My teaching is object-based and complemented by a close analysis of primary sources – this includes providing professional translations when they are not available (see my Translations page). I guide students towards developing exceptional observational skills to achieve a nuanced understanding of art and architectural practice in the early modern period. In particular, my teaching interrogates the relationship between theory and practice, challenging historically engrained hierarchies between art forms and practitioners, and exposing the production of artistic and architectural knowledge.
Often considering these issues in terms of Italy’s exchanges with Northern Europe, the Byzantine world and contested territories of Asia Minor, this approach intends to bridge the historiographical gap between art and architectural history and reposition Italian Renaissance art history within a transcultural perspective.
Giotto Always Comes Back: Renaissance Painting as Architecture
Gestaltungslehre und Entwerfen
Guest Professor, TU Wien
April – June 2025
Giotto, The Nativity at Greccio, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Wikimedia Commons
Intersecting Practices: Architecture and the Figurative Arts in Early Modern Italy
January – February 2025 (Running again in winter 2026)
Courtauld Institute
This online short course highlights the architectural imagination of artists and their contribution to architectural practice at a historical juncture that saw the emergence of the architect as a new professional figure.
Read more about it here.
Fra Carnevale, The Birth of the Virgin, 1467. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
SPRING TERM 2025
Arts and Society in Early Modern Europe
Third-Year Undergraduate Module
University of Warwick
Bernard Palissy or close follower, dish, c. 1600-1650, V&A London
AUTUMN TERM 2024
Sacred Art
First-Year Undergraduate Module
University of Warwick
Nataraja, Chola bronze, 11th century. Government Museum, Chennai. Wikimedia Commons
The Italian City-States in the Age of Dante and Petrarch
Second-Year Undergraduate Module
University of Warwick
Simone Martini, Maestà, 1315. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Wikimedia Commons
Courses I designed and taught in the past include:
Setting the Scene: Architecture and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy
University of Warwick
Carlo Crivelli, Annunciation with St Emidius, 1486. National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons
Artistic Encounters: Italy and the Byzantine Empire, 1261 – 1459
Courtauld Institute of Art (with Maria Alessia Rossi)
Left: Duccio, Maestà, detail, 1308-1311. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena. Wikimedia Commons. Right: Virgin Eleousa, detail, 1315-1321. Kariye Camii, Constantinople.