STEFANIA GEREVINI

I am Associate Professor in the History of Art at Bocconi, and Research Fellow of the British School at Rome. My main research and teaching expertise lies in the areas of Medieval and Byzantine art, with particular focus on the arts of Venice and its empire, and on issues of artistic interaction across the Mediterranean.

I hold a degree in cultural management from Bocconi, and an MA and PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Prior to joining the faculty at Bocconi, I held the positions of Research Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut; Lecturer in the History of Byzantine Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art; and Assistant Director at The British School at Rome.

My scholarship has received recognition from a number of institutions, including, most recently: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (2016); The Leibniz WissenschaftsCampus, Mainz/Frankfurt (2019); the KHI - Florenz (2020-21); the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris (2021).

My recent and current work focuses on the following areas:

• The nexus between arts and politics in the medieval Mediterranean, with specific focus on artistic interactions, political conflict, and public memory. My monograph, Facing Crisis? Art as Politics in Fourteenth-Century Venice (Dumbarton Oaks Studies, Harvard University Press, 2024), explores these issues through analysis of the artistic renewal of the basilica of San Marco during the dogeship of Andrea Dandolo (1343-54), at a time of profound institutional transformation.
• Conceptualizations and artistic applications of light and transparency, with a particular focus on the use and meaning of rock crystal in the religious and secular cultures of medieval Europe.
• Medieval materiality and performativity. The agency of medieval artifacts, the semantic affordances of different artistic media, and the interplay between materiality and immateriality are central to the project Hidden in Plain Sight: the Metalwork Altarpieces of Medieval Venetia (MUR-PRIN 2022) which I lead as principal investigator. This project also engages with current debates in digital heritage, by exploring the relative potential of traditional and digital techniques of visualization for the documentation of historical artifacts and the reconstruction of their original functioning.