Professor Emerita, History of Art and Women's and Gender Studies
About
Patricia Simons is a specialist in the art of Renaissance Europe (primarily Italy, France and the Netherlands) with a special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality and interdisciplinary research on materiality, visuality and material culture. Her books include The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the co-edited Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (Clarendon Press, 1987). Her work ranges from fourteenth-century Italian imagery to contemporary Australian art. Essays, published in anthologies and peer-review journals like Art History, Renaissance Quarterly, and Renaissance Studies, have investigated such issues as portraiture as a mode of fictive representation, medical discourse in relation to visual culture, the representation and reception of female and male homoeroticism, the visual dynamics of secrecy and of scandal, and the public and theatrical use of Christ Child figures. It is distinguished for its combination of rigor and innovation, as well as for analyzing the breadth of visual and material culture, from badges to maiolica, anatomical illustration to erotic prints, life size sculpture to canonical oil paintings and frescoes.
Her latest project is a large, open access Google Doc, a global bibliography on premodern women artists and patrons (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qciG2ndN2dOfg4KDgL9LwCOl8HUZP5liSKtwRcJ_Ah4/edit). She has also started an open access Google Doc on Race and Visual Representation in European Culture, c. 1300-1700 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aPgPgXUVTWel8aXe1lzUrgmS4t30Xiye/edit). She is currently working on a book-length analysis of the visual and cultural history of beards as core markers of various masculinities in Early Modern Europe, including a consideration of racial and ethnic differences. She is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Fields of Study
- Renaissance and Baroque Europe, with some interest in intersections with Islamic cultures
- Gender and sexuality studies
- Materiality and material culture
