Beatrice Kitzinger specializes in the art of the western European Middle Ages, particularly manuscript illumination and treasury arts.
Her book in progress, with the working title The Cross, the Gospels and the Work of Art in the Carolingian Age, examines intersections of artistic media, of pictorial and liturgical space, and of historical, eschatological, and ritual time primarily in manuscript illumination between the 8–10th centuries. Kitzinger studies Carolingian-era illumination in an inclusive perspective, focusing on little-studied manuscripts from western Francia. She analyzes manuscript paintings in close relationship to their codicological contexts and to objects, actions, and spaces outside the boundaries of books, examining the project of book-making relative to a broader view of art-making in the Carolingian world.
Kitzinger’s work has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Stanford University’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, where she held a postdoctoral appointment before coming to Princeton. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2012. Kitzinger’s current research focuses on the intersection of narrative and history in early medieval art, and she is reviving a longstanding interest in the relationship between art and theater in the Middle Ages. Her course offerings reflect these topics, along with emphasis on the materials and techniques of medieval artwork, the function and status of medieval art, relationships between medieval artistic media, and those between medieval art and society.
Professor Kitzinger is an executive committee member for the Program in Medieval Studies. Read her full bio on the Department of Art and Archaeology website.
