Art History Lecture: Dr. Denva Gallant, “Gender, Sex and Its Continuum: Considering Withdrawal in Images of the Vitae patrum"

Dr. Denva Gallant, Assistant Professor of Art History at Rice University, will give a lecture on issues and representations of gender in a premodern manuscript. This lecture expands on her recently published book, Illuminating the Vitae Patrum: The Lives of the Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Penn State University Press, 2024), which is the first work to examine comprehensively the Morgan Library’s richly illustrated manuscript (MS. M. 626), whose extraordinary illustrations comprise a singular witness to the rise of the eremitic ideal and its impact on the visual culture of late medieval Italy.

Click here to join the event on Zoom.

This lecture is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Temple University’s General Activities Fund (GAF) and the Art History Department.

Image: Saint Marinus sits alone in a monastery, manuscript illumination in the Vitae patrum, made in Naples, Italy, ca. 1350–75 CE (New York, The Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.626, fol. 129v).