My thesis will examine the patronage of the Loredan family in Venice and the terraferma in the early sixteenth century. Immortalised in paint by Giovanni Bellini, Doge Leonardo Loredan (1436-1521) is one of the most recognisable figures of Renaissance Italy, and yet his role as a patron of the arts at this seminal period in Venetian art history remains largely unexplored. Still more can be said about the array of artistic projects undertaken for the Doge’s wider family, which often overlapped with those overseen by Leonardo. Encompassing the public and the private, the official, religious and the dynastic, Loredan patronage will be shown to have been an extensive, thoroughly interconnected project, one that involved almost every major artist working in Venice in the early sixteenth century.
I have returned to the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum as curator for a show on Michelangelo, which opened in 2024.
Professional Experience
2022-: The Milein Cosman Curator, Late Michelangelo, British Museum
2018-21: Getty Curatorial Fellow, Old Master Drawings, British Museum
2015-18: Prints and Drawings, British Library
Publications
BOOKS:
Michelangelo: the last decades, British Museum Press, 2024 (with S. Vowles).
ARTICLES/CATALOGUE CONTRIBUTIONS:
‘Roman Prints in Renaissance England’ (in progress).
‘A draughtsman rediscovered: the workshop archive of Raffaello Vanni (1595-1673)’ (in progress).
5 entries on drawings by and after Domenico Beccafumi, in G. Metze ed., Catalogue of Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in Dresden (in progress).
17 entries in A. Bisceglia et al, Titian’s Flora: Venetian Painting from the Uffizi Galleries, exh. cat., Bund One Museum, Shanghai, 2024, pp. 38-9, 40-1, 46-7, 54-5, 70-1, 72-3, 80-1, 90-1, 92-3, 96-7, 98-9, 100-1, 110-1, 112-3, 122-3, 134-5.
‘Handel’s Art Collection’, Apollo, vol. 197, May 2023, pp. 70-5.
‘Tre nuovi disegni di Francesco Vanni per la “Caduta di Simon Mago” in Vaticano’, in M. Ciampolini ed., Francesco Rustici e il Naturalismo a Siena (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2023), pp. 49-58.
Three entries: ‘Progetto per brocca’, ‘Progetto per pinza da tavola’ and ‘Progetto per saliera’ in B. Furlotti and G. Rebecchini eds, Giulio Romano. La forza delle cose, exh. cat., Palazzo Te, Mantua (Venice: Marsilio, 2022), pp. 114-7, 122-3, 124-5.
Two entries: “Study for the Madonna of the Long Neck” and “Study for the Entombment/The Entombment” in K. Gottardo and G. Rebecchini eds, The Art of Experiment: Parmigianino at The Courtauld, exh. cat., Courtauld Gallery (London: Paul Holberton, 2022), pp. 72-7 and 126-31.
‘Bernardino Poccetti as Collector’, with A. Röstel, in A. Diéguez and A. Rodriguez Rebollo eds, The Pictor Doctus, between Knowledge and Workshop. Artists, Collections and Friendship in Europe, 1500-1900 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 47-75.
REVIEWS:
Review of P. Humfrey ed., ‘Titian, Themes and Variations’, Burlington Magazine (forthcoming).
Review of ‘Giorgio Vasari’s Drawings: A Mythical Collection’, Paris, Louvre and Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Apollo, vol. 197, January 2023, pp. 98-9.
Other Recent Exhibition Projects
Superb Line: Prints and Drawings from Genoa, 1500-1800, with Hugo Chapman, British Museum, Gallery 90, October 2023-April 2024.
Venice 1500: Jacopo de’ Barbari and the rise of printmaking, British Museum, Gallery 90a, 23 January – 4 June 2023.
Public Lectures
‘The Value of Drawing in Renaissance Italy’, London Art History Society, 2024.
‘Michelangelo, Architect’, Friends of Kenwood House Lecture, 2024.
‘Michelangelo’s Last Drawings’, Clare Hall, Cambridge, 2024.
‘Michelangelo’s Last Drawings’, London Art Week, 2024.
‘Curators’ introduction to Michelangelo: the last decades’, British Museum, 2024 (with S. Vowles).
‘Drawn to Malta: Mattia Preti’s Thinking on Paper’, National Museum of Malta, 2023.
‘Parmigianino Drawings at the British Museum’, Courtauld Institute, 2021.
Select conference papers
‘Drawing as performance in sixteenth-century Italy’, Courtauld Gallery, 2022.
‘A fresh look at Parmigianino: the use of blind stylus’, Renaissance Society of America, 2022.
‘A baroque draughtsman rediscovered: the workshop archive of Raffaello Vanni’, Renaissance Society of America, 2021.
‘Charles I’s collection of prints and drawings’, Royal Academy/Paul Mellon Centre, 2018.
‘Visual knowledge and the Grand Tour: the collection of Walter Bowman’, Institute for Historical Research, University of London, 2018.
University Teaching
Courtauld Institute
2022-: Guest lecturer for MA courses: ‘Reframing Renaissance Art from Masaccio to Michelangelo’ and ‘Versions of Antiquity in Renaissance Venice, ca. 1470-1550’.
Guest lecturer, BA Year 3 course: ‘Inventing Michelangelo: Drawing, Painting, Sculpture and the Myth of the Artist’.
Cambridge University
2022-: Guest lecturer, dissertation supervisor, MSt History of Art.
2018-21: Supervisor and lecturer, Part II undergraduate BA course: ‘Drawing in Renaissance Italy, c. 1480-1600’.
Media
Interviews for BBC Radio; Reuters; London Live.
My favourite Michelangelo books: ‘An expert’s guide to Michelangelo: five must-read books on the Renaissance Old Master’, The Art Newspaper, June 2024, p. 69.
Research interests
- Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art
- Patronage
- Prints and Drawings
- The History of Collecting
- The Visual Arts in Britain, c. 1500-1800 (especially in Scotland)
- Artistic Exchanges between Britain and Italy
Other
Editorial Board, L’idea: testi, contesti, fonti e lessico, Accademia delle Belle Arti, Rome (2024-).
Education
MPhil – Cantab.
MA – Corpus Christi College, Cambridge