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Jacopo Gnisci graduated with a BA from the University of Rome 3 and an MA from UEA. He obtained his PhD from SOAS in 2016 while working there as a Teaching Assistant. He subsequently worked at Dallas Museum of Art and UT Dallas, the University of Hamburg, the Vatican Library, and the University of Oxford as Exhibition Assistant and Research Associate for the Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East ERC project. In 2019 he was awarded a Getty/ACLS Fellowship and in 2020 he worked as a Curator for the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme within the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the America at the British Museum. Jacopo has been carrying out fieldwork in East Africa for over 10 years.
Contact Details
Office: 203, 20 Gordon Square.
Office hours: on sabbatical in the 2022/23 academic year.
Email: j.gnisci@ucl.ac.uk
Phone: (0)20 7679 7454
Appointment
Jacopo is a Lecturer in the Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at UCL, and a Visiting Scholar in Department of Africa, Oceania, and the America at the British Museum. He is currently the co-Principal Investigator the projects Demarginalizing medieval Africa: Images, texts, and identity in early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270-1527) (AHRC Grant Ref. no. AH/V002910/1; DFG Projektnummer 448410109). Formerly, he co-dicrected other projects including Material Migrations: Mamluk Metalwork across Afro-Eurasia (Gerda Henkel Stiftung). Jacopo sits on the editorial board of several journals for medieval and African studies including Gesta, Aethiopica: International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies, and the Rassegna di Studi Etiopici and currently serves as an Associate of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA).
Research Themes
Medieval art and architecture of Africa; Ethiopic, Syriac, Armenian, and Copto-Arabic illuminated manuscripts; Ethiopian and Eritrean art; historiography; Oriental Orthodox Christianity.
Research
Research Summary
Jacopo’s research focuses on the history of manuscript illustration, on the art and architecture of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and on the marginalization of African art in Western institutions. He has covered on a range of topics including the interconnections between art and the liturgy, the transmission and reconceptualization of visual culture in medieval manuscripts, and the relationship between text and image. He has moreover published studies on the use, significance, and/or symbolism of icons, metalwork, and ecclesiastical vestments in Ethiopia, and has been the first author to have an article on East Africa published in The Art Bulletin. He has been involved in several exhibitions, including Africa and Byzantium (2023-24) at the Met, Peace, Power and Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa (2020) at the Harn Museum of Art and Languages of God: Sacred Scripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea (2019) at the Bodleian Libraries, which was co-curated with members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora. The latter exhibition was accompanied by the publication of the volume Treasures of Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (2019), which he edited.
Research Activities
Jacopo is actively involved in debates about the acquisition and restitution of African art and has contributed to the return of stolen artworks to their country of origin (see for instance here). Additionally, he contributes to several research projects, including the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme, Sacred Ethiopic Texts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: A Catalogue of the Manuscript Collection of Bent Juel-Jensen, and The CaNaMEI Project: Rediscovering Ancient Ethiopian Manuscripts in Italian Libraries. He is currently working on several publications including: A Catalogue of Ethiopia Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, An Introduction to Medieval Ethiopic Manuscripts, and The Stolen Crown: A Bridge Between Two Worlds.
Publications
Selected Publications
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Constructing Kingship in Early Solomonic Ethiopia: The David and Solomon Miniatures in the Juel-Jensen Psalter.” The Art Bulletin 102, no. 4 (2020): 7–36.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “An Ethiopian Miniature of the Tempietto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notes on Its Relatives and Symbolism.” In Canones: The Art of Harmony: The Canon Tables of the Four Gospels, edited by Alessandro Bausi, Bruno Reudenbach, and Hanna Wimmer, 67–98. Studies in Manuscript Cultures 18. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Christian Metalwork in Early Solomonic Ethiopia: Production, Function, and Symbolism.” In Peace, Power, and Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa, edited by Susan Cooksey, 254–65. Gainesville, FL: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, 2020.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Ecclesiastic Dress in Medieval Ethiopia: Preliminary Remarks on the Visual Evidence.” In The Hidden Life of Textiles in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean: Contexts and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Islamic, Latinate and Eastern Christian Worlds, edited by Nikolaos Vryzidis, 231–56. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “A Fifteenth-Century Ethiopian Icon of the Virgin and Child by the Master of the Amber-Spotted Tunic.” Rassegna d Studi Etiopici 65 (2019): 183–93.
- Gnisci, Jacopo., ed. Treasures of Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Manar Al-Athar Monograph 5. Oxford: Manar al-Athar, University of Oxford, 2019.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “The Looted Ethiopian Artefacts That Ended up in UK Museums.” Apollo Magazine, 2018.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Crosses from Ethiopia at the Dallas Museum of Art: An Overview.” African Arts 51, no. 4 (2018): 48–55.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Illuminated Leaves from an Ethiopic Gospel Book in the Newark Museum and in the Walters Art Museum.” Manuscript Studies 3, no. 2 (2018): 357–82.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Picturing the Liturgy: Notes on the Iconography of the Holy Women at the Tomb in Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century Ethiopian Manuscript Illumination.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 78, no. 3 (2015): 557–95.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “Shrouding the Divine: Observations on the Iconography of the Entombment of Christ in Ethiopian Illumination of the Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries.” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 81, no. 2 (2015): 473–492.
- Gnisci, Jacopo. “The Liturgical Character of Ethiopian Gospel Illumination of the Early Solomonic Period: A Brief Note on the Iconography of the Washing of the Feet.” In Aethiopia fortitudo ejus: Studi in onore di Monsignor Osvaldo Raineri in occasione del suo 80° compleanno, edited by Rafał Zarzeczny, 253–75. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 298. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2015.
Teaching and Supervision
Jacopo teaches courses on the late antique and medieval art of African and the Mediterranean world including HART0083 - Empires of Africa: Introduction to African Art & Archaeology and HART0077 - Civilizations of the Book: The Global Middle Ages Through Illustrated Manuscripts. He welcomes expressions of interests from postgraduate students who wish to work on pre-modern illustrated manuscripts or African art. Potential applicants can contact Jacopo directly by email.
Current PhD Students:
Antonia Dalivalle: The Grand Detour: James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730-1794) and the Reception of Ethiopia in Enlightenment Europe, (second supervisor with Professor Margot Finn, FBA, History Department).
