Biography

Dr Michelle O'Malley holds degrees in the History of Art from Newton College of the Sacred Heart (BA), Boston University (MA), and the Warburg Institute, University of London (PhD). She came to Sussex in 1998 to head the Centre for Research in the History of Art from the position of the Head of Education for Exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. She became the Director of the Centre for Arts Research Support in 2001 and was the Director of Research in the School of Humanities 2003 - 2008.

Role

Reader in Art History. 

Dr Michelle O'Malley works on issues of production, value and visual exchange concerning altarpieces and frescoes and other material objects in Renaissance Italy. As a member of the Material Renaissance Project  ('The Material Renaissance: Cost and Consumption in Italy 1300-1650', Sussex 2000-2004, AHRB and Getty funding), she considered the pricing methods and production strategies of Pietro Perugino and one of her current projects arises from this work; it investigates the impact of demand on the production practices of a group of highly regarded painters working in the decades around 1500, including Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi and Perugino. In 2005-06 she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Sussex-V&A Exchange) and another work in progress explores questions of the commission, production, cost and meaning of female footwear in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy. The work contributes to research on the Museum's Medieval and Renaissance Galleries and she is presently co-editing, with Peta Motture, a special issue of Renaissance Studies to coincide with the re-opening of the Galleries in 2009.

Dr O'Malley is the recipient of a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship,  2008-2010.

Conference Organisation

Value, Production, Consumption and the Issue of Quality in Renaissance Italy: a one-day symposium for invited participants at the V&A, June 2006.

The Material Renaissance conference, with Evelyn Welch, at the University of Sussex, March 2003.

Other Research-related Activities

Trustee of the Association of Art Historians (2006-2009); Member of the AAH Publications Committee (2007-2009).

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Member of the Council of the Society for Renaissance Studies (1998-2006); Fellowship Officer (2003-2006), Secretary (2003-2004).

Postgraduate Supervision

2007- : Anthony McGrath, "The Book as Symbol in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Painting".

2007- : Angelica Groom, "Images of 'Exotic' Animals in Early-modern Italian Court Art"

Student Consultation

Office Hours:

Thursday 11-12; Fridays: 10-11

O'Malley, Michelle (2014) Painting under pressure: reputation and demand in Renaissance Florence. Yale University Press, New Haven. ISBN 9780300197976

Motture, Peta and O'Malley, Michelle, eds. (2011) Re-thinking Renaissance Objects: Design, Function and Meaning. Renaissance Studies Special Issues . Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester. ISBN 9781444337754

O'Malley, Michelle (2010) A pair of little gilded shoes: production, cost and meaning in renaissance footwear. Renaissance Quarterly, 63 (1). pp. 45-83. ISSN 0034-4338

O'Malley, Michelle (2010) Finding fame: painting and the making of careers in Renaissance Italy. Renaissance Studies, 24 (1). pp. 9-32. ISSN 0269-1213

O'Malley, Michelle (2007) Quality, demand, and the pressures of reputation: rethinking Perugino. Art Bulletin, 89 (4). pp. 674-693. ISSN 0004-3079

O'Malley, Michelle and Welch, Evelyn, eds. (2007) The Material Renaissance. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 9780719076572

Plazzotta, Carol, O'Malley, Michelle, Roy, Ashok, White, Raymond and Wyld, Martin (2006) Perugino's Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis for Santa Maria dei Servi, Perugia. National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 27. pp. 72-95. ISSN 0140-7430

O'Malley, Michelle (2005) Altarpieces and agency: the altarpiece of the society of purification and its 'invisible skein of relations'. Art History, 28 (4). pp. 416-441. ISSN 0141-6790

O'Malley, Michelle (2005) The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. ISBN 9780300104387

O'Malley, Michelle, Milner, SJ and Campbell, S (2004) Subject matters: contracts, designs and the exchange of ideas between painters and clients in Renaissance Italy. In: Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City. Cambridge University Press, pp. 17-37. ISBN 9780521826884

O'Malley, Michelle (2003) Commissioning Bodies, Allocation Decisions and Price Structures for Altarpieces in Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Italy. In: The Art Market in Italy: 15th-17th Centuries. Franco Cosimo Panini, Modena, pp. 163-180. ISBN 9788882905774

O'Malley, Michelle (1999) Memorising the New: Using Recent Works as Models in Italian Renaissance Commissions. In: Memory and Oblivion: Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art held in Amsterdam, 1-7 September 1996. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 803-810. ISBN 9780792342137

O'Malley, Michelle (1998) Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Painting Contracts and the Stipulated Use of the Painter's Hand. In: With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530. Ashgate, Farnham, pp. 156-178. ISBN 9781859284230