Dr Livia Lupi
About
Livia Lupi joined Warwick in 2018 as a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow. She specialises on late medieval and early modern art and architecture, with a focus on the intersection of art and architectural practice in Europe, especially Italy. She is particularly interested in the relationship between design and craftsmanship, the emergence of the architect as a professional figure, and the production of architectural knowledge. She is currently developing a project on antiquarianism in the early modern Mediterranean, exploring the intersection of architectural theory, cultural identity and exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman empire.
She is the author of one monograph, Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance ItalyLink opens in a new window (Harvey Miller, 2024) and curator of digital exhibition Beyond the Painter-Architect: Artists Reinventing Architecture in Renaissance ItalyLink opens in a new window (Sir John Soane Museum 2024, ongoing). As well as at Warwick, Livia teaches short courses at the Courtauld Institute and was Guest Lecturer for Vienna's architecture school at TU Wien (2025).
In autumn 2025, she joined the editorial board of journal Architectural HistoriesLink opens in a new window. In addition to her research, teaching and editorial work, she is active as a curator and translator, contributing translations to the catalogues of major National Gallery exhibitions on Sebastiano del Piombo (2017), Titian (2020) and Michelangelo (2025). Her research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the University of Warwick and the Warburg Institute.
She sits on the Board of Directors of the Italian Art Society (IAS) as Vice President for Program Coordination and Chair of the Program Committee, and co-convenes the Architectural History Seminar for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB).
Livia obtained her BA in History of Art from the University of York, her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and then went back to York to work on her AHRC-funded PhD (2016). Before joining Warwick, she was a fellow at the Warburg Institute in London.
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Livia's book is now available:
Find it hereLink opens in a new window
“Livia Lupi has written the book about painted architecture that the field of Italian Renaissance art and architecture has long needed. Moving beyond the fixation on perspective representation, she addresses the many and varied ways painters employed architecture for narrative ends. Despite the prominence of architecture in many fifteenth-century paintings, few scholars have taken it as their central subject and when they have it has often been in relation to the issue of pictorial space. Lupi widens the lens, and through an in-depth analysis of several key case studies, opens up a broad set of interpretations. Featuring beautiful color illustrations and clear prose, her book is sure to inspire many other studies.”
Cammy Brothers, Professor, Northeastern University and author of Michelangelo, Drawing and the Invention of Architecture and Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome
Digital Exhibition
Research Interests
- Late medieval and early modern art and architecture, especially in Italy and the Netherlands
- Representation of architecture (within and beyond Europe)
- Design and craftsmanship across artistic and architectural practice
- Exchanges between Italy, the late Byzantine world and the Ottoman Empire
- Reception of antiquity and classical architecture in the early modern period
- History of rhetoric and its interplay with the visual arts
- Architectural drawings
- Painter-architect figures
- Professionalisation of the architect
Teaching and supervision
- Setting the Scene: Architecture and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy
- Classicism
- Sacred Art
- The Italian City-States in the Age of Dante and Petrarch
- Arts and Society in Early Modern Europe (for Warwick's History Department)
See also my short course for the Courtauld Institute:
Intersecting Practices: Architecture and the Figurative Arts in Early Modern Italy Link opens in a new window (2025, running again 2026)
Service to the Profession
- General Editor, Architectural HistoriesLink opens in a new window (2025–2029)
- Vice President for Program Coordination and Chair of the Program Committee, Italian Art SocietyLink opens in a new window (2025-2026)
- Co-convenor of the Architectural History Seminar, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) and Institute of Historical Research, University of London (since 2022).
Livia regularly reviews books and exhibition catalogues, with reviews appearing in The Burlington Magazine, Speculum and the English Historical Review.
