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Books by Anne Leader

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe comprises eleven chapters by ... more Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe comprises eleven chapters by twelve art historians. Together, these essays investigate commemorative practices in Cyprus, England, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Offering a broad overview of memorialization across Europe and the Mediterranean, each chapter examines local customs through particular case studies. The essays explore complementary themes through the lens of commemorative art, including social status; personal and corporate identities; the intersections of mercantile, intellectual, and religious attitudes; upward (and downward) mobility; and the cross-cultural exchange of memorialization strategies.

The subject of society’s response to death through commemoration has long fascinated scholars from many disciplines. Art historical studies of tombs and other commemorative monuments have concentrated on style and the development of various monument types. Early taxonomic investigations have inspired more detailed analyses of particular locales (especially England), artists, patrons, or extraordinary monuments that typically belonged to royals or clerics. Broader studies of funerary customs have been archaeological or anthropological in focus, discerning demographic trends and their intersections with commemorative practices. Memorializing the Middle Classes brings these approaches together while foregrounding the importance of placing monuments in their urban and socio-economic contexts to explore how memorials contributed to both individual and corporate identities. As art historians, the authors are indeed interested in the appearance and creation of the monuments under review, but they approach their visual material with a keen awareness of social and economic history. Commemorative markers not only reflected but also shaped social and religious practices. The book adds to the field of patronage studies, as it examines the motivations and aspirations of those who commissioned memorials. Its essays also demonstrate the benefits reaped by the institutions that housed memorials and the artists who created them.

Most modern historians perpetuate the myth that Giuliano de' Medici (1479-1516), son of Lorenzo t... more Most modern historians perpetuate the myth that Giuliano de' Medici (1479-1516), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was nothing more than an inconsequential, womanizing hedonist with little inclination or ability for politics. In the first sustained biography of this misrepresented figure, Josephine Jungic re-evaluates Giuliano’s life and shows that his infamous reputation was exaggerated by Medici partisans who feared his popularity and respect for republican self-rule.

Rejecting the autocratic rule imposed by his nephew, Lorenzo (Duke of Urbino), and brother, Giovanni (Pope Leo X), Giuliano advocated restraint and retention of republican traditions, believing his family should be “first among equals” and not more. As a result, the family and those closest to them wrote him out of the political scene, and historians - relying too heavily upon the accounts of supporters of Cardinal Giovanni and the Medici regime - followed suit. Interpreting works of art, books, and letters as testimony, Jungic constructs a new narrative to demonstrate that Giuliano was loved and admired by some of the most talented and famous men of his day, including Cesare Borgia, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Niccolò Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael.

More than a political biography, this volume offers a refreshing look at a man who was a significant patron and ally of intellectuals, artists, and religious reformers, revealing Giuliano to be at the heart of the period’s most significant cultural accomplishments.

The Badia of Florence: Art and Observance in a Renaissance Monastery, 2012

In 1418, seventeen Benedictine monks left their home monastery in Padua for Florence, which they ... more In 1418, seventeen Benedictine monks left their home monastery in Padua for Florence, which they found bustling with economic, intellectual, and artistic activity. Focused and determined, they intended to reform one of their order’s oldest houses, the monastery of Santa Maria di Firenze, known familiarly as the abbey, or Badia, of Florence. Led by their charismatic Portuguese abbot Gomezio di Giovanni, these “colonists” brought strict order to the Badia through the institution of the newly established Benedictine Observance. Gomezio realized that reformed spiritual practice alone would be insufficient to secure the Badia’s stability and future success. He understood that in order to inspire and attract new members and benefactors, he had to rebuild the Badia’s body as well as its spirit. To this end, he ordered the monastery to be reconstructed around a new cloister decorated with vivid, engaging, and motivating frescoes depicting the Life of St. Benedict.

The Florentine Badia: Art and Observance in a Renaissance Monastery examines the monastery during this crucial period of reform and rebirth. Interdisciplinary in approach, it explores the renovated Badia as an integral part of the spiritual, political, and social life of Early Renaissance Florence, as crucial to the broader program to disseminate the Benedictine Observance throughout Italy, and as fundamental to refashioning Benedictine corporate identity. The Florentine Badia is significant not only for its role in Florence’s civic life and urban development, but also because its cloister survives as the earliest monastic commission to display the new architectural language of Brunelleschi and the revolutionary artistic vocabulary of Masaccio and Fra Angelico. By interweaving discussion of Renaissance art, architecture, monasticism, patronage, and Florentine social and political history, it provides a greater understanding of this fascinating monument and expands our knowledge of religious life, artistic patronage, and workshop practice in Early Renaissance Italy.

This dissertation investigates the Orange Cloister of the Badia Fiorentina -- a Benedictine abbey... more This dissertation investigates the Orange Cloister of the Badia Fiorentina -- a Benedictine abbey located in central Florence. Between 1428 and 1441, this cloister was built and decorated with mural paintings depicting the Life of St. Benedict. Despite their position in one of the oldest and richest Florentine ecclesiastical institutions, these murals are not included in general surveys of Italian Renaissance painting for lack of an accepted author. However, they survive as a rare example of progressive Florentine mural decoration painted during the decade following the death of Masaccio. Rather than its authorship, this investigation begins with questions of the mural program’s function and reception, creating a framework where issues of architectural setting, iconography, historical context, patronage, and style are integrated to present a more extensive and satisfying interpretation of the paintings.

A review of the literature demonstrates how previous studies of the Orange Cloister focus on issues of authorship, as historians have discussed either the cloister’s construction and responsible architect or its mural program and painter. This dissertation examines the entire complex, remedying the artificial division between architectural and art history. Analyzing the extant building fabric, documentary evidence -- much published here for the first time, and other primary sources, this study aims to reconstruct the cloister’s fifteenth-century appearance and function. A discussion of the patron, Abbot Gomezio di Giovanni, explains how the cloister complex formed an integral part of his reform program initiated at the monastery in 1419. Issues of architectural authorship are also addressed to question the validity of historians’ attempts to identify the cloister’s “architect.” Similarly, art historians have struggled with the authorship of the cloister’s murals. A review of documentary, circumstantial, and stylistic evidence suggests that the Life of St. Benedict cycle was produced by two teams of artists, who included the documented, much-debated, and poorly understood Portuguese painter Giovanni di Consalvo. Stylistic and iconographic analysis clarifies the relationship between the Badia cycle and its textual and pictorial sources to show how the murals served Gomezio’s institutional reforms by expressing themes crucial to the abbot and his monastic community.

