Dr Robert Maniura

Overview

Biography

After a previous career in financial management in industry, I studied the history of art at the Courtauld Institute, taking my PhD in 1998.

I have held Fellowships at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the Netherlands Inter-University Art History Institute in Florence, a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.

I joined Birkbeck in 2001. I lecture on the art of both Northern and Southern Europe in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance at BA and MA level. I welcome enquiries about potential research in Medieval and Renaissance art.

Research

Research overview

My recent research has concentrated on the role of the visual in devotion in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a special focus on images associated with miracles. I have pursued these interests in two books: Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century: The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Częstochowa (2004) and Art and Miracle in Renaissance Tuscany (2018).

Much of my research has focused on the fifteenth century and my current project, begun with the support of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, explores the implications of taking a broader view of the art of that conventionally pivotal period.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Member of Steering Committee, Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
• Member of Steering Committee, Vasari Research Centre

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

3

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research on any aspect of Late medieval or early Renaissance art.

Current doctoral researchers

• JAVIER VICENTE ARENAS

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2018 onwards

• MORAG MCLINTOCK

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Jun 2019 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Art, Family and Status in Fourteenth Century Italy: the Lupi in Parma, Padua and Florence.

• TORBEN LUND

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Debates in Art History (AHVM091S4)
• Renaissance Witnesses (AREN052Z7)
• Art and Devotion in Fifteenth-Century Italy (ARVC118S7)
• Art and the Sacred in the Middle Ages (ARVC179S6)
• Art History: A Survey (ARVC205S4)
• Material and Process in Art (ARVC207S4)
• Dissertation (ARVC220S6)
• Art and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (ARVC239S5)
• Frameworks: Histories and Theories of Art, Architecture, Photography (ARVC247S7)
• The Renaissance: Concepts and Issues (ENHU070S7)

Publications