Aidan Valente

Biography

Aidan Valente is a medievalist focusing on the architecture and urbanism of 14th century Italy and southern France. His research interests center on the role of space and the built environment in shaping and contextualizing the medieval viewer's experience of art, especially that of corporate viewership such as monastic communities, guilds and confraternities, or pilgrims. Other interests include artistic exchange in the broader medieval Italosphere and Mediterranean; the relationship between images, semiotics, and theology; and medieval vs Renaissance aesthetics. He received his BA in Art History from Washington & Lee University and an MPhil in the History of Art and Architecture from Cambridge University, spent two years working as a middle school teacher, and has contributed to W&L professor George Bent's groundbreaking digital humanities project Florence As It Was.