My expertise and interests lie in 迟丑别听 art of the Burgunidan Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy in the late medieval and Renaissance period. I have published on a听 wide range of media and types of objects, from panel painting and听 sculpture, to textiles, metalwork, reliquaries, and illuminated manuscripts, and am particularly interested in their making, materials, meaning, manipulation,听 restoration,听 reception and afterlife across time and geographies. My research combines听 evidence from primary sources with a close scrutiny of the physical properties of objects, telling narratives that weave their conception, facture and afterlives into historical moments and biographies. Current research projects include an essay on Van Eyck’s Material Allusions听 for 迟丑别听 exhibition on his portraits at the National Gallery to be held in 2026-27 and on 迟丑别听 Ghent Altarpiece in an upcoming publication to celebrate the completion of its restoration in 2027. I am also working on a听 longer term project on the inventories of the French courts in the late 14th and early fifteenth century,听 considering their compilation and form, as well as their contents, for which I was awarded a Leverhulme grant. Most recently I am preparing a monograph on the reliquary known as 迟丑别听 Libretto of Louis of Anjou in Florence (c. 1360), its siblings and their听 afterlives, for which I recently spent time as a visiting professor at I Tatti. In addition I continue to research and publish on听 迟丑别听 Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon, including essays and entries for the upcoming exhibition in Dijon Sculptures bourguignonnes du XVe si猫cle听 (2027), and a forthcoming听 study, the second part of my research on听 迟丑别听 tomb of Philip the Bold (2027). I am also working on two further books – one听 on the Seilern Triptych in 91影视 Collection and one on Simon Bening’s听 miniatures made as independent paintings on parchment,听 to be published in 2027 in collaboration with Clare Richardson, Head of Conservation at 91影视, and the Wyvern Collection.
PhD Supervision
Current
- Emma Bruckner, Patronage and Power: Political identity in illuminated manuscripts by Jean Colombe.
- Flora Clark, Painted with glass and fire: Limoges enamelling from the local to the global, c. 1470-1530.
- Leylim Erenel, The Artistic Patronage of the Bruges鈥 Confraternity of the Holy Blood in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.
- The Iconography of the 鈥榁irgin听 with Fifteen Symbols鈥.
Recently completed
- Jessica Gasson, Tapestries on the Altar. Considering their Facture and Purpose in Fifteenth century Europe. 2026
- , The Cross at the Valois Courts of France (c.1360-1422). Object, Relic, Image. 2026
- , Jan Borreman and Sculptural Practice in the Burgundian Netherlands c. 1479-1520. 2025
Completed 2002-2022
- , 鈥榩ro 忙terna salute domin忙 duciss忙鈥: The Carthusian patronage of Isabella of Portugal and Margaret of York, Duchesses of Burgundy, 1430-1503. 听2021
- Margaret Crosland, ‘Servans tous les jours’ : devotion, interaction, and familial piety in the Grandes Heures of Philip the Bold. co-supervised with Professor Alixe Bovey, 2021
- , Altarpieces in Late Medieval Avignon. Studies in Patronage and Reception. 2019
- , Patronage of a Prelate: Artistic Provisions for the Religious Foundations of Cardinal Jean Rolin (1408-1483).听2019
- , Spiritual Provision and Temporal Affirmation: Tombs of the Chevaliers de la Toison d鈥橭r from Philip the Good to Philip the Fair. 听2017
- , Commemorating the Family in Late Medieval Flanders, 2017
- , Cantebury Cathedral鈥檚 Choir Tapestry: Patronage, Production, History and Display.听2016
- Anna Koopstra, Inventing Realities, Picturing Salvation: Making, Meaning And Patronage Of The Paintings Of Jean Bellegambe (c.1470-1535/36), 2016
- , The Chapel of Contador Salda帽a at Santa Clara de Tordesillas: New proposals about the chapel and its role in the fashioning of identity by an early fifteenth-century court converso, 2015
- Susan L. Green 鈥極 Radix Jesse鈥: The iconography of the Tree of Jesse in Northern Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,听 2014
- Samantha Darell, Late Medieval Mother-of Pearl Carvings: Making and Meaning. An Examination of a Material in Context from the Late 14th to the Late 15th Century in France, England and Italy.听 2013
- Mayumi Ikeda, The Fust Master: Illuminator of the First Mainz Presses.听2010
- Melena Hope, Painted Chapels and Oratories in the Households of Fifteenth Century France.听2009
- Douglas Brine, Piety and Purgatory, Wall mounted memorials from the Southern Netherlands.听2006
- Elizabeth Cleland, More than woven paintings : the reappearance of Rogier van der Weyden’s designs in tapestry. 2002
- Ursula Weekes, The Master of the Berlin Passion and his public : the production and reception of engravings and metalcuts as inserted additions in manuscripts from the Rhine-Maas region, ca.1450-1500. 2002.
