Biography
Christina Faraday specialises in Tudor and Stuart visual and material culture, with wider interests in the art of Northern Europe in the medieval and early modern periods. She is also an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker (2019), a programme which gives Early Career Researchers the chance to communicate their research to wider audiences on BBC Radio 3 and other platforms.
Her book, Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England, was published by the Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press in 2023. This is based on her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Cambridge, and uses the period’s concept of vividness in rhetorical theory to explore Elizabethan and Jacobean attitudes towards the value of images. It shows that Tudor and Jacobean images and objects were often seen as vivid and ‘realistic’, even if they don’t appear to conform to modern expectations of realistic images. She is currently working on a new book on Tudor art for a general audience, with further projects in progress on music, art and literature in Elizabethan England, and temporality in Tudor portraits.
She teaches for the History of Art Department and the History Faculty, having given lectures for papers on Tudor Visual Culture; Part IIA Approaches to the History of Art; Part I Objects, Meaning of Art and Part I Meaning of Architecture. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) and in 2018-2019 took part in the Cambridge Teaching Associates’ Programme (TAP). She also contributes to the Department’s access and outreach programmes, including the annual Sutton Trust Summer School, and is a Tutor for the Institute for Continuing Education at Madingley Hall, where she is Co-Director of the MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture.
She graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge in 2014 with a First Class BA in History of Art and stayed to complete the MPhil in History of Art and Architecture with Distinction. Her MPhil thesis researched the symbolism of clocks and dials in the material and visual culture of Tudor England, and was part-funded by the George Daniels Educational Trust. With this research she was runner-up in the University of Cambridge’s Three Minute Thesis Competition in 2015. Alongside her PhD she worked part-time for two years as a Curatorial Intern at the National Portrait Gallery in London on the exhibition 'Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver' (2019). She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a member of the Walpole Society Executive Committee.
Research
British art, architecture and material culture from the late 15th to the early 17th centuries; relationships between art and music, art and literature. More broadly, she is interested in the art and architecture of Northern Europe, especially England, c.1000-c.1650, and the philosophy and theory of art and aesthetics. She was a convenor of the AHRC-funded Value of the Humanities Research Group from 2015 to 2018.
Publications
Book:
Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press, 2023)
Scholarly:
'The Elizabethan and Jacobean Funeral Monuments in Gonville and Caius College Chapel', Church Monuments Journal (2022), winner of the Church Monuments Society Essay Prize 2021
'Horology Verbalised; Horology Visualised', in Anthony Turner, James Nye and Jonathan Betts, eds., A General History of Horology (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021)
‘Two Newly Discovered Anatomy Flap Engravings by Thomas Gemini’, Print Quarterly XXXVII, 2 (September 2020), pp.254-266
‘Lively Limning: Presence in Portrait Miniatures and John White’s Images of the New World’, British Art Studies, Issue 17 (September 2020), online at: http://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-17/lively-limning
‘“it seemeth to be the thing itsefe”: Directness and Intimacy in Nicholas Hilliard’s Portrait Miniatures’, Études Épistémè, no.36 (2019) special issue on early modern miniatures, online at: https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/5292
'Tudor Time Machines: Clocks and Watches in English Portraits c.1530–c.1630', Renaissance Studies, vol. 33, no. 2 (April 2019), pp.239-266, online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rest.12517
Nine catalogue entries incl. ‘Young Man Among Roses’; ‘George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland’; ‘Thomas Bodley’; ‘Christopher Hatton’; ‘Lady in Masque Costume', in C Macleod et al, Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver (London: National Portrait Gallery, exh. cat., 2019)
(as Christina Farley), Guide to St Vincent's Parish Church, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire (Heritage Lincolnshire: 2017) ISBN: 9780948639678 -- Winner of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology's Flora Murray Award for Excellence, 2017.
'Waltham Abbey Panelled Room, Essex', Transactions for the Essex Society for Archaeology and History, 4th ser., vol. 7 (2016).
Popular:
'The Prattling Paintings of Renaissance England', Apollo CXCIII no. 698 (June 2021), pp.54-59, online at: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/elizabethan-talking-pictures-objects/
'Art on the Radio', Apollo (online feature) 22nd March 2021: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/art-radio-blood-and-bronze-the-essay-cellini/
'Period Pieces: The Fashion for Putting Dates on Domestic Objects', Apollo CXCIII no. 693 (January 2021)
‘Hilary Mantel and Tudor Art’, Apollo (online feature) 23rd April 2020
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/hilary-mantel-thomas-cromwell/
‘Jeremiah 4’, Visual Commentary on Scripture, ed. Ben Quash (April 2020) online at:
https://thevcs.org/raising-standards
‘Painted as a Villain – Tudor Portraits of Richard III’, Apollo (online feature) 8th October 2019:
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/richard-iii-tudors-hever-castle/
‘Portrait Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver’, Apollo CLXXXIX, no.673 (March 2019), pp.134-139, online at:
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/english-portrait-miniatures/
Selected Broadcasts and Podcasts:
A Lively Tudor World, Free Thinking, BBC Radio 3 (04/07/23):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n82
Tudor Virtual Reality, The Essay, BBC Radio 3 (02/07/2020):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khhs
Mechanical Amusements, Free Thinking, BBC Radio 3 (20/05/2020), from 24'30":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j9cd
Pop-Up Anatomy, Free Thinking, BBC Radio 3 (11/07/2019), from 20'11":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006m5c
Painting in Miniature, Free Thinking, BBC Radio 3 (20/02/2019), from 21'50":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mk2
Billingsley's Euclid (1570), In Conversation with Gill Partington (scroll for episode):
https://www.gillpartington.com/podcast
