Professor Denva Gallant is a specialist in European medieval art and architecture, with an emphasis on manuscript illumination and the figural arts of the Trecento. Her scholarly work explores themes of narrative, the rise of the eremitic ideal as exemplum virtutis, and issues of patronage in the Middle Ages. She has received a number of research fellowships including awards from Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. She is currently the recipient of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation Rome Prize in Medieval Studies for the 2022-2023 academic year. Her current book project, Illustrating the Vitae patrum: The Rise of the Eremitic Ideal in Fourteenth-Century Italy, is the first work to examine comprehensively the Morgan Library’s richly illustrated manuscript of the VP (MS. M. 626), whose extraordinary illustrations comprise a singular witness to the rise of the eremitic ideal and its impact on the visual culture of late medieval Italy.
