Georgios E. Markou
Hannah Seeger Davis Postdoctoral Fellow, 2018-2019
- DegreePh.D., Art History, University of Cambridge, 2017 DissertationFrom Cyprus to Venice: Art, Exchange and Exile Across the Renaissance MediterraneanResearch ProjectBetween Empire and Exile: Cypriot Nobles in the Regno di Cipro and Venice (14th-17th centuries)
Georgios E. Markou received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge for his dissertation on the artistic patronage of the Cypriot nobles in Renaissance Venice and the Veneto. His research has been supported by the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Francis Haskell Memorial Fund and the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art at the University of Cambridge. His 2017 article “Bonifacio de’ Pitati’s Triumphs by Petrarch and their Cypriot Patron” was the first essay on Cypriot Renaissance patrons to appear in the Burlington Magazine. His research focuses on the Renaissance art and culture in Venice and his native Cyprus and the life and oeuvre of the artist Giorgione.
About the Research Project
Between Empire and Exile: Cypriot Nobles in the Regno di Cipro and Venice (14th-17th centuries)
<p>The project “Between Empire and Exile: Cypriot nobles in the <em>Regno di Cipro</em> and Venice (14th-17th centuries)”, seeks to understand how the insular nobility negotiated their identity between the two centres, Cyprus and Venice, as reflected in their artistic commissions and material culture. Through the examination of unpublished archival documents, printed primary sources and extant artefacts, this project will offer, for the first time, a panorama of the professional and private lives of the Cypriot elite. It will discuss their material culture and touch on important issues such as the transportation of works of art between the two centers and the movement of artists and ideas across the Mediterranean. The examination of case studies in both Venice and Cyprus will significantly enhance our understanding of the island’s cultural life, about which we know comparatively little, highlight the status of the Cypriot elite as important patrons of the art in Venice and the Veneto, and offer new insights regarding the formation of the Cypriot identity in the socially fluid world that was the medieval and early modern Mediterranean.</p>