Research interests
- Late medieval and Renaissance art of all media in Northern Europe and Spain c. 1350-1500, most notably the following:.
- Early Netherlandish Painting, in particular听 Jan van Eyck and Robert Campin.
- Arts made for the Courts of France for the Valois kings and princes, most extensively at the Chartreuse de Champmol (the Well of Moses and the Tomb of Philip the Bold), as well as their听 inventories, metalwork panel paintings and reliquaries.
- Tombs and their production, meaning and materials, notably in France and the Burgundian Netherlands.
- Materials, their supply, trade, cost, properties and meaning, notably pigments, black Dinant marble and alabaster
- Technical art history and works of art as physical objects: conservation, restoration histories, fakes and pastiches.
- The visual historiography of Art History (how sculpture in particular听 has听 been reproduced since the 19th century)
- The Libretto of Louis of Anjou, its siblings and their afterlives.
- Simon Bening’s independent illuminations – materials, techniques and function.
Recent Fellowships
I Tatti, Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies,听 Visiting Professor 2025-26
The courts of France c. 1400 sent fabulous metalwork to the Italian states, through diplomatic exchanges or trade. Others were acquired there by different means – war, looting, pawning. This fellowship was focused on听 the 听meaning, manipulation and re-framing (in many senses) of these hugely valuable objects which were often politically charged and virtuosic, made with techniques impossible to reproduce outside Paris at that period. Its starting point is the extraordinary, tiny, Libretto of Louis of Anjou (d. 1384), now in the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo. This study, expanded to include two other almost identical, no lost versions, will be published as a book provisionally entitled Blood Brothers. Some of the results fo this research were presented at I Tatti in October 2025, at a conference in Florence at the NIKI听 in honour of Gervase Rosser in November 2025, and as a keynote for the AAH conference in Cambridge in 2026
Leverhulme Senior research Fellow 2016-2018. 鈥楳aking Lists, Inventories and Objects at the Courts of France’
Between 2016 and 2018 I was听 the recipient of a major research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, working on听 a听 book provisionally entitled 鈥楳aking Lists: Inventories and Objects at the Courts of France鈥. At its heart it is a study of visual culture of the courts of France in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, but seen through the lens of a particular form of 听written artifact, the detailed inventories of the kings of France and the princes of the blood: these include Charles V (d. 1380), his brothers Jean de Berry (d. 1416), Philip the Bold (d. 1404), and Louis of Anjou (d. 1384), and Charles V鈥檚 son, Charles VI (d. 1422). These men (and it was mostly, if not exclusively, men) amassed vast collections of thousands of precious objects, termed collectively 鈥榡oyaux鈥, which encompassed metalwork, precious jewels, chapel goods and textiles, robes, hats, tapestries, paintings, manuscripts, relics, dog collars, astrolabes, sundials, cameos, and a host of other 鈥榗hoses estranges鈥 like giants鈥 teeth and ostrich eggs. Most have since been lost, and much was dispersed and melted down even within their lifetimes, but recorded in a series of extraordinary, often loquacious, inventories 鈥 far more of them than I had thought at the start (I have discovered several previously unknown ones). 听听My research has focused not simply on what听was described in these inventories 鈥 as fascinating as that is 鈥 but on听how听it was described 鈥 in practical and linguistic terms. These inventories were often made听ad vivam听and in one case at least, that of Louis of Anjou, 听dictated by the prince himself. Louis鈥檚 inventory听 includes nearly 4,000 items and has individual descriptions of its finest objects extending to more than 40 folios: it is thus an unparalleled, and untapped, example of late-medieval ekphrastic description 鈥 and of the patron鈥檚 voice. These are fascinating as things in their own right, remarkably varied in their form and function: most are bound codices, but some are rolls; some are on paper, some on parchment; many teem with marginal notes recording absence and presence, damage and repair; others have clear, wide margins, with not a trace of later annotations, beautiful script, and illuminated frontispieces.I have tried in this project to piece together how they were made, by whom and why (never as obvious as it might seem). But听 I have also pondered how they were used over time, and how their significance shifted and developed: it seems to me that they often became repositories of cultural memory and ancestral power, symbols of French patrimony, long lost, but eloquent, nevertheless.
