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

• FERRY LICHTENBERG

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  The Methodological Application of Semiotics and Social Factors in Visual Culture: Case Studies from Mediaeval Guelders

  Description:

  In 1979, Jean-Francois Lyotard defined postmodernism as an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives', and yet, despite postmodernist concepts and ideas having flourished since, meta-narratives remain persistent in the realm of visual culture. My research focuses on a counterpart of meta-narratives, petit-recits, or small narratives. Applying semiotic concepts from literature studies, which suggest meaning is dependent on the social context in which language itself is represented, it seeks to demonstrate how and to what extent small narratives can account for phenomena in the realm of visual culture.

  Case studies from the duchy of Guelders around the turn of the fifteenth century seem auspicious to these enquiries. One reason is that a centre-periphery dichotomy remains prevalent in (meta-narrative) explanations: although it has long been argued that the visual culture of this region was advanced compared to others in the Northern Netherlands, this is omitted from most evaluations. A further consideration is the role of women, which is obfuscated. Important regional works, such as the prayerbook of Mary of Guelders and the Roermond Passion, were commissioned, and sometimes made, by women. This, too, remains underrepresented in texts. Through an evaluation of contemporary objects, the social environments in which they were created, and relevant source material, my research aims to explicate fresh frames of enquiry so that meta-narrative orthodoxies can be challenged, and our understanding of the visual culture of Guelders be enhanced.

• 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

  Title of thesis:

  How portraiture can explore the fashioning of Protestant Identity in the sixteenth century: a comparative study of England, Denmark-Norway and Sweden.

  Description:

  What was the significance of the portrait in the first generation of the Reformation? Responding to this question, this study examines portraits produced in three Northern European Protestant kingdoms - Sweden, Denmark-Norway and England - to explore the place of the portrait and those commissioned, made and saw it in those societies and the relationship amongst the image, the selection of those represented and the location of the portrait. The study investigates specifically what portrait can tell us about Protestant identity in the sixteenth century England, Denmark-Norway and Sweden. To do so, it explores a portrait of Sweden's king-elect Erik, commissioned by English courtiers, painted by a Netherlandish painter and presented to Queen Elizabeth in connection with his marriage proposal. The study will, furthermore, examine and compare six portraits of members of the urban elite in the three kingdoms. Portraits of citizens were not as common as those of members of the nobility in the sixteenth century Northern Europe. They have therefore not been subjected to extensive analysis to the same extent as portraits of royalty and nobility. The selected portraits reflect the importance contribution university-educated scholars and merchants made to shaping the new post-Reformation societies. It is the thesis of the study that the portraits discussed reflects a new identity, which the Protestant Ideology brought to the three kingdoms after the break with the Catholic Church.

Publications