received a B.A. in History of Art and Archaeology with a minor in Aesthetics from the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne, following his years of Lettres Supérieures and Première Supérieure at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux. He went on to earn a Master 1 in Arts, Literature, and Languages from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and an M.A. in History of Art with Distinction from University College London (UCL), where he studied with Professor Briony Fer.

At Yale, Théo has been awarded the Berthe Corr and James Corr Memorial Fellowship (2021–2022, 2023–2024), and he serves as a Graduate Fellow at the European Studies Council, MacMillan Center. In 2023, he pursued dissertation research at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich while continuing his study of German at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, with support from the Max Kade Foundation. That same year, he was the Daniel Arasse Fellow at both the École Française de Rome and the Académie de France in Rome – Villa Medici.

Before he came to Yale, Théo’s first book was published by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in Cologne and launched at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. A New Spirit in Painting, 1981: On Being an Antimodern reassesses the historic exhibition through a critical essay and thematic interviews with key figures, including Georg Baselitz, Sir Norman Rosenthal, and Sir Nicholas Serota.

Alongside his work on early modern European painting and ancient, Renaissance, and Baroque Rome, Théo maintains an active dialogue with contemporary art, reflecting on how painters engage with the art historical past. His writings and interviews have appeared widely in publications on American and European artists such as Georg Baselitz, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Claire Tabouret. Most recently, he contributed a full-length essay to the catalogue published by Thames & Hudson with the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, for the museum’s 2025 David Hockney exhibition. Further information about his publications is available on his website.