Lia Markey

Biography

Lia Markey (MA University of Chicago 2002; Ph.D. University of Chicago 2008) is the Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at Chicago’s Newberry Library where she is responsible for conferences, symposia, workshops, seminars, and digital humanities projects devoted to medieval and early modern studies. Currently, she is conducting research for an exhibition provisionally entitled “Seeing Race Before Race,” co-curated with Noémie Ndiaye (University of Chicago), Rebecca Fall (Newberry Library), and Christopher Fletcher (Newberry Library) and scheduled for fall 2023.

Dr. Markey’s research examines cross-cultural exchange between Italy and the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, collecting history, and early modern prints and drawings. Most recently, she has published Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (Penn State University Press, 2016) and a co-edited volume The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her edited volume, Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s “Nova Reperta” (Northwestern University Press, 2020) complemented the Newberry Library’s fall 2020 exhibition by the same title and includes catalog entries as well as contributions from a related Newberry symposium. 

Dr. Markey has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and at Princeton University and held fellowships at the Folger Library, the Warburg Institute, Harvard's Villa I Tatti, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Herzog August Bibliothek. She currently participates in the Getty Connecting Art Histories Research Group, “Spanish Italy and the Iberian New World.” 

Publications

“Introduction: Inventing the Nova Reperta,” in Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2020).

Northwestern University Press
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2020

The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750 

Cambridge University Press
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2017

Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence 

Penn State University Press
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2016

Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum

Yale University Press
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2014

A Feather Painting of Montezuma, Captured by a Sea Captain and Destined for a Medici,” in The Significance of Small Things, eds. Luisa Elena Alcalà and Ken Moser (Madrid: El Viso Ediciones, 2018).

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“The Medievalists and the Early Modernists: A World Divided?,” in A World within Worlds? Reassessing the “Global Turn” in Medieval Art, special edition of The Medieval Globe, ed. Christina Normore (2018). (co-authored with Jessica Keating)

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“The Global Renaissance and the Canon of Art,” in The Globalization of Renaissance Art: A Critical Review, ed. Daniel Savoy (Leiden: Brill, 2017): 255-288.

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“Aldrovandi’s New World Natives in Bologna (or how to draw the unseen al vivo)” The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750, eds. Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017): 225-248.

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“Italy’s Virtual Discovery: an Introduction” in The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750, eds. Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017): 1-16. (co-authored with Elizabeth Horodowich)

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“The Riches of the Indies: Francesco and Ferdinando de’ Medici and the Americas,” in The Grand Ducal Medici and their Archive (1537-1743), eds. Alessio Assonitis and Brian Sandberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016): 123-132. 

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“Stradano’s Allegorical Invention of the Americas in Sixteenth-Century Florence” Renaissance Quarterly 65, 2 (Summer 2012): 385-442.

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“Introduction” in Captured Objects: Inventories of Early Modern Collections, Journal of the History of Collections, 23, 2 (2011): 209-213. (co-authored with Jessica Keating)

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“Indian Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inventories: A Case Study of the Sixteenth-Century Term” Journal of the History of Collections, 23, 2 (2011): 283-300. (coauthored with Jessica Keating)

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Captured Objects: Inventories of Early Modern Collections, Journal of the History of Collections, 23, 2 (2011). (special edition of the journal guest co-edited with Jessica Keating)

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Exhibitions

Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta, Newberry Library, April 18-July 3, 2020

Profiles

Niall Atkinson
Niall Atkinson
Medieval and Renaissance Architecture and Urban History
Department Chair
CWAC 260
773.702.0270
Seth Estrin
Seth Estrin
Ancient Greek Art and Archaeology
MAPH Art History Advisor
CWAC 264
Wei-Cheng Lin
Wei-Cheng Lin
Chinese Art and Architecture
Architectural Studies Advisor
CWAC 268
773.702.0268
2006-07
Iowa State University
Assistant Professor, East Asian Art and Architecture
Potters Wheel
Richard Neer
Ancient Greek Art and Architecture
CWAC 259
773.702.5890
Andrei Pop
Andrei Pop
Modern Art and Aesthetics
1130 East 59th Street
773.702.8410
Megan Sullivan
Megan Sullivan
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
CWAC 272
773.702.5126