Theresa Flanigan, Ph.D.

Dr. Flanigan is a specialist in Italian late medieval and Renaissance art and architectural history. She has a PhD in the History of Art from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, a MA in Art History from Syracuse University’s Florence Program, and a studio background in architecture. Dr. Flanigan's scholarship has been generously supported by a residential fellowship at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and by grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Renaissance Society of America. Since 2014, she has served on the executive board of the Southern Humanities Council. 

Dr. Flanigan's research interests include premodern scientific approaches to the body, senses, and emotions; Italian architecture and urbanism; women's history; cultural constructions of identity; Christian art and ethics; and viewer response to images. She has published on the civic patronage and architectural history of the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) in Florence; emotional expression in Italian Renaissance female portraits, including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa; the representation of women's speech in the Tornabuoni Chapel; the devotional and ethical function of religious images by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi; compassionate response to images; and the influence of medical science on Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, amongst other subjects. Her scholarship has appeared in multiple edited volumes and academic journals, including Studies in Iconography, Gesta, Artibus et Historiae, and Open Arts Journal.

Her recent book is The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence (Harvey Miller, 2024), which is available from Brepols Publishers, https://www.brepols.net/products/978-1-912554-68-3. You can listen to an interview with Dr. Flanigan about her book on the New Books Network (Dec. 21, 2024).