Dr Elsje van Kessel

Senior Lecturer in Art History

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 2374

Email

ejmvk@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

My research and teaching focus on the viewing, use and display of early modern art. I completed my Ph.D. at Leiden University, the Netherlands (2011), and I am the author of The Lives of Paintings: Presence, Agency and Likeness in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth-Century (De Gruyter, 2017). In this monograph, I examine how people in Titian’s Venice used paintings in their daily lives. I have published articles in Renaissance Studies, the Journal of the History of Collections, Studiolo, and Art History. My research has been supported by various fellowships, grants and awards: among others, from the Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

My current major research project, for which I received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, concerns the circulation of art objects within the Portuguese maritime empire at the turn of the seventeenth century, in particular as a result of piracy and privateering.

I would be delighted to hear from postgraduate students whose research interests align with the above.

PhD supervision

• Aagje Lybeer
• Louis Edmanson

Selected publications

• Open access

  The inventories of the Madre de Deus: tracing Asian material culture in early modern England

  van Kessel, E., Jul 2020, In: Journal of the History of Collections . 32, 2, p. 207-223 17 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  The making of a hybrid body: Corpus Christi in Lisbon, 1582

  van Kessel, E., 19 Aug 2020, In: Renaissance Studies. 34, 4, p. 572-592

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Longing for the past: Eichendorff's Marmorbild, historical experience, and the sexuality of the masterpieces room

  van Kessel, E. J. M., 2019, Sculpture, Sexuality and History: Encounters in Literature, Culture and the Arts from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Funke, J. & Grove, J. (eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 57-79 23 p. (Genders and sexualities in history).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review

• The lives of paintings: presence, agency and likeness in Venetian art of the sixteenth century

  van Kessel, E., 24 Apr 2017, Berlin: de Gruyter. 347 p. (Studien aus dem Warburg-Haus; vol. 18)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• The secret lives of art works: exploring the boundaries between art and life

  van Eck, C. (ed.), van Gastel, J. (ed.) & van Kessel, E. (ed.), Jan 2014, Leiden: Leiden University Press. 411 p.

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• How to Make an Image Work? The Presentation of the Miraculous Christ Carrying the Cross at San Rocco in Venice

  van Kessel, E., 2012, In: Studiolo. 9, p. 12-25

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Staging Bianca Capello: Painting and Theatricality in Sixteenth-Century Venice

  van Kessel, E., 2010, In: Art History. 33, 2, p. 278-291

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

 

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