University of Melbourne

Faculty Member, Art History

Gerry Higgins Lecturer in Medieval Art History

About

Felicity Harley-McGowan is an historian of Late Antique and Medieval art, and has taught in the fields of Greek, Roman, early Christian, Byzantine, Medieval and Renaissance art history. She is particularly interested in the art of early medieval Rome and the 'survival' of the Classical tradition in Christian iconography through to the Renaissance. Felicity has specific expertise in the origins of Crucifixion iconography in the late antique period, and its development through to the late medieval/early Renaissance.

On completing her PhD in the department of Classics at the University of Adelaide (Australia), she was awarded post-doctoral fellowships at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and subsequently The British School at Rome.

In 2006, she was appointed Lecturer in Medieval Art History at the University of Melbourne. Between 2009-2010, she was a Research Fellow in the department of Art History and lectured in early Christian art at the United Faculty of Theology. In December 2010, Felicity was appointed as the Gerry Higgins Lecturer in Medieval Art History at the University of Melbourne. She is a Research Fellow in the Trinity College Theological School, University of Melbourne.

Her publications on aspects of the origins and development of Christian iconography include ‘Christianity and the Transformation of Classical Art’, in Philip Rousseau (ed), A Companion to Late Antiquity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 306-326.

Felicity is currently working on: representations of the suicide of Judas in early medieval art; the painting 'I Tre Crocifissi' (c. 1450) by Lombard artist Vincenzo Foppa; and is preparing a monograph concerning the earliest extant images of the Crucifixion.

From January-June 2012, Felicity is on study leave in the United States, where she is a research associate at Yale Divinity School.

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