Projects by Anne Leader

A digital sepoltuario (tomb register) that brings together data on the tombs of Renaissance Flore... more A digital sepoltuario (tomb register) that brings together data on the tombs of Renaissance Florence and their "inhabitants," charting social status, occupation, and political service as well as ties of kinship and neighborhood.

Fully searchable online database where users can search by monument, materials, decorative elements, location, family or individual, institution, occupation, neighborhood, social status, and other categories.

http://sepoltuario.iath.virginia.edu

Articles by Anne Leader

Acta Palæomedica–International Journal of Paleomedicine , 2024

Summary of a paper presented in "Health, medicine, and socio-cultural aspects in the Late Middle ... more Summary of a paper presented in "Health, medicine, and socio-cultural aspects in the Late Middle Ages and through the Renaissance: new research perspectives." FAPAB (Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Bioarchaeology) Research Center, Avola, Italy (virtual). 16-17 September 2021

The Galitzianer, Dec 2022

A description of the Galician village of Uhnów that traces the lives of the descendants of Elkana... more A description of the Galician village of Uhnów that traces the lives of the descendants of Elkana Sonenthal after their immigration to the United States in the early 20th century.

Family history of Jewish immigrants to Chicago.

The origins of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) have fascinated scholars for well over a century. Ar... more The origins of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) have fascinated scholars for well over a century. Archival research has revealed much about Leonardo’s origins and his complex family that included four stepmothers and twenty-three half-brothers and half-sisters and their offspring. One source, however, has been overlooked by scholars – a Libro dei defunti, or necrology, kept by the Benedictine monks of the Badia Fiorentina, where Leonardo’s father installed a family tomb in the late fifteenth century. This book of the dead, which lists burials from 1499 through the late eighteenth century, not only offers precious information about which of Leonardo’s relatives found their final rest in Florence at the Badia but also provides invaluable help in reconstructing the disposition of the church interior. This article traces the history of the Da Vinci tomb from its first burial in 1474 to its last in 1614 and provides a transcription and analysis of relevant notices found in the Badia’s Libro dei defunti.

In the late fifteenth century, the father of Leonardo da Vinci, whose origins have fascinated sch... more In the late fifteenth century, the father of Leonardo da Vinci,
whose origins have fascinated scholars for well over a century, installed a tomb for himself and his descendants in the
Florentine monastery known today as the Badia Fiorentina.
Leonardo’s complex family included four stepmothers and
twenty-three half brothers and half sisters and their offspring,
many of whom were buried at the Badia. This article traces the
history of the Da Vinci tomb from its first burial in 1474 to
its last in 1614 to recount which family members were buried
therein and when. Since the church was radically renovated in
the mid-seventeenth century, this paper also provides evidence
for where the tomb chamber was originally located and where
its remnants might be found through archeological excavation.

Compares the underdrawings of the Badia Fiorentina's cloister frescoes with their finished painti... more Compares the underdrawings of the Badia Fiorentina's cloister frescoes with their finished paintings to reveal collaboration between Fra Angelico as designer and several assistants as executors. Through technical and documentary analysis, this article offers a solution to the long-standing dispute over the murals’ authorship and changes our understanding of Fra Angelico’s early career. Focusing on how the early 15th-century murals decorating the cloister of the Florentine Badia with scenes from the life of St Benedict were made allows new insights into who made them. Scholars have long separated the murals into two distinct groups, but by seeking a single artistic personality for each group, they have overlooked the collaborative nature of Renaissance fresco production and the realities of Florentine workshop practice. A reappraisal of the documentary evidence shows that Giovanni di Consalvo, to whom one of the groups is usually attributed, was, at most, a minor workshop assistant on the Badia project. A closer look at the larger group and the frescoes' sinopia underdrawings indicates that they were not the work of a single master, but rather the creations of a workshop team, most probably supervised by Fra Angelico.

Assesses the introduction of PowerPoint into the art history classroom. Offers best practices for... more Assesses the introduction of PowerPoint into the art history classroom. Offers best practices for those making the switch from analog to digital presentations.

A discussion of the theme of papal primacy in Michelangelo's fresco Last Judgment in the Sistine ... more A discussion of the theme of papal primacy in Michelangelo's fresco Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel in Rome and how the artist worked to convey this message. Contrary to much published opinion, this fresco cannot be taken merely as expressing a single artist's vision, but instead should be viewed as the culminating statement of papal propaganda in the Sistine Chapel, which continues the message of papal primacy begun by Pope Sixtus IV in the early 1480s. Michelangelo's fresco, together with the chapel's earlier decoration, was commissioned to propagate specific ideas about the Second Coming and the Catholic Church's part in this climactic event. An examination of why a Last Judgment was commissioned and why certain iconographic choices were made in the grand composition's development supports the argument that the fresco conveys an inherently positive and triumphal message, rather than being a gloomy and frightening image that reflects insecurities spawned within the papal court by the Sack of Rome.

In the late 1420s, Abbot Gomezio di Giovanni initiated a major building campaign to reform the Be... more In the late 1420s, Abbot Gomezio di Giovanni initiated a major building campaign to reform the Benedictine monastery of the Badia Fiorentina. Designed to provide its community with an orderly space in which to pursue the Benedictine Observance, the compound rises around the so-called Orange Cloister, long considered to be an early work of Bernardo Rossellino. A reevaluation of the archival record demonstrates that he was one of many who contributed to the project, which was a collaborative effort co-directed by master mason Antonio di Domenico della Parte and master stonecutter Giovanni d’Antonio da Maiano. In addition to issues of authorship, this article investigates why the building looks the way it does, how it was built, and how it served the Abbot’s reform program. Answers to these questions allow us to develop our appreciation of Benedictine life and architectural practice in early Renaissance Florence.

