Elizabeth Duntemann (PhD Candidate, Art HIstory) has been awarded a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Grant to support nine months of dissertation research in Venice, Italy, during the 2019-2020 academic year. Her dissertation investigates how art, architecture, and urban topography shaped concepts of chronic infection and healing between sixteenth century port cities of the Italian peninsula, and Spanish-Italy. The project focuses on cultural production in the ambit of the Incurabili hospital network, which was established and expanded after 1515, to address evolving medical, charitable, and social challenges in the wake of the infamous early modern outbreak of syphilis.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant will facilitate Elizabeth’s primary research on the art and architecture of the Venetian Ospedale degli Incurabili, the endorsement of new medicinal remedies for venereal infection, and developments in Counter-Reformation iconography of healing. Her work in Venice will commence soon after the completion of a prosperous period of dissertation research on the Neapolitan Ospedale degli Incurabili, as a Research Resident at the Centro per la Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali (a collaboration between the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas, Dallas, and the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy), during the 2018-2019 academic year.