I am a specialist in early modern art histories and material cultures of the body. Prior to joining the Courtauld, I taught for three years as a faculty member at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich while simultaneously working as a research associate in the director’s office at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. I have also held extended research positions at the Warburg Institute in London and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence.
My work examines how images and objects shaped the ways that bodies, behaviors, and experiences were understood, fashioned, and politicized in the global early modern. In so doing, I explore a broad notion of art history beyond the traditional canon that embraces interdisciplinary and critical methodologies. Currently, I am finalizing a monograph based on my doctoral thesis about early modern armor – awarded with the Zentralinstitut’s Applied Arts Prize – that deals with the interplay of military material culture and humanist body politics, thus embedding armor within contemporary medical, pedagogical, political, and colonial discourses. I am also interested in the histories of prosthetics and more generally the dialogue between art history and disability studies as examined, for instance, in a co-edited volume on Dis_ability Art History and an upcoming article on Aby Warburg’s engagement with physical disability.
My second book project, tentatively titled Early Modern Art Histories of the Mind, seeks to address art’s ability to promote analytic engagement with the self – a shift that, in my reading, anticipated “modern” psychological practices. Leading up to this new topic, I have been exploring the roles of artworks in the hypnotist practices of Jean-Martin Charcot as well as in the consultation room setting of Sigmund Freud. I am also preparing a co-edited volume on the concept of the apotropaic as a means of negotiating art’s affect and emotional impact.
In addition, I am engaging with the legacies of East German Marxist art history, in a co-edited special issue of Selva as well as ongoing projects.
Interests
- early modern visual and material cultures
- body histories and disability studies
- art and psychology
- legal imagery
- history of art history
Teaching
- BA1: Early Modern Histories of Art
- BA3: Lessons in Critical Interpretation
- BA3: The Shape of Thought: Art and Knowledge in the Early Modern Period
- MA Special Option: Violent Materials: Art and War in the Early Modern World
- MA Special Option: Body and Experience in Renaissance Art (with Dr Robert Brennan and Professor Guido Rebecchini)
PhD Supervision
- Saskia Jordan: A Baby Dressed in Brocade and Pearls: The Christ Child Statue in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Anna Carrarini: Paduan Renaissance Bronzes at the V&A: Exploring New Critical Approaches, co-supervised with Guido Rebecchini, as well as Rachel Boyd and Kira d’Alburquerque, V&A
Publications
Monographs
Die Ungestalten des Souveräns: Rüstungskunst und Körperpolitik der Renaissance. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2027 [in preparation].
Edited Volumes
East German Art History and Global Marxisms = Selva 5 (with Tamara Golan), URL: https://selvajournal.org/issue/five, 2024.
Dis_ability Art History = kritische berichte 48, no. 4 (with Henry Kaap), Ilmtal-Weinstraße: Jonas, 2020.
Bilder als Denkformen: Bildwissenschaftliche Dialoge zwischen Japan und Deutschland (with Yasuhiro Sakamoto and Jun Tanaka), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.
Articles
“Iconological Prosthesis: Aby Warburg and Physical Disability.” In: Words for Disability Art History, ed. Jess Bailey et al. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2027 [under review].
“Suggestive Materials: Constructing Cure in Freud’s Collection.” In: Bildersammlungen als Denkmaterial: Materialismen, Realismen, Kunst (1900–1960), ed. Carolin Behrmann and Steffen Haug. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2026 [forthcoming].
“Electrified: Jean-Martin Charcot and the Iconography of Light in Hypnotism.” In: Leonardo, 59, no. 3 (2026), 226-233.
“Disability ex Machina: Federico da Montefeltro und die Plattenrüstung als Anpassungstechnologie,” in: KörperZeiten: Narrative, Praktiken und Medien, ed. Manuel Bolz, Fabian Röderer and Constanze Wallenstein, Berlin: Reimer, 2023, 35-58.
“Diplomatie des Spotts: Maximilian I., Heinrich VIII. und der “Hörnerhelm,” in: Maximilian1: Festkultur am Innsbrucker Hof, ed. Monika Frenzel, Innsbruck: Wagner, 2023, 135-143.
“The Prince’s Prosthetic Body: Orthopedic Armor and Material Self-Fashioning in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” in: The Art Bulletin 105, no. 3 (2023), 61–89.
“Zur Sichtbarkeit des Rechtsstaats in der Krise” (with Carolin Behrmann and Leva Wenzel), in: Politische Ikonographie Heute = kritische berichte 30, no. 3, ed. Henry Kaap, Ilmtal-Weinstraße: Jonas, 2022, 59–66.
“Maniera und Shizen: Zum deutsch-japanischen Dialog über Bilder,” in: Bilder als Denkformen: Bildwissenschaftliche Dialoge zwischen Japan und Deutschland, ed. Yasuhiro Sakamoto, Felix Jäger and Jun Tanaka, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 167–173.
“Kunshu no Hotetsuteki Shintai: Jyūroku Seiki ni Okeru Katchu Kaibōgaku Geijutsu” [= The Prince’s Prosthetic Body: Armor, Anatomy, and Art in the 16th Century], in: Imējigaku no Genzai: Warburg kara Shinkeikei Imējigaku he, ed. Yasuhiro Sakamoto, Jun Tanaka and Yoshikazu Takemine, Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2019, 175–196.
“Yugami no Seijigaku: Manierisumu to Merankorī no Shōzō” [= The Politics of Deformation: Mannerism and the Melancholy Portrait], in: ibid., 297–317.
“Bodies of Knowledge: Renaissance Armor and the Engineering of Mind,” in: Wearing Images = Espacio, Tiempo y Forma 6, ed. Diane Bodart, Madrid: Facultad de Geografía e Historia, UNED, 2018, 89–118.
“Dialektik der Genauigkeit: Nicolaus Cusanus und Leon Battista Alberti,” in: Bilder der Präzision: Praktiken der Verfeinerung in Technik, Kunst und Wissenschaft, ed. Matthias Bruhn and Sara Hillnhütter, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, 269–281.
“Framing the Law: Joos de Damhouder and the Legal Iconology of the Grotesque,” in: The Art of Law: Artistic Representations and Iconography of Law and Justice, ed. Georges Martyn et al., Cham: Springer, 2018, 223–244.
“Shikou-Keitai to Bunka-Keisyhou to Shite no Imēji” (with Yasuhiro Sakamoto), in: Shinkeikei Jinbungaku = Shi-Sou 1104, Tokyo: Iwanami, 2016, 19–33.
“Sovereign Infamy: Grotesque Helmets, Masks of Shame and the Prehistory of Caricature,” in: Images of Shame: Infamy, Defamation and the Ethics of “oeconomia,” ed. Carolin Behrmann, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, 169–192.
“Le XIXe Siècle vu au Travers de ses Crises,” in: Signes des Temps: Œuvres Visionnaires d’Avant 1914, exhib. cat., ed. Nikola Doll, Brussels: Racine, 2014, 124–135.
“Zergliederungskunst” (with Lena Bader, Judith Berganski and Eva Dolezel), in: Von Mehr als Einer Welt: Die Künste der Aufklärung, exhib. cat., ed. Moritz Wullen, Petersberg: Imhof, 2012, 59–73.