Chapters and Catalogue Entries by Anne Leader

Lost and Found Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World, 2023

Reconstructs the tombscape of the church inside the complex of the Florentine foundling hospital ... more Reconstructs the tombscape of the church inside the complex of the Florentine foundling hospital known as the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Tombs were installed from 1445 through the middle of the eighteenth century.

Eleonora di Toledo e l'invenzione della corte dei Medici a Firenze, 2023

Discusses drawing of the lost cenotaph erected in Santa Maria del Fiore in 1553 to honor the fath... more Discusses drawing of the lost cenotaph erected in Santa Maria del Fiore in 1553 to honor the father of Eleonora of Toledo, Duchess consort of Florence to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. The drawing comes from a copy of Stefano Rosselli's Sepoltuario Fiorentino written between 1650 and 1657, but was placed by the copyist at the wrong tomb description, which he subsequently covered with an inserted correction that can be lifted to reveal the drawing of Pedro's tomb beneath. Edelstein and Leader reattribute the copy, now kept at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (Manoscritti, 625) to Giovanni Battista Dei, royal antiquarian and director of the Archivio Segreto.

Unfortunately, the entry includes an error in the life dates provided for Dei, who was born in 1702/3 and died in 1789, not 1759 as published in the catalogue, a date based on what is likely a typographical error in Giovambatista Ristori, “Brevi cenni biografici di antichi soci Colombari.” Atti della Società Colombaria di Firenze dall’anno MCMX all’anno MCMXX. Florence: L’ Arte della Stampa, 1921, vol. 7, p. 178. For date of 1789 see Sandra Marsini. “Fondo Manoscritti. Inventario analitico.” N/187, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, 1989; and D. Savini D. and S. Taglialagamba, La Filza Dei: Giovanni Battista e i suoi documenti inediti su Leonardo da Vinci: Achademia Leonardi Vinci, 2022, anno II, n. 2, 53-87.

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 2018

Most know Florence’s memorial culture through the extraordinary Renaissance wall monuments create... more Most know Florence’s memorial culture through the extraordinary Renaissance wall monuments created for high-ranking clerics like Baldassare Cossa, the Antipope John XXIII (d. 1419), and for humanists like Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444) and Carlo Marsuppini (d. 1453). These tombs are acclaimed for their illustrious inhabitants; for the esteemed artists who sculpted them – Donatello and Michelozzo for Cossa (ca. 1425-7), Bernardo Rossellino for Bruni (ca. 1445), and Desiderio da Settignano for Marsuppini (ca. 1459); and for the illustrious institutions that house them – the Baptistery and the Franciscan church of Santa Croce. However, by 1400, the city’s merchants had already carpeted the city’s churches with hundreds of floor slabs, marking private ecclesiastical space not simply for burial, but also to remember their lineages in perpetuity. Just as these men filled the halls of government and places of business in life, their tombs covered the floors and walls of parish, mendicant, and monastic buildings in death. While proper burial was crucial to prepare for the afterlife, monuments manifested a conflicting mix of piety and social calculation that reflected tension between Christian humility and social recognition. Benefactors secured intercession for their souls while promoting family honor. Decorated with coats of arms, laudatory inscriptions, and occasional figure sculpture, merchant tombs were ubiquitous reminders of Florence’s past and offered promise of a glorious future through the honorees’ descendants, who continued to still walk and work in the city.

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 2018

Brief overview of burial practices in Christian Europe and summary of book's eleven chapters

Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth, edited by Nathaniel Silver, 2018

Accompanying the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, this catalog, edited ... more Accompanying the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, this catalog, edited by Nathaniel Silver, explores one of the most important artists of the Renaissance. Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455) transformed painting in Florence with pioneering images, rethinking popular compositions and investing traditional Christian subjects with new meaning. His altarpieces and frescoes set new standards for quality and ingenuity, contributing to Angelico’s unparalleled fame on the Italian peninsula. With the intellect of a Dominican theologian, the technical facility of Florence’s finest craftsmen and the business acumen of its shrewdest merchants, he shaped the future of painting in Italy and beyond.

The exhibition reunites for the first time Fra Angelico’s four reliquaries for Santa Maria Novella (1424-34; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Museo di San Marco, Florence). Together they cover key episodes in the life of the Virgin Mary and capture in miniature some of his most important compositional innovations. Assembled at the Gardner with exceptional examples of Angelico’s narrative paintings from collections in Europe and the United States, this exhibition explores his celebrated talents as a storyteller and the artistic contributions that shaped a new ideal of painting in Florence.

The Badia of Florence: Art and Observance in a Renaissance Monastery, 2012

http://sepoltuario.iath.virginia.edu

Acta Palæomedica–International Journal of Paleomedicine , 2024

The Galitzianer, Dec 2022

Family history of Jewish immigrants to Chicago.

Lost and Found Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World, 2023

Eleonora di Toledo e l'invenzione della corte dei Medici a Firenze, 2023

Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 2018

Brief overview of burial practices in Christian Europe and summary of book's eleven chapters

Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth, edited by Nathaniel Silver, 2018

Reconstructs a panel painting that was dismembered and dispersed among five different collections... more Reconstructs a panel painting that was dismembered and dispersed among five different collections in the late eighteenth century. Long thought to be the predella, or base, of an early Renaissance altarpiece, my research has revealed that the panels come from a single, stand-alone painting depicting the four Doctors of the Western Church in a landscape filled with vignettes from the lives of various hermit saints. These so-called Desert Fathers were revered in monastic circles as exemplars of religious vocation, and they enjoyed a surge of popularity in the early fifteenth century among monastic reformers. This admiration prompted Fra Domenico Cavalca (d. 1342) to write Vite dei Santi Padri (Lives of the Holy Fathers), which in turn inspired numerous paintings known as Thebaids in the late 1300s and early 1400s. The reconstructed devotional panel, which I attribute to the workshop of Fra Angelico, was recently included in a census of Thebaid images (Atlante delle Tebaidi e dei temi figurativi, a cura di Alessandra Malquori con Manuela De Giorgi e Laura Fenelli. Florence: Centro Di, 2013) and is a featured work in the exhibition Fra Angelico, Botticelli…Rediscovered Masterpieces (Chantilly, Musée Condé, 8 September 2014 – 4 January 2015).

Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy. Ed. Trinita Kennedy. Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 31 October 2014 – 25 January 2015. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, edited by Trinita Kennedy, Oct 31, 2014

Initial A with the Madonna of the Purification and St. Zenobius, attributed to Battista di Biagio... more Initial A with the Madonna of the Purification and St. Zenobius, attributed to Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, The Lilly Library, Indiana University Libraries, Medieval and Renaissance 26.

Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trinita Kennedy, Oct 31, 2014

St. Francis before the Bishop by Niccolo da Verona, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman... more St. Francis before the Bishop by Niccolo da Verona, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection 1975.1.318.

Italy in the thirteenth century was transformed by two new religious orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. They created a tremendous demand for works of all kinds – painted altarpieces, crucifixes, fresco cycles, illuminated choir books, and liturgical objects – to decorate their churches. The visual narratives they favoured are notable for their naturalistic treatment and the emphasis on expressive gestures to show human emotions, both of which were significant new developments in Italian art. This book is the first major study to examine the art of these rival religious orders together, exploring the ways in which they used art as propaganda to promote the charisma of their saints and to articulate their revolutionary concept of religious vocation.

The first exhibition dedicated to Italian Renaissance art in Nashville since 1934, Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy explores the role of the two major new religious orders in the revival of the arts in Italy during the period 1200 to 1550. The exhibition presents drawings, illuminated manuscripts, liturgical objects, paintings, prints, printed books and sculptures drawn from the collections of major American and European libraries and museums, including works of art from the Vatican Library and Vatican Museums that have never before been exhibited in the United States. Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. A fully illustrated catalogue published by Philip Wilson Publishers in conjunction with the Frist Center will accompany the exhibition.

Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trinita Kennedy,, Oct 31, 2014

St. Clare by the Master of the Loeser Madonna, Georgia Museum of Art, Kress Collection 1961.1890.... more St. Clare by the Master of the Loeser Madonna, Georgia Museum of Art, Kress Collection 1961.1890.

Church Monuments: Journal of the Church Monuments Society, 2022

Renaissance Quarterly, Jun 29, 2021

While the title suggests a monograph on buildings purposely built for banking, this book’s subtit... more While the title suggests a monograph on buildings purposely built for banking, this
book’s subtitle more aptly captures its subject: a history of the spaces, places, and
lived experience of monetary exchange in late medieval and early modern Italy.
Lauren Jacobi explores the “topography of money” (164) primarily through the example
of Florence, but also cities including Milan, Rome, and Venice, and smaller centers like
Gubbio, Lucca, and Perugia. Jacobi also looks at international economic landscapes
through Italian branch banks in England and Flanders. Her subject presents challenges
because most banking architecture was initially built for other functions, many buildings
used by bankers were multipurpose, and little survives of the structures as they
appeared in the Renaissance. The term architecture is defined broadly, and workshops,
mints, guild halls, loggias, streets and squares, mansions, monti di pietà (charitable lending institutions), and even ships are analyzed as sites of commercial exchange, fortune building, and money lending. Jacobi examines a range of evidence through the lens of financial activity to conclude that the spaces of banking were recognizable not by any particular architectural style or typological form but rather through the relationships of bankers, monetary activities, and the spaces they inhabited. These banking networks
enabled moneymaking—both the literal minting of coin and the figurative creation
of wealth—to be seen as honest and connected to good government.

The Burlington Magazine, 2017

Renaissance Quarterly, Dec 1, 2016

Reviews From Giotto to Botticelli: The Artistic Patronage of the Humiliati in Florence by Julia I... more Reviews From Giotto to Botticelli: The Artistic Patronage of the Humiliati in Florence by Julia Isabel Miller and Laurie Taylor-Mitchell. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. xiii þ 244 pp. $74.95.

Reviewed work: Nicholas A. Eckstein, Painted Glories: The Brancacci Chapel in Renaissance Florenc... more Reviewed work: Nicholas A. Eckstein, Painted Glories: The Brancacci Chapel in Renaissance Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Pp. 284; 100 black-and-white and 50 color figures. $75. ISBN: 978-0-300-18766-3. doi:10.1086/685467

Reviewed work: Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490. By Diana Hi... more Reviewed work: Gendered Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490. By Diana Hiller. 256 pp. incl. 8 col. + 36 b. & w. ills. (Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, 2014), £60. ISBN 978–1–4094–6206–4.

Reviewed work: Sally J. Cornelison. Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Floren... more Reviewed work: Sally J. Cornelison. Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence. Visual Culture in Early Modernity. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012. xv + 358 pp. + 13 color pls. $119.95. ISBN: 978–0–7546–6714–8.

Reviewed work: Marie Tanner. Jerusalem on the Hill: Rome and the Vision of Saint Peter’s Basilic... more Reviewed work: Marie Tanner. Jerusalem on the Hill: Rome and the Vision of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Renaissance. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2010. 288 pp. index. illus. map. bibl. €120. ISBN: 978–1–905375–49–3.

Renaissance Quarterly, Jan 1, 2008

Reviews James R. Lindow's 2008 book

Portuguese Studies Review, 2001

Italian Art Society Newsletter, Sep 18, 2019

Reviews exhibition mounted at Museo Nacional del Prado 28 May to 15 September 2019.

caa.reviews, 2014

Reviews exhibition held in Florence and Paris 2013-14

Review of exhibition Devotion by Design, National Gallery, London

caa.reviews, Dec 23, 2010

A review of “Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting,” a traveling exhibition at the High ... more A review of “Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting,” a traveling exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from October 16, 2010, to January 2, 2011. This small but impressive exhibition presented 12 drawings and 13 paintings from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. These were well displayed in four galleries, the first devoted to Venetian drawings and the rest offering a concise history of 16th-century Venetian painting. The highlight of the show and perhaps its reason for being was the loan of Titian's spectacular pair of canvases painted between 1556 and 1559 for King Philip II of Spain: Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto. These were shown alongside much earlier works he painted between 1517 and 1520, giving a succinct yet effective synopsis of his religious and mythological works.

caa.reviews, Apr 14, 2010

A review of the exhibition “Emozioni in terracotta: Guido Mazzoni/Antonio Begarelli, sculture del... more A review of the exhibition “Emozioni in terracotta: Guido Mazzoni/Antonio Begarelli, sculture del Rinascimento emiliano,” on display at the Foro Boario in Modena, Italy, until June 7, 2009. This magnificent exhibition was the first dedicated to the celebrated Modenese sculptors Guido Mazzoni (1450–circa 1518) and Antonio Begarelli (1499–circa 1565). The show set out to place the sculptors in the first rank of European artists while exploring the bias that still exalts paintings over sculpture, marble over clay, and classicism over verisimilitude. It was accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalog.