Some of the results of this research can be heard in my听
Recent publications
Recent publications
- ‘Jan van Eyck’s Material Allusions’ in听 ex. cat., Van Eyck. The Portraits. (London, NG, 2026-27),听 pp. 19-39.
- 鈥楴o Sorrow Like unto my Sorrow. Philip the Bold, the Great Cross at Champmol and the Battle of Nicopolis鈥, The Burlington Magazine, October 2024, pp. 997-1027.
- 鈥楾he de Limbourg Brothers and Simone Martini鈥檚 Orsini Polyptych鈥 in Siena. The Rise of Painting, exh. Cat (London NG and NY Met, 2024), pp. 241-53.
- ‘The Martyrdom of St Denis, the Chartreuse de Champmol and the Battle of Nicopolis鈥, Maelwael Van Lymbourch Studies Vol II, ed A. Stufkens, Brepols 2022, pp. 12-45.
- ‘Ad Pedes Patrae. John the Fearless and the Third Tomb of Philip the Bold鈥 Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (forthcoming)
Articles and Essays
- 鈥業nventory as Royal Object. Charles V and the Enumeration of Kingship鈥,听The Medieval Book as Object, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, ed. J. Luxford, Donnington 2021
- 鈥楾he Two Tombs of Philip the Bold鈥櫶Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 2019, pp. 1-112.
- The Myth of Luis Alincbrot: Relocating 迟丑别听Triptych with听 Scenes from the Life of Christ听in the Prado鈥,听Bolet铆n del museo del Prado, vol. xxxii no 50,听 2014, pp. 70-95. With translation in Spanish.
- 鈥楲es retables de Jacques de Baerze et Melchior Broederlam: Documentation, fabrication et signification鈥, in听Les retables de Champmol et leur restauration听(Dijon, Musee des Beaux Arts, 2014); also published in English
- 鈥楨rwin Panofsky鈥檚 Early Netherlandish Painting鈥 in听The Books that Shaped Art History听ed. R. Schone and J. P. Stonard, (London, Thames and Hudson, 2013), pp. pp. 88-101
- 鈥Pour couleurs et autres choses pris de lui鈥he supply, cost, acquisition and employment of painters materials at the Burgundian court c. 1375-1415鈥 in听Trade in Artists Materials听(see above).
- 鈥樷楾he Lord鈥檚 Crucifix of Costly Workmanship鈥: Colour, Collaboration and the Making of Meaning on the Well of Moses鈥 in听Circumlitio. The Polychromy of Antique and Late Medieval Sculpture, ed. V. Brinkmann, O. Primavesi and M. Hollein (Frankfurt am Main, 2010), pp. 356-381
- 鈥楥laus Sluter鈥檚 鈥榃ell of Moses鈥 for the Chartreuse de Champmol Reconsidered鈥. Part I听The Burlington Magazine, December 2005, pp. 798-809; Part II听The Burlington Magazine, July 2006, pp. 456-69; Part III鈥,听The Burlington Magazine, November 2008, pp. 724-741
- 鈥楾he听Parement de Narbonne, Context and Technique鈥, in C. Villers, ed.,听The Fabric of Images, European Paintings on Fabric Supports,听1300-1500, (London, Archetype Press, 2000
Books and edited books
- Late Medieval Panel Paintings. Materials, Methods Meanings听II (Paul Holberton 2015); editor
- Late Medieval Panel Paintings. Materials, Methods, and Meaning I (London, Paul Holberton, 2011); author
- Trade in Artists鈥 Materials. Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, co- editor with Jo Kirby and Joanna Cannon (London, Archetype publications, 2010).
- Northern Renaissance Art听( Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008).
- 鈥楴o Equal in Any Land鈥. Andr茅 Beauneveu, Artist to the Courts of France and Flanders. (London, Paul Holberton Publishing in association with Musea Bruggee/Groeningemuseum, 2007).
- Between France and Flanders: Manuscript Illumination in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century.听The British Library Studies in medieval Culture (London, British Library and Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1999)
- Robert Campin, New Directions in Scholarship听co-editor with Susan Foister (1996)
Other current/ongoing professional activities
- Trustee of the Caroline Villers fellowship
- Member of the International Advisory Board for the Department of Conservation and Technology
- External Examiner for PhDs at universities in the UK, Europe, Canada and the US.