Dr Peter Dent
Lecturer
BA (Oxford), MA (Courtauld), PhD (Courtauld)
Office: 2.32, 9 Woodland Road
Phone: 44+ (0)117 954 6052
Email: Peter.Dent@bristol.ac.uk
Peter Dent read Modern History and English at Merton College, Oxford, followed by a Masters in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He wrote his doctoral thesis, also at the Courtauld, on representations of the body of Christ in fourteenth-century Tuscan sculpture (2005). He has since held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Courtauld (2005-08) and a Henry Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Warwick (2009).
Research interests
The core of my research is centred on the sculpture of late medieval and early Renaissance Italy. I am currently at work on a monograph (Sculptural Encounters in Dante’s World) that explores the expectations and experiences of late medieval beholders when interacting with sculptural objects. I am also engaged in an ongoing project in collaboration with Dr Ettore Napione (Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona) on the sculpture of late medieval Verona. More broadly, I am interested in the history of sculptural aesthetics. In 2008, I organised an interdisciplinary conference on the subject of ‘Sculpture and Touch’.
Teaching in 2011/12
- Introduction to Medieval Art (BA)
- Introduction to Early Modern Art (BA)
- Histories and Theories of Art (BA)
- Western Sculpture and the Classical Tradition (BA)
- Into the Baroque (BA)
- Defacing the Renaissance (MA)
Publications
'The Call of the Beautiful: Augustine and the Object of Desire in Purgatorio X,' Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages, eds., M. Gragnolati, E. Lombardi, F. Southerden and T. Kay, London: Legenda, forthcoming.
(with Ettore Napione) 'Reading and Writing at the V&A: An Episode in the Collection of Italian Gothic Sculpture,' Journal for the History of Collecting, (number to be confirmed, but already published online)
'Chellini's Ears and the Diagnosis of Technique,' in S. Nethersole, P. Rumberg, J. Harris eds., 'una insalata di più erbe': A Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin, (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2011), pp. 138-150
'"[P]er concorrenza d'uno […] da un Tedesco": Giovanni Pisano, Vasari, and the Competitive Motive at Pistoia, c.1301', Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 74.1, 2011, pp.29-44
(with Ettore Napione), Il Maestro di Santa Anastasia e la produzione di tabernacoli: due inediti, Verona, 2010 (first edition of 'Ospiti in Galleria' series, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona), pp.3-13 also published in in Verona illustrata, 23, 2010, pp.11-22
'Sculpture and Touch from Pygmalion to the Present', in F. Bacci and P. Dent eds, Sculpture and Touch, exh. cat. The Courtauld Institute of Art, 31/10/2008-15/01/2008, (London, 2008), pp. 14-19
'LAUDE DEI TRINI: Observations towards a reconstruction of Giovanni Pisano's Pistoia Pulpit', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. LXXI, 2008, pp. 121-38
'Contemplative Relief: Meditating on Christ through sculptural form in early Trecento Italy', eds Donal Cooper and Marika Leino, Depth of Field: Relief Sculpture in Renaissance Italy, (Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 41-69.