A review of two recent exhibitions of work by the 15th-century Italian artist and Observant Domin... more A review of two recent exhibitions of work by the 15th-century Italian artist and Observant Dominican friar Diovanni da Fiseole, known as Fra Angelico. The first show, the small, focused “L'Angelico ritrovato,” was shown at the Museo Nazionale di S. Marco in Florence, Italy, until April 26, 2009. It celebrated the return to Florence of two small panels originally from the pilasters of the dismembered San Marco altarpiece. A more ambitious show was held at the Palazzo dei Caffarelli, Musei Capitolini, Rome, until July 5. Intended to be the largest Italian show on Fra Angelico since 1955, the exhibition included 50 works, some of which had never been exhibited before. It is to be hoped that future generations of historians will draw inspiration from this beautiful exhibition.

caa.reviews, Apr 8, 2008

"“The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece,” a traveling exhibition at t... more "“The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece,” a traveling exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from October 30, 2007, to January 13, 2008, provided U.S. audiences a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to intimately experience the genius of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise from the Florentine Baptistry and to be among the first to appreciate their newly revealed gilt surfaces. Close scrutiny is richly rewarded with Ghiberti's apparently limitless array of naturalistic and decorative details. caa.reviews (April 9, 2008), doi: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2008.33
"

Reviews developments of IASblog from July 2 2014 to 2015.

The Newsletter of the Italian Art Society, XXVI, no. 3, Sep 1, 2014

History of IASblog on the occasion of its first anniversary.

My final post as IASblog editor with reflections on the creation of the blog and its development ... more My final post as IASblog editor with reflections on the creation of the blog and its development from 2013 to 2016. Click link above to see the original post, a less attractive PDF of which is offered below.

The Artstor blog: news, tips, discoveries, 2013

The English Historical Review, Jun 2021

The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 2021

The volume of essays examines memorials within various religious contexts during the Middle Ages ... more The volume of essays examines memorials within various religious contexts during the Middle Ages and early modern period. In her introduction, Anne Leader points up the impact of the material here studied, noting that the history of Western art would be quite short were it not for practices of memorializing. Perhaps the most productive aspect of this book is the insistent use of the plural “middle classes.” The authors explore not “a middle class” but the shifting, growing, and contended groups that the term middle class has come to comprise. Contentious fluidity is underscored in nearly every essay. (Only one contributor, Agnieszka Patala, attempts to draw a sharp distinction between the patrician and the middle classes in urban centers.) I would further stress that the terms middle class and bourgeoisie are of course retrospective and analytical; they did not constitute contemporaneous self-fashioning or aspirational categories. The contributors bring together a wealth of artistic examples and written documents as they interrogate the hierarchical placement of tombs, including floor slabs and wall monuments, distinctions of placement inside and outside of churches, patrons’ choices of institutions, the decorum and meaning of materials, the usage of various media and multimedia, the meanings of spolia and emulation, the comparative advantages of various kinds of furnishings, as well as of transitory consumable gifts, and the ways in which memorials were interconnected with the performance of liturgy and the observance of the church year.

English Historical Review , 2021

Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici (1479-1516) did not enjoy the best of reputations during his lifet... more Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici (1479-1516) did not enjoy the best of reputations during his lifetime. Although he was Machiavelli's first choice as dedicatee of Il principe, and was admired by the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo, he was seldom taken seriously either as a soldier or as a statesman. Writing shortly after the Medici's return to Florence in 1512, Francesco Vettori archly opined that he was a man 'more of the court than of war'. Others were more scathing. According to Bartolomeo Cerretani, even some of the Medici's supporters regarded him as 'naturally unsuited to the task of government'. For most contemporaries, especially those who had known him in exile, he was a mere voluptuary, given more to poetry and pleasure than to politics. In Pietro Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua, for example, he was celebrated not as a possible subject for heroic verse, but as a typical example of Florentine eloquence, while in Baldassare Castiglione's Il cortegiano, he appears as a defender of female beauty, rather than of the stoic virtues beloved of Florentine humanists. Modern historians have not been much more sympathetic. During the nineteenth century, criticisms were, if anything, even more savage. For Francesco Nitti, he was an idle and ineffective wastrel, unworthy of his high birth; for Ludwig Pastor, he was nothing more than an extravagant showoff, whose disinterest in the affairs of state was matched only by his appetite for debauchery. Such negative views persisted well into the twentieth century. Writing in the early 1970s, J.R. Hale neatly encapsulated general opinion in deploring his dedication to the 'pleasures of sex, luxury, and the arts'. Only recently has there been any effort at reassessment. In an entry in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (2009), Stefano Tabacchi has pointed out that, far from being an 'irrelevant figure', Giuliano played a part in securing the reform of the Florentine government in 1512, and was integral to Leo X's 'international strategy' in the years which followed. Yet even Tabacchi has been forced to admit that he was still a rather passive figure, who was denied an independent role in the Medici regime and wallowed in the shadow of his own shortcomings. Josephine Jungić's biography is a more radical attempt at rehabilitation. Convinced that Giuliano was misrepresented by contemporaries jealous of his popularity, she seeks to portray him as a 'highly principled individual' (p. 6), who was admired by the leading statesmen and condottieri of his day, but who was nevertheless sidelined by his family for his 'republican' views. At the same time, she also sets out to show that he was a discerning patron of the arts, whose fate was intertwined with 'some of the period's biggest cultural achievements' (p. 7). Jungić's approach is novel. Though the book's ten chapters are ordered in a broadly chronological fashion, most concentrate on Giuliano's relationship

