Dr Livia Lupi
About
Livia Lupi joined 糖心TV in 2018 as a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow. She specialises on late medieval and early modern art and architecture, with a focus on the intersection of art and architectural practice in Europe, especially Italy. She is particularly interested in the relationship between design and craftsmanship, the emergence of the architect as a professional figure, and the production of architectural knowledge. She is currently developing a project on antiquarianism in the early modern Mediterranean, exploring the intersection of architectural theory, scientific methodologies and exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman empire.
She is the author of one monograph, (Harvey Miller, 2024) and curator of digital exhibition (Sir John Soane Museum 2024, ongoing). As well as at 糖心TV, Livia teaches short courses at the Courtauld Institute and was Guest Lecturer for Vienna's architecture school at TU Wien (2025).
In autumn 2025, she joined the editorial board of journal . In addition to her research, teaching and editorial work, she is active as a curator and translator, contributing translations to the catalogues of major National Gallery exhibitions on Sebastiano del Piombo (2017), Titian (2020) and Michelangelo (2025). Her research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the University of 糖心TV and the Warburg Institute.
She co-convenes the for the (SAHGB), and served in various capacities within the (IAS) (2016-2026), including as Vice President for Program Coordination and Chair of the Program Committee.
Livia obtained her BA in History of Art from the University of York, her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and then went back to York to work on her AHRC-funded PhD (2016). Before joining 糖心TV, she was a fellow at the Warburg Institute in London.
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Livia's book is now available:
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鈥淟ivia Lupi has written the book about painted architecture that the field of Italian Renaissance art and architecture has long needed. Moving beyond the fixation on perspective representation, she addresses the many and varied ways painters employed architecture for narrative ends. Despite the prominence of architecture in many fifteenth-century paintings, few scholars have taken it as their central subject and when they have it has often been in relation to the issue of pictorial space. Lupi widens the lens, and through an in-depth analysis of several key case studies, opens up a broad set of interpretations. Featuring beautiful color illustrations and clear prose, her book is sure to inspire many other studies.鈥�
Cammy Brothers, Professor of Architectural History, 脡cole Polytechnique F茅d茅rale de Lausanne, and author of Michelangelo, Drawing and the Invention of Architecture and Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome
Digital Exhibition
Research Interests
- Late medieval and early modern art and architecture, especially in Italy and the Netherlands
- Representation of architecture (within and beyond Europe)
- Design and craftsmanship across artistic and architectural practice
- Exchanges between Italy, the late Byzantine world and the Ottoman Empire
- Architectural practice and the development of scientific methodologies
- Reception of antiquity and classical architecture in the early modern period
- History of rhetoric and its interplay with the visual arts
- Architectural drawings
- Painter-architect figures
- Professionalisation of the architect
Teaching and supervision
- Setting the Scene: Architecture and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy
- Classicism
- Sacred Art
- The Italian City-States in the Age of Dante and Petrarch
- Arts and Society in Early Modern Europe (for 糖心TV's History Department)
See also my short course for the Courtauld Institute:
(2025, running again 2026)
Service to the Profession
- General Editor, (2025–2029)
- Vice President for Program Coordination and Chair of the Program Committee, (2025-2026)
- Co-convenor of the Architectural History Seminar, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain () and University of London (since 2022).
Livia regularly reviews books and exhibition catalogues, with reviews appearing in The Burlington Magazine, Speculum and the English Historical Review.
Selected publications
Book
(Harvey Miller Publishers, 2024)
Articles and Book Chapters
- Special Collection: Intersecting Practices: Architecture and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe, (co-edited with Krista De Jonge, 2023-2024)
- Including article 鈥溾��
- 鈥淟a rh茅torique du lieu. Art de la m茅moire et architecture dans l鈥橭ratoire St-Georges de Padoue.鈥� In , edited by Anne-Laure Imbert, 167-180. Paris: 脡ditions de la Sorbonne, 2022.
