About

Livia Lupi joined Warwick in 2018 as a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow. She works on late medieval and early modern art and architecture, and her research focuses on the intersection of artistic and architectural practice in Europe, especially Italy. In particular, her work addresses the communicative powers of structure and ornament, strategies of architectural representation, the relationship between design and craftsmanship, the emergence of the architect as a professional figure, and the production of architectural knowledge. She also works on the relationship between Western Europe and the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Livia's research falls within the departmental theme of Art in Venice and Northern Italy.

Her book, Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy: Innovation and Persuasion at the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice, is under contract with Brepols and forthcoming in 2023. Arguing that architecture in painting provided a unique platform for experimentation, the book contends that artists played a crucial role in the elaboration of the classical architectural heritage, redefining the status of architectural forms as a kind of cultural currency. As it explores the nexus between innovation and persuasion, the volume highlights an early form of little-discussed paragone between painting and architecture which relied on a shared understanding of architectural invention as a symbol of prestige. This approach offers a crucial insight into how architectural forms were perceived and deployed, be they two or three-dimensional, at the same time clarifying the intersection of architecture and the figural arts in the work of later, influential figures like Giuliano da Sangallo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Baldassarre Peruzzi.

Livia is currently working on a special collection of articles for journal Architectural Histories, co-edited with Krista De Jonge and featuring an article reassessing craftsmanship and the social implications of the architectural profession in Renaissance Italy. She is also preparing a digital exhibition for the Sir John Soane Museum in London, entitled "Beyond the Painter-Architect: Artists Reinventing Architecture in Renaissance Italy" and scheduled for November 2023. Research for this exhibition is informing an article on the architectural imagination of painters in Northern Italy. Further publication plans include two book projects. The first, entitled "Architecture, Design and Craft in Early Modern Italy," explores the relationship between design and craftsmanship in connection with the emergence of the architect as a professional figure. The second book, entitled "Ottoman Encounters and the Production of Architectural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe," investigates how diverse individuals, from merchants and craftsmen to scholars, negotiated the classical architectural heritage in contested territories.

Service to the Profession

Livia works as a specialist translator of early modern Italian texts and is an active member of the US-based Italian Art Society and of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. In 2017, she translated a selection of Sebastiano del Piombo's letters to Michelangelo for the exhibition “Michelangelo & Sebastiano” (with Amanda Lillie, National Gallery, London, 2017), while in 2020 she translated letters by Titian to Philip II of Spain for “Titian: Love, Desire, Death” (National Gallery, London, 2020). Since 2020, she has been the Editor of the Italian Art Society's Newsletter, so far producing seven issues. Two of these were special issues: the first on women in Italian art (October 2021) and the second on the global future of Italian art history (June 2022). Since 2022, she has been a convenor for the Architectural History Seminar, a series of research events organised by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) in collaboration with the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London.

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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, which she completed in 2016. Before joining Warwick, she was a fellow at the Warburg Institute in London and taught at the University of York and at the Courtauld Institute of Art.