Speculum 96/2, 2021

People die, but their memories live on, at least when these take the form of durable funerary mon... more People die, but their memories live on, at least when these take the form of durable funerary monuments. This volume of eleven essays by an international group of historians and art historians explores the commemorative practices of a range of prosperous city-dwellers in medieval and renaissance Europe. Based on the careful description and analysis of commemorative artifacts, and taking social and political contexts into account, they demonstrate that the desire to transcend the transience of the human body was shared by many urban elites. The majority of the essays focus on urban elites who were both prosperous and socially ambitious, but did not rely primarily on rents from ancestral lands. These elites are referred to as "the middle classes," a term more popular among art historians than among social historians of medieval and renaissance cities, since it does little to clarify the fine gradations of urban social hierarchies, and was not in use among the people to whom it refers. Indeed, as the essays themselves make clear, some of these men of the "middle class" embraced distinctly noble identities. For them, elaborate tombs were a favored investment. Essays by Ann Adams, Nicola Jennings, and Meredith Crosbie show that high court officials in Castile, Flanders, and Burgundy, and the holders of newly purchased titles of nobility in Venice, constructed fancy funerary monuments that mimicked or even surpassed those of established aristocratic families, laying solid claim to status that was still uncertain. These efforts were not necessarily successful: the high court officials appear not to have convinced the traditional nobility that they were true knights. Meanwhile, Sandra Cardarelli shows, the declining nobleman Cione dei Ravi in Tuscany did not have as much to spend, yet still planned elaborate tombs, seeking to memorialize his lineage's status even as it seeped away. (Fortunately for Cione, he lived for more than twenty-five years after the plague scare that prompted him to write a detailed will.) Depictions of the dead as knights in armor was one way to affirm high social status, but some urban elites preferred to adopt non-chivalric identities. A few of the essays focus on civic and professional forms of representation, and together they provide a convincing argument that successful medieval and renaissance citizens often embraced identities that had little to do with nobility. As Ruth Wolff shows in her analysis of several overlooked tombs, some medieval Italian men of letters were represented as "enthroned" doctors teaching students, even when they were not doctors of law. Karen Rose Matthews's strong essay shows that in Ghibelline Pisa, creative reuse of ancient Roman sarcophagi, which were used by merchants from both the old nobility and the popolo, hinted at a glorious imperial past and a proud civic present for that city. Merchants did not always ape gentlemen. In fifteenthcentury Bruges, Harriette Peel suggests, an anti-imperial aristocrat and a salt merchant might have commissioned similar unusual funerary monuments because they shared similar civic politics and concerns. Other citizens cherished multiple loyalties. Nuremberg merchants who established themselves in the commercially strategic Silesian city of Breslau maintained Nuremberg identities even as they assimilated: as Agnieszka Patała shows, they made lavish charitable donations to the church of Breslau's elite, sometimes commissioning art that followed Silesian conventions but depicted Saint Sebald, a patron saint of Nuremberg. In general, the funerary monuments and practices explored here illustrate how urban elites pursued the intertwined ends of piety and self-promotion. However, there is interesting geographical variation, particularly in regard to the commemoration of women and children. Women seem to be almost entirely absent from the elaborate commemorative landscapes

Renaissance Quarterly, 2020

The Antiquaries Journal, 2020

Church Monuments: Journal of the Church Monuments Society, 2019

Quaderni d'italianistica, 2019

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2019

The Burlington Magazine, Jul 2014

55. The cloister of the Badia, Florence, towards the west, showing fresco scenes 8-10.

Speculum, Apr 2013

Reviews 541 visible also in the heavy weight of ex act footnotes noting each case and folio . It ... more Reviews 541 visible also in the heavy weight of ex act footnotes noting each case and folio . It is a grea t pit y that Lacey has been so techni cally pr ecise at places. The boo k is full o f the te rmi no l ogy of common Jaw: felon y, eyr e, jury of presentment, gaol delivery, oyer et termin er one feels a need fo r a tec hnica l introduction in order to famil iarize one's self wi th the ba sic terminology, w hich migh t alienate social and cu ltu ral historians, for whom the book is highly important.

The Catholic Historical Review, Jan 2013

Renaissance Quarterly, 2012

Choice Reviews Online, Oct 2012

The Medieval Review, Sep 27, 2012

Studies of the Urbino studiolo have yet to elucidate an overarching iconographic scheme to explai... more Studies of the Urbino studiolo have yet to elucidate an overarching iconographic scheme to explain its selection of portraits. Literary and pictorial sources demonstrate that Federico’s series draws on yet adapts the visual and literary traditions of uomini famosi picture cycles and uomini illustri biographical collections as well as the burgeoning Quattrocento interest in portrait collection. This combination creates an exemplum of intellectual and humanistic values and an ideal kinship of scholars into which Federico da Montefeltro wished to be included. By substituting rulers and generals (a seemingly more natural choice for a condottiere and leader) with authors, thinkers, and theologians, Federico created a new type of uomini famosi who represented the vita contemplativa, celebrated the Duke’s scholarly pursuits and prowess, and suggested allegiance with the greatest intellects of past and present.

Although most Florentines chose burial in their parish churches, many requested entombment in men... more Although most Florentines chose burial in their parish churches, many requested entombment in mendicant churches, monasteries, or the cathedral. Their tomb monuments manifest a mix of piety and social calculation emblematic of the tension between Christian humility and social recognition. Quite fascinating is the fairly frequent decision to be buried apart from kinsmen, either in a separate tomb or at a separate institution from the family's primary burial ground. Preliminary research into the rich resources of the sepoltuari (tomb registers) kept in the Florentine Archives reveals that lineages were typically divided among as many as three or four different churches. Equally fascinating is the typical mix of elite and non-elite tombs, as men from the ruling class found their final resting place next to those with low-to-no economic, political, or social status. This paper presents initial findings and invites discussion of current assumptions about tomb patrons’ identities, choices, and motives.

