Jane Cooper
PhD Student
Research Interests: Medieval to early modern art and visual culture | Franciscan history and painting | Church architecture and furniture | Place theory and studies | Affective painting and the history of emotions
Year PhD started: 2022
Thesis
Place and Place-Making in the pictorial life of St Francis in Montefalco
My thesis is an interpretative analysis of the meaning of place and how ideas about place are visualised in Benozzo Gozzoli’s 1452 painted cycle of the life of St Francis in the church of San Francesco, Montefalco, in Umbria. It is grounded in textual and visual evidence and is informed by a multi-disciplinary mix of ideas circulating in the mid Quattrocento, and modern theories of architecture, urban and rural environment, place, and emotion.
Supervisors: Caspar Pearson / Alessandro Scafi