Selected publications
Book
Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy: Innovation and Persuasion at the Intersection of Art and Architectural PracticeLink opens in a new window (Harvey Miller Publishers, 2024)
Articles and Book Chapters
- Architectural Histories Special Collection: Intersecting Practices: Architecture and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe, (co-edited with Krista De Jonge, 2023-2024)
- “La rhétorique du lieu. Art de la mémoire et architecture dans l’Oratoire St-Georges de Padoue.” In Mnémonique et poétique. La figure et son lieu dans la peinture des Tre-QuattrocentoLink opens in a new window, edited by Anne-Laure Imbert, 167-180. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2022.
- “Fictive Architecture and Pictorial Place: Altichiero da Zevio’s Oratory of St George in Padua (c.1379-1384).” In Place and Space in the Medieval WorldLink opens in a new window, edited by Jane Hawkes, Meg Boulton and Heidi Stoner, 137-148. New York and London: Routledge, 2018.
- “The Rhetoric of Fictive Architecture: Copia and Amplificatio in Altichiero da Zevio’s Oratory of St George, Padua.” Architectural HistoryLink opens in a new window, 60 (2017): 1-35.
Specialist Translations
- Michelangelo's correspondence and notes. In Michelangelo Imperfect, exh. cat. Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 2025.
- Contract of Parmigianino's commission and excerpt of Maria Bufalini's will. In Parmigianino: the Vision of St Jerome, exh. cat. London: National Gallery and Yale University Press, 2024.
- Titian’s Letters. In Titian: Love, Desire, Death, exh. cat., 194-195 and 197-203. London: National Gallery and Yale University Press, 2020.
- (with Amanda Lillie) Sebastiano del Piombo’s Letters to Michelangelo, 1518-1531. In Michelangelo & Sebastiano, exh. cat., pp. 225-237. London: National Gallery and Yale University Press, 2017.
- Alessandro Nogarola, La vita della Serenissima Reina Maria d'Austria, Reina d’Ungheria […] (n.p., 1553), pp. 22-24. Appendix 3 in Cordula van Wyhe, “The Fabric of Female Rule in Leone Leoni’s Statue of Mary of Hungary, c. 1549-1556.” In Cambridge and the Study of Netherlandish Art, edited by Meredith Hale, pp. 135-168. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.
Invited Talks
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“Painting and Building Architecture: the Architect as a New Professional,” Architecture School of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) (19 September 2025).
- "Architecture According to Artists: the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice in Renaissance Italy," Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University (24 March 2025).
- “L’architecture et les autres arts pendant la Renaissance italienne,” Institut National pour l’Histoire de l’Art, Paris (10 February 2025)
- “Book Presentation: Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy: Invention and Persuasion at the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice,”Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture, University of Cambridge (8 November 2024)
- “La pittura come laboratorio di architettura: Masolino a Castiglione Olona e il capitale culturale dell’architettura all’antica,” Museo della Collegiata, Castiglione Olona (30 Ottobre 2024)
- “Book Presentation: Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy: Invention and Persuasion at the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice” Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, London (10 October 2024).
Including “Architecture as Transmedial Practice”: a visit to the Sir John Soane’s Museum’s library, led with Elizabeth Merrill (Ghent)
- "Artistic Practice and the Emergence of the Architect in Italy c. 1300 – c. 1480" Medieval Visual Culture Seminar, University of Oxford (16 May 2024)
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“Performing Magnificence: Artistic Practice, Architectural Invention and Persuasion in the Pellegrinaio of Santa Maria della Scala, SienaLink opens in a new window” Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (2022)
- “The Agency of Architectural Settings: Invention, Time and Place in Fra Angelico’s Nicholas V Chapel.” Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome (2019).
- “Drawing, Painting and Building Architecture. A Historical Perspective.” Andrew Phillips Studio, London (2017).
- “Rhétorique du lieu: art de la mémoire et architecture dans la peinture italienne au XIVe siècle.” Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris (2017).
Qualifications
- BA (York)
- MA (London)
- PhD (AHRC-funded, York)
Associate Tutor
Contact
Tel: +44 (0)24 765 23436
Email: livia.lupi@warwick.ac.uk
Faculty of Arts Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7EQ
Advice and Feedback hours
Teaching
Undergraduate modules 2025
Classicism