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History of Art

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 Italy (Harvey Miller, 2024) and curator of digital exhibition Beyond the Painter-Architect: Artists Reinventing Architecture in Renaissance Italy (Sir John Soane Museum 2024–). As well as at Warwick, Livia teaches short courses at the Courtauld Institute and is currently a Guest Professor at TU Wien, the architecture school of Vienna (2025).

In addition to her research and teaching, she work as a curator and translator, contributing translations to the catalogues of major 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.

Visit Livia's websiteLink opens in a new window 

Livia's book is now available:

cover of book painting architecture 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

"This book explores the communicative power and astonishing variety of architectural representation in fifteenth-century Italian painting. Lupi illuminates three wonderful fresco cycles in different parts of Italy, each serving a different type of patron, and all designed to enhance reputations, strengthen authority, and shape specific identities. The meticulous research and fresh insights of this new study help us all to look closely at these vast yet strangely neglected parts of paintings, and to understand how widespread, engrained and inspiring depicted architecture can be."

Amanda Lillie, Professor Emerita, University of York and Curator of Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting

Digital Exhibition

Beyond the Painter-Architect: Artists Reinventing Architecture in Renaissance Italy, Sir John Soane's MuseumLink opens in a new window

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

See also my new short course for the Courtauld Institute:

Intersecting Practices: Architecture and the Figurative Arts in Early Modern Italy Link opens in a new window (Jan-Feb 2025)

Service to the Profession

Livia is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Italian Art SocietyLink opens in a new window as Vice President for Program Coordination and Chair of the Program Committee (2025-2026). She was previously Newsletter Editor (2020-2023) for this society.

Since 2022, she has been a convenor of the Architectural History Seminar for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) and the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London.

She regularly reviews books and exhibition catalogues, with reviews appearing in The Burlington Magazine, Speculum and the English Historical Review. Two book reviews are forthcoming for Renaissance Quarterly and Sehepunkte (2025 or 2026).

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

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

  • "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)
  • “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)

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Associate Tutor

Contact

Tel: +44 (0)24 765 23436
Email: livia.lupi@warwick.ac.uk

Faculty of Arts Building
University of Warwick
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Teaching

Undergraduate modules 2024

Sacred ArtLink opens in a new window

The Italian City-States in the Age of Dante and Petrarch