Anne D. Hedeman

Expertise and Current Research Activity

As an undergraduate I fell in love with illuminated manuscripts (hand written and decorated books) because holding manuscripts and turning their pages to examine pictures while reading their text replicated some of the experience of early owners. As a scholar, I examine the relationships between a text and its images in vernacular late medieval French manuscripts in order to contextualize this experience and gain insight into late medieval ideology and society.

In books I’ve analyzed the role images played in the earliest national history of France, showed how a royal secretary sought to use images to capture the attention of the mad king Charles VI, and considered the key role that visual imagery played in translating texts originating in earlier times or in non-French cultures to make them appealing and accessible to fifteenth-century French readers. My book in progress will analyze the role of this visual translation in works owned or made by three French humanists who were instrumental in introducing ancient Roman and contemporary Italian texts to the French court in the early 1400s. I’ve also co-curated an exhibition at the Getty Museum and co-authored its catalogue, Imagining the Past in France, History in Manuscript Painting 1250-1500 which was a finalist in 2012 for the Alfred H. Barr Award for Museum Scholarship.

My research has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship and recognized by election as a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.