Rebecca Bowen

Dr. Rebecca Bowen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max Planck Institute) since 2021. She earned her PhD from the University of Oxford, where her thesis Figures of Love: Amor from Antiquity to the Italian Middle Ages won the Society for Italian Studies Postgraduate Prize and forms the basis of her first monograph. She contributes to the AHRC-funded project Envisioning Dante alongside the Universities of Oxford and Manchester.

• Education: PhD in Art History, University of Oxford

Her research examines the visual, literary, and material culture of the Italian peninsula during the late medieval and early modern periods. Key themes include:

• Classical Reception in Renaissance Italy
• Intermedial Relations between text, image, and material artifacts
• Iconology of love and Cupid's representation
• Text-Image Studies in vernacular literature

Rebecca leads the interactive digital platform Dante Depicted, analyzing the visual traditions surrounding Dante’s Commedia, and works on Picturing Love in Renaissance Italy, a project exploring Boccaccio’s influence on Cupid’s iconography.

• Scientific Awards:
  • Society for Italian Studies Postgraduate Prize

Advising: No formal students listed, but she contributes to collaborative research through digital humanities projects. Grants: AHRC project funding for Envisioning Dante.
Labs/Teams: Part of the Max Planck Society’s international research network, collaborating on digital humanities, photo archives, and intermedial studies.