University of Edinburgh

Faculty Member, History of Art

Senior Lecturer, Italian Renaissance Art History

Arts, Culture and Environment

About

I am a specialist in the visual culture of the Italian renaissance and currently working on a number of projects - including an edited book that attempts to provoke a rethinking of the "high" renaissance, and a book about nakedness and the development of the artistic nude in renaissance Italy. I'm also interested in considering contemporary applications of knowledge about the Renaissance; and the relationship between the visual arts, body image and ideology in particular. As part of this last interest, I'm currently part of a project investigating renaissance cosmetics - see http://sites.ace.ed.ac.uk/renaissancecosmetics/
There's more about the work I'm doing at the moment, and various musings about renaissance art on my research blog - http://renresearch.wordpress.com/

Talks coming up:

Saturday 10th March
'The pitfalls of genius: Leonardo and his frustrated patrons'. Birmingham Art Gallery - Part of the Exploring Leonardo study day to accompany the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition

Thursday, 22nd March, 8:30am - 10:00am. Paper in panel in honour of Bill Kent at the 2012 Renaissance Society of America conference in Washington:
'The “Prince of the Crazies”: Fra Mariano Fetti, Humor, and Self-Invention in the Early Sixteenth Century'

I'm also convening two panels on renaissance cosmetics in the Renaissance later the same day - 3pm-6.15. For more info search the RSA programme at http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/rsa/rsa12/

Contact Information