Contrary to what we might expect, Florentine families commonly established several commemorative ... more Contrary to what we might expect, Florentine families commonly established several commemorative burial sites around the city, installing tombs in parish churches, friaries, monasteries, convents, and, if allowed, the cathedral as well. Indeed, tombs were the most prevalent and conspicuous form of private monuments in city churches, and such diversity of burial location within a single lineage attests to the various functions sepulchers held beyond interment. Certain patrons desired to have specific, personal, and direct intercessory prayers rather than find themselves grouped anonymously in an ancestral tomb. Multiple family memorials would preserve, promote, and advertise the honor of the family name in general and that of individual branches of the lineage in particular. This paper will examine the burial choices of the Albizzi, Covoni, Corsini, Medici, Ricci, and Strozzi, among others, to explore whether factional politics also played a role in where Florentines chose to install their tomb monuments.

The church of Santa Croce in Florence has long been recognized as an important commemorative site... more The church of Santa Croce in Florence has long been recognized as an important commemorative site. While many of those buried and honored within the Franciscan convent lived and died in the neighborhood, a large number of tombs at the church belonged to Florentines from other quartieri. Moreover, all who chose interment with the Franciscans were consequently rejecting their home parishes, the traditional locale of burial and commemoration, raising questions about competition between the city’s neighborhood and monastic churches. Relational database technology that tracks tomb location and type alongside family status and residence reveals the topography of burial and commemoration at Santa Croce during the Florentine Republic as well as patterns of tomb patronage and their relationship to social networks among the living.

Most know Florence’s memorial culture through extraordinary Renaissance wall monuments for humani... more Most know Florence’s memorial culture through extraordinary Renaissance wall monuments for humanists and high-ranking clerics. By 1400, the city’s merchant elite had carpeted city churches with floor slabs, marking private ecclesiastical space not simply for burial, but also to remember their lineages in perpetuity. Just as these men filled the halls of government and places of business in life, their tombs covered the floors and walls of parish, mendicant, and monastic buildings in death. While proper burial was crucial to prepare for the afterlife, monuments manifested a conflicting mix of piety and social calculation reflecting tension between Christian humility and social recognition. Benefactors secured intercession for their souls while promoting family honor. Decorated with coats of arms, laudatory inscriptions, and occasional figure sculpture, merchant tombs were ubiquitous reminders of Florence’s past and offered promise of a glorious future through the honorees’ descendants still walking and working in the city.

Daniel Lesnick’s Preaching in Medieval Florence continues to influence our understanding of the F... more Daniel Lesnick’s Preaching in Medieval Florence continues to influence our understanding of the Franciscan and Dominican communities in late medieval Florence. He argues that the social status of the friars mirrored that of each order’s primary constituency, with Franciscans appealing mostly to the popolo minuto, and the Dominicans, to the elite. A comprehensive examination of tombs installed in Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella at the turn of the fourteenth century complicates this thesis. Statistical analysis of more than 1,500 tombs demonstrates how members of the popolo grasso actively sought burial rights with both orders, and some lineages installed monuments in each church. Indeed, the primary patrons of Santa Croce (the Bardi, Alberti, Cavalcanti, Gherardini, Donati, Ricasoli, Adimari, Cerchi, Pazzi, and Peruzzi) include some of the city’s oldest elites, with both magnates and merchant bankers choosing the Franciscans to care for their remains and pray, and presumably preach, for their salvation.

Building on the session “Memorials for Merchants: The Funerary Culture of Late Medieval Europe’s ... more Building on the session “Memorials for Merchants: The Funerary Culture of Late Medieval Europe’s New Elite” (College Art Association Annual Meeting, 2014) and toward an edited volume on the subject, this session seeks papers that investigate the habits and strategies of middle-class patrons of commemorative art ca. 1300-1700. The rising fortunes of merchants, lawyers, and other professionals allowed middle-class patrons to commission private tombs in numbers not seen since Roman times. While historians and anthropologists have looked broadly at European commemorative practices of the later Middles Ages and Renaissance, art historians have tended to focus on individual patrons, monuments, artists, or institutions. We seek papers that allow comparative analysis of the socio-cultural significance of memorialization both within particular cities and regions and across Europe. We welcome papers that explore issues of social networks, the privatization of communal spaces, individual and corporate identities, personal and public memories, the relationships between the living and the dead, and other questions regarding commemoration, the use of space, and the patronage and reception of tombs and other memorials.

Common Children and the Common Good: Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World, Dec 10, 2019

Contrary to what we might expect, Florentine families commonly established multiple commemorative... more Contrary to what we might expect, Florentine families commonly established multiple commemorative burial sites around the city, installing tombs in parish churches, friaries, monasteries, convents, and, when allowed, at the cathedral itself. Though the Ospedale degli Innocenti was intended to be a secular institution, it came to have its own church, which included family-sponsored altars and tombs in the manner typical of city churches, though on a smaller scale. These dozen monuments provide the opportunity for alpha testing of Digital Sepoltuario, an online searchable database for the study of Florentine commemorative culture. Questions raised include who received burial rights within the foundling hospital between the consecration of the church in 1451 and the completion of a citywide tomb registry by Stefano Rosselli in 1657. Why did they want to entrust prayers for their salvation here, rather than their home parish or popular sites of commemoration like Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella? The Innocenti memorials enrich our understanding of the social networks woven through the hospital and also provide a sharp contrast to the ways in which resident children were buried. The elites buried in the church received specific, personal, and direct intercessory prayers and expected to be remembered for generations while orphans and staff were placed anonymously in communal graves.

The recent revelation that the biological remains of Duke Alessandro de’Medici were partly respon... more The recent revelation that the biological remains of Duke Alessandro de’Medici were partly responsible for stubborn stains on the surfaces of Michelangelo’s stonework in the burial chapel he created for the Medici at their parish church of San Lorenzo gives credence to the concerns of medieval and early modern churchmen and civic authorities who battled, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep cadavers out of church buildings, if not the city itself. This presentation will provide an overview of the processes of interment from the thirteenth through late-eighteenth centuries in Florentine churches and raise questions about attitudes toward death, resurrection, and health in Renaissance Florence.

