I am a EUTOPIA-SIF fellow (Maria Skłodowska-Curie COFUND) based in the Institute of Advanced Studies and the Center for the Study of Renaissance (History Department). My project ‘OLEUM’, Olive Cultivation and Environment in Tuscany in the Early Modern Period proposes a multifaceted investigation into the environmental, artistic, and intellectual history of the olive in the Medici Grand Duchy of Tuscany (1569–1737). The study, provides a historical perspective able to raise awareness of the importance of safeguarding the olive’s heritage and presence in the Mediterranean in the wake of current global climatic, ecological, and economic challenges. I will bring novel insights into a plant intrinsically connected to the construction of the ‘Tuscan’ identity, while highlighting its sensitivity to the climatic fluctuations that already affected this territory during the Early Modern period. In doing so, my work showcases the need for traditionally distinct fields of enquiry such as intellectual, environmental, and art history, to discourse. As part of this fellowship, I will undertake periods of research at the Tuscan Society for Horticulture in Florence and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (co-host).My work on the cultural and visual history of olive tree and oil in sixteenth-century Tuscany was awarded an I Tatti Long-Term Fellowship, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence (Jul. 2023-Jun. 2024); a Frances A Yates Long-Term Fellowship

at the Warburg Institute, London (Oct. 2022-Jun. 2023); and a Post-Graduate Fellowship at the NIKI in Florence (15 Aug.−30 Sep. 2022).

Additionally, I am completing a monograph, entitled Illustrating the Year: The Iconography of the Calendar and its Cultural Impact in Early Modern Northern Italy, which builds upon my doctoral research at Warwick. Combining historical and art-historical approaches, my work investigates the imagery of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century calendars created in Northern Italy, demonstrating the enduring centrality of this theme within the late Renaissance visual culture and society. This research has been supported by a Long-Term Fellow at the Newberry Library, Chicago between Sep. 2021 and May 2022, with the addition of a month at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (Jun.−Jul. 2022). I was awarded a Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award for the forthcoming publication.

In 2019-2020 I was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Warwick Institute of Advanced Studies to examine the illustrations of early-printed farming literature and to recreate a Renaissance vegetable garden for educational purposes on campus. This project expanded my research on Renaissance agricultural literature in the collection of the Newberry Library, for which I received a Charles Montgomery Gray Short-Term Fellowship in the autumn of 2019.

'Athene had seen what the land required.It needed the sound of the wind rustling slender green-silver leaves. It needed an elegant pale trunk, and it needed bright green fruit. In short, it needed us.' Natalie Haynes, 'Stone Blind'.

Email: Anca-Delia.Moldovan@warwick.ac.uk

PhD in History of Art - University of Warwick (UK)

MA in History of Art - University of Florence (IT)

BA in History - University of Bucharest (RO)

Teaching Experience

I have delivered a 2nd-year module on Italian Renaissance Sculpture (HA2C7) in the Department of History of Art (Warwick), during the Spring Term 2019/20. My teaching approach is interdisciplinary and aims at contextualising the artworks within the political, social, cultural, and technological development of Renaissance Florence. The seminar also sought to emphasise the physical qualities of sculpture and to directly engage students with artworks during a field trip to the V&A. I conducted highly dynamic classes, in which I encouraged student participation, by creating both group and individual exercises designed to develop essential analytical, critical and presentational skills.

Research Interests

My research explores the calendrical and agricultural representations during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, principally in Italy, but in relation to other spaces, including the Americas. The central aspects of my work concern timekeeping, Renaissance agriculture and astrology, seasonal, rural, urban, and religious representation, food production and consumption. I am interested in the intersection of artistic representation, science and material culture, the relationship between agriculture and the myth of power, as well as the intertwining between classical knowledge, popular tradition, and Renaissance farming innovation. More broadly, I am fascinated by the transmutation of motifs across time and borders, as well as across different media, including manuscripts and printed materials, paintings, frescoes, tapestries, and decorative arts. My research integrates a systematic, comparative, and interpretative approach to visual sources, to observe how shifts in iconography reflect broader cultural, religious, economic, and political changes.