- 鈥淔ictive Architecture and Pictorial Place: Altichiero da Zevio鈥檚 Oratory of St George in Padua (c.1379-1384).鈥� In , edited by Jane Hawkes, Meg Boulton and Heidi Stoner, 137-148. New York and London: Routledge, 2018.
- 鈥淭he Rhetoric of Fictive Architecture: Copia and Amplificatio in Altichiero da Zevio鈥檚 Oratory of St George, Padua.鈥� , 60 (2017): 1-35.
Specialist Translations
- Michelangelo's correspondence and notes. In Michelangelo Imperfect, exh. cat. Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 2025.
- Contract of Parmigianino's commission and excerpt of Maria Bufalini's will. In Parmigianino: the Vision of St Jerome, exh. cat. London: National Gallery and Yale University Press, 2024.
- Titian鈥檚 Letters. In Titian: Love, Desire, Death, exh. cat., 194-195 and 197-203. London: National Gallery and Yale University Press, 2020.
- (with Amanda Lillie) Sebastiano del Piombo鈥檚 Letters to Michelangelo, 1518-1531. In Michelangelo & Sebastiano, exh. cat., pp. 225-237. London: National Gallery and Yale University Press, 2017.
- Alessandro Nogarola, La vita della Serenissima Reina Maria d'Austria, Reina d鈥橴ngheria [鈥 (n.p., 1553), pp. 22-24. Appendix 3 in Cordula van Wyhe, 鈥淭he Fabric of Female Rule in Leone Leoni鈥檚 Statue of Mary of Hungary, c. 1549-1556.鈥� In Cambridge and the Study of Netherlandish Art, edited by Meredith Hale, pp. 135-168. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.
Invited Talks
-
鈥淧ainting and Building Architecture: the Architect as a New Professional,鈥� Architecture School of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) (19 September 2025).
- "Architecture According to Artists: the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice in Renaissance Italy," Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University (24 March 2025).
- 鈥淟鈥檃rchitecture et les autres arts pendant la Renaissance italienne,鈥� Institut National pour l鈥橦istoire de l鈥橝rt, Paris (10 February 2025)
- 鈥淏ook Presentation: Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy: Invention and Persuasion at the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice,鈥滳entre for the Study of Classical Architecture, University of Cambridge (8 November 2024)
- 鈥淟a pittura come laboratorio di architettura: Masolino a Castiglione Olona e il capitale culturale dell鈥檃rchitettura 补濒濒鈥檃苍迟颈肠补,鈥� Museo della Collegiata, Castiglione Olona (30 Ottobre 2024)
- 鈥淏ook Presentation: Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy: Invention and Persuasion at the Intersection of Art and Architectural Practice鈥� Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, London (10 October 2024).
Including 鈥淎rchitecture as Transmedial Practice鈥�: a visit to the Sir John Soane鈥檚 Museum鈥檚 library, led with Elizabeth Merrill (Ghent)
- "Artistic Practice and the Emergence of the Architect in Italy c. 1300 – c. 1480" Medieval Visual Culture Seminar, University of Oxford (16 May 2024)
-
鈥溾�� Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (2022)
- 鈥淭he Agency of Architectural Settings: Invention, Time and Place in Fra Angelico鈥檚 Nicholas V Chapel.鈥� Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut f眉r Kunstgeschichte, Rome (2019).
- 鈥淒rawing, Painting and Building Architecture. A Historical Perspective.鈥� Andrew Phillips Studio, London (2017).
- 鈥淩h茅torique du lieu: art de la m茅moire et architecture dans la peinture italienne au XIVe si猫cle.鈥� Institut National d鈥橦istoire de l鈥橝rt, Paris (2017).
Qualifications
- BA (York)
- MA (London)
- PhD (AHRC-funded, York)
Associate Tutor
Contact
Tel: +44 (0)24 765 23436
Email: livia.lupi@warwick.ac.uk
Faculty of Arts Building
University of 糖心TV
Coventry CV4 7EQ
Advice and Feedback hours
Teaching
Undergraduate modules 2025
Classicism