Jill Burke

Jill Burke is a professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh and writes about the body and its representation, focussing on Italy and Europe 1400-1700. Her most recent book The Italian Renaissance Nude was deemed "a keystone for future studies" and selected for Choice's 2019 Outstanding Academic Titles list. A member of the curatorial team for The Renaissance Nude exhibition at the Royal Academy in London and the J. Paul Getty Museum in New York in 2018-19, she co-edited the exhibition catalogue. Jill talks regularly about renaissance bodies on TV, radio and podcasts and discusses ideas about the history of art and beauty on "Jill Burke's Blog". Her current research interest is how people in the Renaissance sought to change their bodies, faces and hairstyles to meet beauty ideals. This includes trying out renaissance cosmetics recipes at home and experimenting with physicists in a lab in an unlikely but fruitful collaboration between the history of skincare and soft-matter science.