Marcia Pointon is an independent scholar and research consultant; she is Professor Emeritus of History of Art at the University of Manchester UK and Honorary Research Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She lives in central London and in Northern Tuscany. Having studied both English and History of Art, her professional interests range widely across many aspects of visual culture, imagery and representation in Western media from around 1700 to the present day. She has written on Portraiture, Landscape, Book Illustration, the Body in Representation, Gender and Imagery and, most recently on the interrelations between the applied arts of jewellery and other forms of historical visual evidence. Marcia Pointon's most recent book (click on link below) explores both the materiality of gems and jewellery and the economics and politics of a culture of surface display that functioned across national boundaries and encompassed simultaneously both ancient traditional bodies of knowledge and new scientific approaches to the world. She has just completed a book length manuscript looking at different ways of approaching portraiture, including in relation to the material culture of dress; this is entitled Portrayal and the Search for Identity and will be published by Reaktion Books in 2012. Marcia is a Research Associate of the AHRC network 'Elzabeth Montagu's Friendships' and a member of the Editorial Committee of Manchester University Press.
WINNER OF HISTORIANS OF BRITISH ART BOOK PRIZE 2011- For contents click on Sample Documents in the menu bar.
Contact Marcia Pointon - m.r.pointon@gmail.com
