Directory of Experts
Details for Dr Beth Williamson
| Personal details | |
| Name | Dr Beth Williamson |
| Job title | Reader in History of Art |
| Department | Department of History of Art (Historical Studies) University of Bristol |
| Contact details | This expert can be contacted via the University of Bristol Public Relations
Office. To help us deal with your request, please mention the Directory of Experts when contacting the Public Relations Office. work+44 (0)117 331 8092 email: public-relations@bristol.ac.uk |
| Qualifications | B.A.(Oxon.), M.A., Ph.D.(Lond.) |
| Professional details | |
| Keywords | Medieval art Medieval architecture Virgin Mary iconography Marian liturgy saints sanctity devotional imagery |
| Areas of expertise | I have published on Italian painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth-centuries, and on Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth-century, with particular interests in images of the Virgin Mary, and in altarpieces. My research has focused mainly on the iconography, function and reception of artworks and cultural artefacts, and on the relationships between liturgy, devotion and visual culture. I have a continuing interest in issues relating to the body including: the bodies of the Virgin Mary and of Christ; attitudes towards, and treatment of, the human bodies of saints; the ways in which clerics, worshippers, pilgrims and others use their own bodies in the performance of religious and devotional activity. My latest book, The Madonna of Humility: development, dissemination and reception, explores the iconography and development of the image of the Virgin seated on the ground, the assimilation and translation of the image between different cultural milieux, and its function and reception. |