Congratulations to Aaron Thom on his recent, successful PhD viva! Aaron defended his research, "Caravaggism in Rome and Naples: Case Studies in Connoisseurship", which was supervised by Mr John Gash.
Aaron's thesis deals with some infrequently studied followers of the revolutionary Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610). Investigations pertaining to many of Caravaggio's followers are still in their infancy; as attribution and dating are inherent problems in this field, the art of Caravaggio and his followers is intrinsically linked to matters of connoisseurship. Through case-study analyses, Aaron's research explores the authorship of paintings by selected Caravaggists working in Rome and Naples, mainly in the two decades following Caravaggio's death.