Email address: eleanor.townsend@history.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic
The commissioning, function and agency of religious images in late-medieval England: The Jesse Tree reredos at St Cuthbert’s, Wells
Supervisor: Gervase Rosser
I am interested in the role images played in the late medieval English parish church.
My thesis will reconstruct the material form of the fragmentary Tree of Jesse reredos at St Cuthbert’s church, Wells (Somerset), and explore the process of a late medieval civic commission through the surviving contract, focussing on the choice of an iconography, and a material form at large scale, which is far from being the obvious choice for a late fifteenth-century English parochial Lady altar. I will go on to examine the role of the altarpiece within a church that had a very specific identity as the centre of civic life in a cathedral city.
Before I began my DPhil, I spent twenty years at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in a variety of curatorial and project management roles. My projects included the major loan exhibition, Gothic: Art for England 1400-1547 (2003-4) and the new permanent Medieval and Renaissance Galleries (which opened in 2009), as well as the record-breaking exhibition, David Bowie Is… (2013).
In addition to parish churches, devotional images and medieval sculpture, my broader interests include English country houses, museological practice, particularly in the display/interpretation of medieval objects, and the senses and their role in the creation and reception of art, particularly in the context of the museum.
Recent projects/roles:
2016 to present: trustee of the Northamptonshire Victoria County History Trust
2018: Royal Women of Influence in Medieval Coventry: display focusing on Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou (TORCH project with Medieval Coventry)
2019: researcher on Talking Sense: research group bringing together Oxford early career researchers from diverse disciplines to shed new light on the permanent collection of the Ashmolean Museum through a series of interdisciplinary gallery talks
2019-20: research skills trainer for the National Trust (TORCH/National Trust partnership)
2020 onwards: member of the Oxford University Heritage Network
https://twitter.com/eleanor25661771?lang=en-gb
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College: Wadham College
Link to departmental profile:
Eleanor Townsend
Eleanor is involved with the following projects:
Trustee of the Northamptonshire Victoria County History Trust
Royal Women of Influence in Medieval Coventry
Talking Sense
National Trust Partnership
