Raymond Carlson

I am a Fellow by Examination in Magdalen College, University of Oxford. My interdisciplinary scholarship is concerned with early-modern visual and literary culture, with a focus on Renaissance Italy. Combining close study of original artworks and textual sources, I engage a variety of critical approaches including gender studies, queer theory, material philology, cultural history, connoisseurship, and technical art history. My publications have appeared in Italian Studies, the Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, various museum catalogues, and other venues.

My current book manuscript re-evaluates the creative production of Michelangelo Buonarroti across media. This research addresses why, at the peak of his fame and professional obligations, Michelangelo devoted considerable energy to writing hundreds of poems. At Oxford, I am also developing a literary, visual, and social history of artists’ workshops in Renaissance Italy. Among my additional projects is a study of the interchange between popular literature and bronze sculpture in the Veneto during the sixteenth century.