Blood, milk, and tears: bodies of mothers and sons in the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano’s Pistoia pulpit
Dissertation, 2026, MA Art History
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Abstract
This dissertation examines Giovanni Pisano’s Pistoia pulpit (1301) through close visual analysis of three narrative scenes, the Nativity, the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion, considered alongside thirteenth-century devotional texts and a liturgical manuscript previously unstudied alongside the Pisanos’ work. The pulpit’s figuration, naturalism, and carving technique are compared systematically with Nicola Pisano’s Pisa Baptistry pulpit (1260) and the collaborative Siena cathedral pulpit (1268), using photographs taken from close, steep viewing angles not prioritised in existing scholarship. The analysis reveals that Giovanni’s innovations are not uniform but vary with the emotional register of each scene: smooth carving in the tender Nativity, rough and angular surfaces in the violent Massacre, and a combination of naturalism and expressiveness in the Crucifixion. These specific correspondences: the crucifixus dolorosus, the nursing Virgin, the nursing mothers among the slain innocents, and the first Tuscan instance of Mary swooning at the Cross, each align with documented themes in the laude, mystical writings, and liturgical performances of the affective piety movement that swept Italy from 1260 onward. A transcription and translation of the Good Friday rite from Pistoia’s Archivio Capitolare MS C.102, presented here for the first time in connection with the pulpit, shows that the Crucifixion relief faced a congregation accustomed to kissing the cross and singing the Reproaches in dialogue with the crucified Christ. The dissertation intervenes against readings of Giovanni’s expressiveness as purely personal (Max Seidel), Scholastic (Anita Fiderer Moskowitz), or narratological (Jules Lubbock), arguing instead that the sculptures are consistent with a communicative programme grounded in the devotional culture of the period.
In progress
Vision and Narrative in The Morgan Crusader Bible: A Portable Display of Holy War
Essay, 2025, MA Art History
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Abstract
This essay examines the Morgan Crusader Bible (New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.638) and the crusader ambitions of its likely patron, King Louis IX of France. The primary research is a codicological and visual analysis in comparison with a large section of the Oxford-London-Paris Bible Moralisee (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 270b) and the Psalter of Saint Louis (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 10525), the other two Paris manuscript works most closely associated with Louis’s patronage. This is supported with the historiography of Louis’s political and religious activity and art commissions in the period prior to embarking on his first crusade. The paper intervenes with a sustained, formal visual analysis of how compositional strategies in the Morgan manuscript are consistent with the persuasive rhetoric Louis implemented in other media including sermons and the stained glass of the Sainte-Chapelle.
Bottom: Diagram of kinetic effects produced by positions of knights, horses and swords
Revision in progress
Michelangelo Merisi’s Use of Disegno:
Did Caravaggio Draw?
Term Paper, Art and Architecture in Baroque Rome
Hunter College, CUNY City University of New York (audit)
Abstract
This essay examines the possible working methods of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. In the absence of surviving dry-media drawings, this paper intervenes in the examination of working methods by contextualizing them in the art training tradition of empiricism and observational drawing. Comparisons are made to Caravaggio’s contemporary Lombard artists and his master Peterzano to examine the continuity of approaches to composing and executing oil paintings. Recent radiographic and other forensic evidence of preparatory incised linear drawing on Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes is examined in comparison to the final composition.
