About
Lorraine de la Verpillière is a Post-doctoral Research Assistant on the ERC-funded project “Genius Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science”.
Before coming to CRASSH, Lorraine completed a PhD at the History of Art department in Cambridge, funded by the AHRC, the Cambridge Trust, and Pembroke College’s Lander Studentship in History of Art. Her thesis, entitled ‘Visceral Creativity: Digestion, Earthly Melancholy, and Materiality in the Graphic Arts of Early Modern France and the German-Speaking Lands (c. 1530-1675)’, examines how early modern artists depicted the ‘physiology of creation’, focusing on the lower process of digestion as a natural model of artistic creativity.
Prior to her PhD, Lorraine received a BA and MA in History of Art from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she researched and published on the artistic patronage of Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500-1558) between Italy and England.
Lorraine has a long-standing interest in science as, prior to starting her BA in History of Art, she studied Physics, Chemistry, and Maths in a French classe préparatoire. Recently, she also took part in the Middle French Paleography Workshop organised by The Making and Knowing Project (led by Prof. Pamela Smith) at the University of Columbia in New York, where she received intensive training in Middle French manuscript reading and helped to the translation and digital encoding of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 – a sixteenth-century compilation of technical recipes written by an anonymous French craftsperson.
With her colleague, Lizzie Marx, Lorraine co-coordinated the Cambridge History of Art Graduate Research Seminar, Lent term 2018 on the topic of “Art and the Senses.” Education
* Oct. 2014- June 2018: PhD in History of Art, University of Cambridge
Thesis title: ‘Visceral Creativity: Digestion, Earthly Melancholy, and Materiality in the Graphic Arts of Early Modern France and the German-Speaking Lands (c. 1530-1675)’
* 2012-2014: MA, History of Art – Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
– 2012-2013: Master 1, Histoire de l’art, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Master 1 dissertation: ‘Frontispices de Pierre Paul Rubens et imagerie jésuite (1609-1640)’ (Title-Pages by Peter Paul Rubens and Jesuit Imagery, 1609-1640)
– 2013-2014: Master 2 Recherche, Histoire de l’art, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Master 2 Recherche dissertation: ‘Lost in translation? De l’Italie à l’Angleterre, le mécénat du cardinal Reginald Pole et son cercle’ (‘Lost in Translation?’ From Italy to England, the Patronage of Cardinal Reginald Pole and His Circle)
*2009-2012: Licence Histoire de l’art (BA History of Art) – Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonnePublications
Lorraine de la Verpillière, ‘‘God is in the details’: visual culture of closeness in the circle of Cardinal Reginald Pole,’ Renaissance Studies 30, n°5 (2016), 752-772. Upcoming Talks and Conferences
“‘Excrements on a cushion’: Religious Anxieties, Caprices of Fortune and Artistic Capricciosin the Early Modern Period,”Cleanliness and Bodily Expulsionssymposium, The Cambridge Body and Food Histories Group, University of Cambridge History Faculty, 15 May 2018
“Visceral Knowledge: Image-Making in ‘Le médecin guarissant Phantasie’ by Matthäus Greuter, c. 1600,”Subjective Sciences: A Workshop on Practices of Taste & Connoisseurship in Early Modern Europe, London, UCL, 4 May 2018
“The Physiological Workings of Images: Epistemic Layers in Matthäus Greuter’s Le médecin guarissant (c. 1600),” Epistemische Schichten. Weltsehen und Weltverstehen in der Frühen Neuzeit, colloquium, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, 22-23 February 2018
“Le médecin guarissant phantasie: The Fortunes of a Satirical Print Design in Seventeenth-Century Europe,” Early Modern Satire: Themes, Re-Evaluations and Practices, International Conference, University of Gothenburg (Sweden), 2-4 November 2017
