BA (McGill), MLitt (London), PhD (Warwick)

Room F47 Millburn House

Email l.bourdua@warwick.ac.uk

Research Interests | Publications |

Warwick-Newberry Initiative 2009-current

Louise Bourdua and Vicky Avery led the Italian Art History strand of a new cycle of Warwick-Newberry initiatives on "Renaissance and Early Modern Communities in a Transatlantic Perspective", generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Scheduled events included two workshops (at Warwick on Friday and Saturday 30-31 October 2009, and Warwick in Venice on 6-7 April 2010. The programme culminated with a residential summer school for doctoral students and early career scholars at Warwick in Venice, 19-31 July 2010. It was staffed by numerous experts from the Newberry Consortium of North American universities and other invited guests.

The programme continues in 2011 with the appointment of two Fellows, Dr Megan Moran and Emily Price, who will be conducting research in Venice during the autumn.

Research Interests 

• Giotto’s Legacy especially in Padua
• Politics and economics of artistic patronage in 14^th-century Venice especially the Procurators of St Mark
• 13^th/14^th century-sculpture in Venice
• Intersections between the Veneto and Northern Europe, later middle ages/renaissance
• Religious orders (patronage and iconography) during the later middle ages/renaissance

I am currently finishing a book devoted to redressing the balance of our understanding of what I call ‘the long fourteenth century’ in Padua and its territory (tentatively titled Giotto’s Century? Painting in Padua in the Long Fourteenth Century). It explores the production of art (both small and large scale) over the hundred years on either side of the Black Death and questions Giotto’s primacy and legacy in this key location.

My next project will focus on Venice and is entitled “Philistine and Totally Commercial”? Art and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Venice.

My previous work has focused on the artistic patronage and iconography of mendicant orders in late medieval/early Renaissance Italy: The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) explored how the art of this Order’s churches and convents in the Veneto c.1250-c.1400 was conceived, reflected on the historiography of patronage studies, and tested whether there was a central Franciscan artistic policy or indeed a regional one. It constructed a multiform model of patronage, revealing fundamentally complex processes of production and also demonstrated how the sensitive use of archival documentation can extend our discipline.

Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy, edited with Anne Dunlop, is a co-edited collection of ten essays on the art, iconography and patronage of the Augustinian Hermits with works ranging from Simone Martini to Raphael (Ashgate Press, 2007). This was the result of a collaborative venture between UK and Canadian-based scholars which led to a conference and was augmented by specially commissioned essays.

Most recently my research has been generously funded by the British Academy. Earlier support has come from the British School at Rome, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy/Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for Venetian Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the CVCP (UK).

Graduate Students 

Current or recent supervision includes iconographic studies (such as the cult of the Magdalen in the pre-Alps, the Sybils in Flemish art, and that of Bacchus from the Renaissance onward), aspects of patronage (in the diocese of Grosseto), and Venetian art (such as its visual culture following the Catholic Reformation, family portraits in the sixteenth century, puppetry in the early modern period, and the artistic policies during the Napoleonic soppression).

Select Publications

A Wider Trecento. Studies in 13th- and 14th- Century European Art Presented to Julian Gardner, edited with Robert Gibbs, Brill, 2012.

'The Serenissima's Largesse to Paduans in the Early Fifteenth Century', in L'iconografia della solidarieta, eds M. G. Muzzarelli and M. Carboni, Marsilio, 2011, in press.

'The Arts in Florence after the Black Death’ in Florence, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis, Cambridge, 2011, pp. 79-118.

‘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 University Press, 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 L. Bertolini and A. 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).

‘Painting The Poor and the Infirm in Trecento Padua and Venice’, in Armut und Armenfürsorge in der italienischen Stadtkultur zwischen dem 13. und 16. Jahrhundert. Bilder, Texte und soziale Praktiken, eds. P. Helas and G. Wolf, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern: Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 335-348.

‘Displaying the Bodily Remains of Saint Anthony of Padua’, in Bild und Körper im Mittelalter", eds. K. Marek, R. Preisinger, M. Rimmele, K. Kärcher, Paderborn: Fink Verlag, 2006, pp. 243-255.

The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Late Medieval Italy, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

‘Guariento’s Crucifix for Maria Buvolini in San Francesco, Bassano: Women and Franciscan Art in Italy during the Later Middle Ages’, in Pope, Church and City. Studies in Honour of Brenda Bolton, ed. F. Andrews, C. Egger, C. Rousseau, Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 309-323.

‘Altichiero’s Anchona for Margareta Lupi: a Context for a Lost Painting’, The Burlington Magazine, 144 (2002), pp. 291-293.

‘D’un ordre à l’autre. Choix iconographiques des ordres mendiants à Bolzano’, in D’une montagne à l’autre. Etudes comparées, Cahiers du CHRIPA, 6, ed. D. Rigaux, Grenoble: Université Pierre Mendès, 2002, pp. 221-241.

‘Death and the Patron: Andriolo de Santi, Bonifacio Lupi, and the Chapel of San Giacomo in Padua’, in Il Santo, 39 (1999), pp. 687-697.

‘De origine et progressu ordinis fratrum heremitarum: Guariento and the Eremitani in Padua’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 66 (1998), pp. 177-192.