Presented in “Health, medicine, and socio-cultural aspects in the Late Middle Ages and through the Renaissance: new research perspectives.” FAPAB (Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Bioarchaeology) Research Center, Avola, Italy (virtual). 16-17 September 2021. See YouTube video at 2:16-2:53. Corrections included in draft, forthcoming in Acta Palaeomedica-International Journal of Paleomedicine 3 (Feb/Mar 2022)

Cambridge Medieval Art Seminar Series, 2022

Video presentation: Overview of digital humanities project Digital Sepoltuario, a catalogue of al... more Video presentation: Overview of digital humanities project Digital Sepoltuario, a catalogue of all churches, chapels, tombs, and other memorials installed in Florence ca. 1250-1785.

Caring for and commemorating the dead is a fundamental human activity, as old, if not older, as h... more Caring for and commemorating the dead is a fundamental human activity, as old, if not older, as human civilization itself. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended cherished burial rituals worldwide and has also renewed interest the pandemic of 1348 that killed upwards of 60% of Europe’s population. Fourteenth-century authors have become newly relevant as their vivid descriptions of the plague seem ripped from today’s headlines. Florence, Italy ranked among the largest European cities at the start of the fourteenth century and lost approximately half of her citizens in the summer of 1348, putting great stress on survivors torn between protecting themselves from illness and attending to the sick and dying. Giovanni Boccaccio lamented the abandonment of funeral customs and bemoaned the many who died alone. Dr. Anne Leader will present her award-winning research on burial customs in early Renaissance Florence, providing an overview of the memorial landscape of the city as Boccaccio and his contemporaries knew it and the ways in which Florentines reformed and renewed their interrupted memorial traditions.

Overview of my book with focus on iconography of the murals vis-a-vis the Benedictine Observance.... more Overview of my book with focus on iconography of the murals vis-a-vis the Benedictine Observance. Q&A at the end discusses attribution to workshop of Angelico.

Prayer was a key feature of Dominican and Franciscan life, and many laypeople believed that mendi... more Prayer was a key feature of Dominican and Franciscan life, and many laypeople believed that mendicant prayer was the most efficacious. Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, donations of all kinds poured into Dominican and Franciscan communities as a means of requesting prayers for the living and the dead. In addition to altarpieces, fresco programs, stained glass windows, and church furnishings, thousands of Italians requested burial in mendicant houses during the Renaissance with graves decorated with stone slabs and other markers. While it is often claimed that Franciscans appealed more to the working classes, and Dominicans conversely to the merchant class, tomb patronage demonstrates that elites sought their final rest with both orders. A comparison of the tomb patronage at Florence’s Franciscan Santa Croce and Dominican Santa Maria Novella raises interesting questions about the social profile of those who chose to await the Final Judgment in the care of the mendicants.

IATH, 2024

Digital Sepoltuario offers students, scholars, and the public an online resource for the study of... more Digital Sepoltuario offers students, scholars, and the public an online resource for the study of commemorative culture in Florence from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Based on the city-wide sepoltuario compiled by the antiquarian Stefano Rosselli in the mid-seventeenth century, this site includes an illustrated catalogue of the city's memorials that recreates the commemorative landscape of the pre-modern city. Florence's extensive memorial culture was developed and propagated through thousands of decorated tombs personalized with inscriptions and coats of arms. These sepulchers were intended both to encourage prayers for the dead to ease their passage through Purgatory and to preserve and promote the family name for eternity. Groups who could sponsor altars and chapels ensured that masses and offices would further remediate their sin and aid their souls in their pursuit of heaven. Furnishings like holy water stoups, doorways, and altarpieces not only provided the clergy and faithful with what they needed for worship but also could be emblazoned with coats of arms and inscriptions as signs of their donors' piety and reminders to pray for their souls.

RSA News and Announcements: Awards and Prizes, Jun 28, 2021

RSA Member Anne Leader (Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, Uni... more RSA Member Anne Leader (Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia) and her project team at IATH were awarded a 2021 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant from the Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities. This two-year grant of $299,000 will support research on the relationships between the living and the dead in premodern Florence and will further development of Digital Sepoltuario, an internet accessible resource based on archival registries kept by church officials to keep track of patronage rights and burials on their grounds. Known as sepoltuari, these manuscripts list burials according to their physical proximity to chapels, altars, and other furnishings and to each other. Antiquarians later compiled individual registers into comprehensive, citywide sepoltuari, adding descriptions of tomb components, materials, and decorations and transcribing inscriptions. The Digital Sepoltuario built by Leader and IATH includes not only the data contained in these manuscript sepoltuari but also facts about family, corporate, and neighborhood networks and the employment, marriages, and political service of the deceased as gleaned from a variety of additional primary sources and the rich scholarship on Florentine history. NEH funding will enable an extensive expansion of the dataset, the construction of more robust search mechanisms, and the development of mapping features. These enhancements will allow students, scholars, genealogists, and visitors to Florence, whether in person or virtually, to explore and interpret the tombscape of this treasured UNESCO heritage site.

For more on the history of Digital Sepoltuario, please visit: http://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/campus_notices/2021/06/220845-olli-neh-award.php.

For the full list of award winners, see: https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-24-million-225-humanities-projects-nationwide

Opelika Observer, Jun 30, 2021

Local art historian Dr. Anne Leader and her research team at the University of Virginia’s Institu... more Local art historian Dr. Anne Leader and her research team at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) have received a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant for $299,000 from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In addition to teaching art history classes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Auburn, Leader is a visiting fellow at IATH, where she and her colleagues are building an interactive digital research site on the connections between burial choices, family networks and religious and social affiliations in Florence, Italy. The project, called Digital Sepoltuario, links city and church burial records with the commemorative landscape and culture of premodern Florence.

Auburn University Campus Notices, Jun 22, 2021

Auburn, AL Local art historian Anne Leader and her research team at the University of Virginia’s ... more Auburn, AL Local art historian Anne Leader and her research team at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, or IATH, have received a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant for $299,000 from The National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH. In addition to teaching art history classes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, or OLLI, at Auburn, Leader is a Visiting Fellow at IATH, where she and her colleagues are building an interactive digital research site on the connections between burial choices, family networks and religious and social affiliations in Florence, Italy. The project, Digital Sepoltuario, links city and church burial records with the commemorative landscape and culture of premodern Florence.