Publications

‘“Olevum olivarum”: Stradano’s Engraving and the New Art of Olive-Oil Making in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany’, Renaissance Quarterly, 77.2 (2024), forthcoming.

‘From Carnival to Pious City: Scenes of Urban Life in the Bassano Series of the Months’, Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme, special issue: Experiencing the Environment in the Early Modern Period: Seasons, Senses, and Health, curated by Terpstra and Hewlett, 44.2 (2021), pp. 113-142. https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v44i2.37523

‘Astrology and Agriculture in the Calendar of the Offiziolo of Charles VIII (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, inv. 2502/4)’, in Rivista di Storia della Miniatura, 22 (2018), pp. 136-148.

‘L’incontro nel deserto tra Gesù e san Giovannino: fonti iconografiche’, in Arte Cristiana, 103: 887 (2015), pp. 113-122.

Seminars

‘“Oleum olivarum”: Stradano’s Engraving and the New Art of Olive-Oil Making in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany’,Warburg Institute, Work in Progress Seminar, London, 10 May 2023.

Olevum olivarum: Stradano's Engraving and the New Art of Olive-Oil Making in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany', Newberry Seminar in European Art series, Chicago, 12 November 2021.

Conference Papers

‘Lacking the Benefit of the Air’: An Olive Tree-Focused Perspective on Climate in Sixteenth-Century Medici Tuscany', European Society for the History of Science, Barcelona, 4 – 7 September 2024 - panel series: Ecology, Land Management and Horticulture in Early Modern Italy.

'A Cultural and Iconographic Study of the Olive Tree and Vine in Early Modern Emblems’, Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, 21 March 2024 - panel series: New Work in Emblem Studies.

The Calendar of the Offiziolo of Charles VIII and Its Talismanic Function, Renaissance Society of America, Virtual conference, 13 – 22 April 2021 - panel series: Magical Materials II: Secret Virtues in Crafted Objects.

'From Carnival to Pious City: Scenes of Urban Life in the Bassano Series of the Twelve Months', Renaissance Society Association 65th Conference, Toronto, 17 – 19 March 2019 - panel series: Seasonal Rhythms and Rituals in the Cultural Life of Renaissance Cities.

‘The Calendar of a Printed Book of Hours and its Impact on Sixteenth-Century Manuscript Illumination’, Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, The Newberry Library, Chicago, 25 – 27 January 2018.

Conference Organisation

"L'Olivo in Toscana: un viaggio tra cultura, tradizione e innovazione", 12 December 2024, Villa Bardini. Event opened to the public and organised in collaboration with the Società Toscana di Orticoltura.

We come together to celebrate the olive tree, a plant that is deeply woven into the culture, economy, environment, culinary traditions, and daily life of Tuscany. With the help of historians and olive cultivation experts, we will explore the challenges faced both in the past and present, and work on the best strategies to safeguard and enhance its immense ecological, cultural, and social value.

“Fertile Furrows: Ruling and (Re-)Working Soil in Early Modern Period”, Online Conference, Warburg Institute, London, 27–28 June 2023. The conference showcases multifaceted and broadly geographical perspectives on ideas, uses, and representations of soils in the Early Modern period. It addresses the topic from a variety of methodologies and disciplines, including history of art and architecture, history of science and technology, indigenous history, ecohistory, cultural and intellectual history, politico-economic history, and literature

Aetas Argentea in Ovid, Metamorphoses 1. Crispijn van de Passe I, Cologne, 1602–1607. Engraving. From The Warburg Institute’s Photographic Collection. [the original work is found in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. RP-P-OB-15.886]

Blog posts

'Organising "Fertile Furrows", a conference on Early Modern soils', post for the Warburg Institute, 16 August 2023.

'How Italian Comedy Made Its Way into the Catholic Church', post for the Newberry Library Blog, 18 May 2022.

Google Scholar

academia.edu

I had a great day last Friday presenting the Renaissance vegetable garden project to the students of the @AcademyWestwood. What an enthusiastic group! Thanks @IASWarwick for your support! @WarwickHoA 🌽🌻🍋🍅🥦🥔🥕🧅 pic.twitter.com/8LO10sroff

— Delia Moldovan (@MoldovanDelia) March 13, 2020