Award-winning art historian specializes in Italian Renaissance

One of the first points that art history professor Bette Talvacchia makes to her students is this: “When you look at a piece of art, don’t expect to automatically understand it.

“You can say you like it, you can say you don’t,” she adds.

“But that’s different from understanding what’s there, knowing the reasons why it was created, or what function it had in a particular culture.”

That’s what historical study does, she says.

An acclaimed scholar in Italian Renaissance art, Talvacchia is a 2005 Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. The honor is given for exceptional distinction in scholarship, teaching, and service. Recipients hold the title for life.

One of Talvacchia’s research interests involves examining the use of sexual imagery in religious paintings during the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries). The research is an outgrowth of her 1999 book, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, in which she examines a notorious set of graphic sexual images.

The book, published by Princeton University Press, received accolades from the New York Review of Books, and was recognized as one of the 10 best art history books of the year by the Apollo art journal.

While she was working on the book, Talvacchia became increasingly interested in the sensual and eroticized imagery used in religious artwork.

“It was fascinating to see the ways in which the culture approached the use of the body as an image and what they deemed as appropriate for works dealing with religious subject matter,” she says.

“In Renaissance culture, the body and the spirit were seen as a continuum.

“That’s a strange concept for our culture,” adds Talvacchia.

“We separate the carnal from the spiritual. But during the Renaissance, a beautiful figure in a religious painting would lead the viewer to seek out spiritual beauty and spiritual understanding.”

Her work explores how sexual motifs were employed suggestively, symbolically, or metaphorically in religious images.

Talvacchia, who says she loves to lecture on her work, will present a talk on Saint Sebastian at the Renaissance Society of America conference this month.

She selected him as the subject for discussion because “he is usually nude, and everyone wonders what this kind of figure is doing in a religious image. I hope to give an explanation for that.”

Research is often like detective work, says Talvacchia, who often finds herself examining documents, letters, and even poetry.

“You never know what little gem you might find,” she says. “And that bit of information forces you to ask other questions.”

Talvacchia, who came to UConn in 1981, earned her doctorate in history of art from Stanford University.