Research interests

Artistic production including manufacture, patronage and iconography (especially that of religious orders) and intersections between the Veneto and the world in the later middle ages and Renaissance. Further Information.

Teaching and supervision

Modules taught include:

• Venice: Rise and Myth (1100-1600)
• Giotto & Assisi (13th-14th centuries)
• The Altarpiece
• Sacred Art
• Italian City States
• Introduction to Art History: Classicism to Christianity
• MA Research in the Middle Ages/Renaissance (Venice based)

Current PhD/M.Phil supervision includes investigations of various forms of agency in artistic production including encounters between Italy and China; collecting Italian art in the UK. In the past, I have supervised iconographic studies such as the Labours of the Month, the cult of the Magdalen in the pre-Alps, the Sybils in Flemish art, the interest in Bacchus and other mythological figures during the Renaissance; Duecento & Trecento studies (throughout Italy including Siena and Genoa); and Venetian topics such as the transport of large paintings and material considerations, Bartolomeo Montagna's marketing strategies, Venice's visual culture following the Catholic Reform, sculptural portraits from the 14th to the 16th century, marionettes from the middle ages to the 18th century, and the business of art under Napoleon.

See Student Research.

Administrative roles

• Chair of the SCAPVC Research Ethics Committee
• Director of PGResearch Students SCAPVC
• Convener: Introduction to Art History. Classicism and the Arts of Christianity

Select publications

• Frances Andrews and Louise Bourdua, 'The Notary, the Sculptor, the Friar and the Doge: Giovanni Dolfin and his Creditors in Mid-Fourteenth-century Venice', in Popes, Bishops, Religious and Scholars. Studies in Medieval History Presented to Patrick N.R. Zutshi for his Seventieth Birthday, eds Peter D. Clarke and Michael J.P. Robson, Brepols: Turnhout, 2024, pp. 51-75: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/185130/Link opens in a new window
• 'Cut-out stencils in fourteenth-century painting:Link opens in a new window Giotto and his workshop in the arena chapel', Il Santo. Rivista francescana di storia, dottrina, arte, LXIV, 2024, pp. 237-250.
• Frances Andrews and Louise Bourdua. 'Fashioning the "Order of Saint Clare. A Rule illuminated by Neri da Rimini: Princeton University Library MS 83 in context', Franciscan Studies, 81, 2023, p. 75-114: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/917852
• '"qui locus vocatur el Batisterio". Space, liturgy and multiple vantage points: the frescoes of the Baptistery of Padua by Giusto de’Menabuoi', in Gli spazi del sacro nell'Italia medievale, eds F. Massaccesi and G. Valenzano, Bologna, 2022, pp. 327-353: https://buponline.com/prodotto/gli-spazi-del-sacro-nellitalia-medievale/Link opens in a new window
• 'The dynamics of artistic patronage at the Santo and the role of the franciscans /Le dinamiche della committenza artistica al Santo e il ruolo dei francescani', in La Pontificia Basilica di Sant'Antonio in Padova, eds Luciano Bertazzo, Girolamo Zampieri, 3 vols, Rome, 2021, vol. 1, pp. 505-537: https://en.lerma.it/libro/9788891320100

• The Discovery of the Trecento in the Nineteenth Century, in Predella, Journal of the Visual Arts, 41/42, 2017 (Feb. 2019); guest editor of special issue with 22 articles, available online <em>Predella</em> , and in paperback.

• 'Illumination, Painting and Sculpture', in Dante in Context, eds Zygmunt Baranski and Lino Pertile, Cambridge, 2015, pp. 401-426.
• '“Stand by your man”: Caterina Lupi, Wife of Bonifacio. Artistic Patronage beyond the Deathbed in late medieval Padua’, in Venice and the Veneto During the Renaissance. The Legacy of Benjamin Kohl, Florence University Press & Reti Medievali, 2014, pp. 405-428.
• A Wider Trecento. Studies in 13th- and 14th- Century European Art Presented to Julian Gardner, edited with Robert Gibbs, Leiden, 2012: includes ‘Some Pilgrimage Sources for Altichiero’, pp. 190-199.
• 'The Serenissima's Largesse to Paduans in the Early Fifteenth Century', in L'iconografia della solidarieta', eds Maria Grazia Muzzarelli and Mauro Carboni, Venice, 2012, pp. 59-66.
• 'The Arts in Florence after the Black Death’, in Florence, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 70-118.
• '"Master" Plans of Devotion or Daily Pragmatism? The Dedication and Use of Chapels and Conventual Spaces by the Friars and the Laity at the Santo 1263-1310', Il Santo, LI, 2011, pp. 1-20.
• ‘Exports to Padua Trecento style: Altichiero’s Roman legacy’, in Rome Across Time and Space. Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas c. 500–1400, eds Claudia Bolgia, Rosamond McKitterick and John Osborne, Cambridge, 2011, pp. 291-302.
• 'Time-Keeping in Fourteenth-Century Venetian Sculpture: Andriolo de Santi's Absenteeism', The Sculpture Journal, 19.1, 2010, pp. 102-107.
• 'Pellegrini, santi, artisti. Per un'iconografia del viaggio in veneto nel tardo medioevo', in Il viaggio e le arti: il contesto italiano, eds Lucia Bertolini and Annalisa Cipollone, Alessandria, 2009, pp. 193-201.
• 'Religious Orders and Their Fresco Cycles in the Later Middle Ages', in Le immagini del francescanesimo. Atti del XXXVI Convegno internazionale Assisi, 9-11 ottobre 2008, Spoleto, 2009, pp. 195-216.
• Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy, edited with Anne Dunlop, Ashgate, 2007: includes 'Entombing the Founder St Augustine of Hippo', pp. 29-50.
• The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Late Medieval Italy, Cambridge, 2004; paperback edn 2011.

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Qualifications

• PhD (Warwick)
• MA (London)
• BA (McGill)