Areas of Expertise: Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture
Amy Bloch, Associate Professor of Art History, received her PhD from Rutgers University and started teaching at the University at Albany in 2007. She is a scholar of Italian Renaissance art, sculpture in particular. Professor Bloch’s book on Lorenzo Ghiberti’s artistic interpretations of Old Testament narratives in the Gates of Paradise was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Her recent and forthcoming articles and essays explore Donatello’s engagement with music and sound, Fra Angelico’s use of gold, Donatello’s and Ghiberti’s representations of the effects of early Christianity on the practice of sculpture, Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia, and the placement of Michelangelo’s David. She has co-edited two books, the first a festschrift (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2019) and the second a collection of essays focusing on fifteenth-century sculpture in Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Bloch’s current research investigates the practice of goldsmithery in Renaissance Italy. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Villa I Tatti (the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence), the Renaissance Society of America, and the College Art Association. At the University at Albany, Professor Bloch teaches courses on Italian Renaissance art and architecture (1250-1450 and 1450-1600) and northern European art (1350-1600). Her recent seminars have focused on the life and work of Michelangelo and the sculpture of Donatello, in particular his creative and nontraditional use of materials.