The following provides a very brief outline of some projects I’m currently working on.
Art and Inequality
I am currently Research Associate on the UKRI-funded ‘Art and Inequality in the Post-Black Death Century’ project, led by PI Prof. Samuel Cohn at the University of Glasgow.
Find out more here.
Re-materialising the Wax Ex-Voto
This is the subject of my first monograph (under contract with De Gruyter). While there is an existing body of literature on votive gifts, this book reorientates the study of wax ex-votos by exploring them along the lines of research on other artworks. Thus, it focuses on the practical aspects of their material, manufacture, commission, purchase and use, in order to explore the meanings, functions and visual evolution of wax ex-votos.
Linked to this is a broader project to re-evaluate the place of wax sculpture in the wider visual arts of fifteenth-century Florence. There is a digital humanities project associated with this research.
Visualising Monastic Genealogies in Renaissance Florence
This project considers the different types of self-representation used by Florentine monastic orders in painted works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and uses case studies to assess conjunctions between circumstances of patronage, order politics and the iconography deployed.
Dr Louisa McKenzie 