Francesca Dell'Acqua

Francesca Dell’Acqua is Associate Professor in History of Medieval and Byzantine Art at the Università di Salerno. She held fellowships at prestigious research centres including the Bibliotheca Hertziana/Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome, the American Academy in Rome, the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies–Harvard University in Washington DC, and the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham.

She is interested in the interaction between texts, objects, and beliefs in the early medieval Mediterranean. Her first monograph Illuminando colorat (CISAM, Spoleto, 2003) earned her the Hanno and Ilse Hahn Prize from the Bibliotheca Hertziana/Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome. In the past few years, she has co-edited the multi-authored collection Pseudo-Dionysius and Christian Visual Culture, C.500–900 (Palgrave, 2020) and published a new monograph, Iconophilia. Politics, Religion, Preaching, and the Use of Images in Rome, c.680–880 (Abingdon-on-Thames, Routledge, 2020).

The project "At the Crossroads of Empire: The Longobard Church of Sant'Ambrogio at Montecorvino Rovella (Salerno, Italy)", that she conceived and directs with two colleagues, received a Special Mention in the Category Research in the European Heritage Awards of Europa Nostra in May 2020.