RESEARCH ON
Art, Ecology, and Ecocriticism
Giambologna, Apennine Colossus, late 1580s, Villa Medici, Pratolino, Photo © Elizabeth J. Petcu
Research Theme
Publications and Projects
I am currently engaged in a number of projects that examine the ecological dimensions of exchanges between artists and scientists (or, in early modern parlance, “natural philosophers”) in Europe and its colonial contact zones, as well as ecocritical ways of doing early modern art history. My work foregrounds the historical and present-day ecological stakes of the visual research of early modern artists and scientists, which laid foundations for systems of colonial and ecological exploitation that endure today.
Work on the Ecological Dimensions of Art in the Early Modern Atlantic World
Most of my research time is now spent investigating the ecological dimensions of early modern art. In this work, I adopt an ecocritical approach, that is, an orientation that asks how concepts of “nature” and, by extension, “the human” have been formed, questioned, and revised, and a position that foregrounds the interconnectedness of the human and the more-than-human within the natural world. My current contribution to this growing field of early modern art studies is to ask how the interplay between art and science in colonial early modernity can be re-read in ecocritical terms.
My third book, tentatively titled Art, Science, and Ecology in the Early Modern Atlantic World, will address the challenges and opportunities of combining methods of “global” art history with ecocritical approaches to early modern art history while offering a postcolonial re-reading of the art-science interface in the early modern Atlantic world. I have delivered lectures related to the manuscript at MIT, the University of Michigan and Duke University. The Frauenbeauftragte der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, have supported my research for earlier versions of this project.
Due to the ecological, social, and political ramifications of this facet of my scholarship, I endeavor to release all my research in this vein on an open access basis.
My publications on the ecological dimensions of early modern art include:
“Metabolic Segers,” in Imaginaries of the Landscape: Media, Materials, Makers, ed. Christine Göttler and Marie Theres Stauffer (forthcoming in 2026). This article arises from a talk at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting 2025. You can read more here.
“Renaissance Architectural Culture and Geological Inquiry,” in Synagonism: Theory and Practice in Early Modern Art, ed. Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Markus Rath, and Joris van Gastel (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2024), 421-454. DOI
“Palissy and the Clash of Natural and Artistic Processes,” in Motion: Transformation.
35th Congress of the International Committee of the History of Arts. Florence, 1-6 September 2019. Congress Proceedings, ed. Marzia Faietti and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2021): I:165-170. DOI
“Ryff’s Acanthus: On Field Research in Renaissance Architecture,” 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur 1, no. 2 (November 2020): 259-301. DOI
Collaborative Project: “Ecocritical Histories of Early Modern Art”
Since 2022, I have collaborated with Professor Maurice Saß (Alanus University, Alfter) on “Ecocritical Histories of Early Modern Art.” This project critically interrogates and contributes to our shared methodological apparatus for writing ecologically-grounded histories of early modern art. The project builds upon the recent ecocritical turns in other disciplines of early modern studies, on ecologically oriented work in medieval, modern, and contemporary art history, and a longstanding tradition of art-nature studies in early modern art history that is only recently experiencing an ecocritical turn. Our work supports this emerging ecosophical disposition in early modern art history while also equipping historians of early modern art to engage more meaningfully in contemporary ecocritical discourses beyond art history, and the academy itself.
The marquee thought piece of our project so far, an article I have co-authored with Saß titled “Toward an Ecocritical History of Early Modern Art,” will appear in the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte on an open-access basis in late 2025.
“Ecocriticism &: Art Historical Methods in Conversation” was a double panel we organized for the RSA Annual Meeting in Boston in 2025, sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies. The panels examined the relationships between ecocritical and other approaches to early modern art history. A special journal issue or edited volume will arise from the event; watch this space for updates.