Prof. Renana Bartal

Renana Bartal is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Art History at Tel Aviv University. She specializes in medieval art and visual culture, with particular interests in illuminated manuscripts, devotional practices, sacred materiality, and the movement and transformation of holy matter and sacred space between the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Europe. Her research explores the ways in which images, objects, and materials shaped religious experience, devotional practice, and contemplative thought, often at the intersection of art history, religious studies, and gender studies.

She is the author of Gender, Piety and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts (Ashgate, 2016) and Word, Image, and the Spiritual Life of the Poor Clares (Cambridge University Press, 2026), and co-editor of three volumes examining the translation of sacred space and holy matter from the Holy Land to medieval Europe. Her current research focuses on relics of the Virgin Mary and their circulation between the Holy Land and the Latin West during the long twelfth century.

Education

2001        BA, Phycology and Art History                   The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2004        M.A., Art History (summa cum laude)      The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2010        PhD, Art History (summa cum laude)       The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2003 – 2004 and 2005 – 2006                                    The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

2009 – 2010 Post-Doctoral Studies                            University of Cambridge

Academic Positions

Associate Professor, Art History Department, Tel Aviv University, 2026 – present

Tenured Senior Lecturer, Art History Department, Tel Aviv University, 2019 – 2026

Senior Lecturer, Art History Department, Tel Aviv University, 2015 – 2019

Member of the ERC-funded project “Spectrum: Visual Translations of Jerusalem,” The European Forum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012 – 2015

Lady Davis Fellow, Art History Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011 – 2012

Selected Grants and Awards

2015, PI, ISF, Book Publication Grant, for Gender, Piety and Production in Fourteenth-Century English   

Apocalypse Manuscripts (Burlington: Ashgate, 2016).

2015 – 2018, Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Scholars

2020 – 2024, PI, ISF, “A Fourteenth Century Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi: Image, Meditative

Praxis, and Poor Clare Spirituality in Trecento Italy”

2021, Ranked among the 100 Excellent Lecturers at Tel Aviv University

2025, PI, ISF  Book Publication Grant, for Word, Image, and the Spiritual Life of the Poor Clares:

Interpreting the “Meditations of theLife of Christ” in Medieval Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2026)

2024, Italian Art Society/Samuel H. Kress Foundation International Conference Travel Grant

2024, Distinction for Excellence in Teaching, awarded by the Rector of Tel Aviv University

2026 – 2029 Pl, ISF, “Material Mary: Relics and Sacred Geography in the Twelfth Century”

Monographs

Bartal, R., Gender, Piety and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts (Burlington: Ashgate, 2016).

Bartal, R., Word, Image, and the Spiritual Life of the Poor Clares: Interpreting the “Meditations of the Life of Christ” in Medieval Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

Text Book Unit

Bartal, R., Art and Faith: Literary Sources for Christian Art, unit 7 for the Introduction to Medieval Art in      Europe and Byzantium (Ra’anana: The Open University of Israel, 2020) (In Hebrew)

Edited Volumes

Bartal, R., and H. Vorholt, Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

Bartal, R., B. Kühnel and N. Bodner, Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500–1500 (Oxford and New York: Routledge/Ashgate, 2017).

Bartal, R., B. Kühnel and N. Bodner, Projections of Jerusalem in Europe (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2023).

Selected Articles and Chapters

Bartal, R. “Remnants of Sorrow: Anglo-Norman Hair Relics of the Virgin Mary.” Medieval Encounters (forthcoming, 2027).

Bartal, R., “Images and Self-Reflection in the Meditationes Vitae Christi.” Specula Revista De Humanidades Y Espiritualidad, no. 4 (2022):33-58.

Bartal, R., “The Origins of an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi Manuscript.” The Burlington Magazine 163: 1421 (2021): 728–731. 

Bartal, R., “Reading the Meditationes on the 'Mount of Light'.” In The Meditationes Vitae Christi Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image, eds. Holly Flora and Peter Tóth (Brepols, 2021), 111–128. 

Bartal, R., “Text, Textile, Blood: Mary under the Cross in Oxford Corpus Christi College, MS 410.” Studies in Iconography 41 (2020): 131–164. 

Bartal, R., “Lost and Found in the Meditationes Vitae Christi.” In Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden, eds. Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 291–308.

Bartal, R., “The Stone of Sansepolcro: Relic, Image, and the Resurrection of Jerusalem in Tuscany.” Codex Aquilarensis 35 (2019): 291–304. 

Bartal, R., “Piero’s Faces: Artist and Image Making in Pierro Della Francesca’s Resurrection of Christ.” Source: Notes in The History of Art 39.1 (2019): 25–35. 

Bartal, R., “Gazing at Europe across the Mediterranean Sea: Medieval Art History in Tel Aviv.” ICMA Newsletter, Summer Issue (2019): 22–23. 

Bartal, R., “Relics of Place: Stone Fragments of the Holy Sepulchre in Eleventh-Century France.” Journal of Medieval History 44.4 (2018): 406–421. 

Bartal, R., “Un Saint-Sépulcre à Beaulieu-lès-Loches.” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 61 (2018): 217–228.

Bartal, R., B. Kühnel and N. Bodner, “Natural Materials, Place and Representation.” In Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500–1500 (New York: Ashgate/Routledge, 2017), xxii–xxxiii. 

Bartal, R.,“‘And Behold a Door was Opened in Heaven’: Vision and Visual Strategies in Three Vernacular Apocalypses from Fourteenth-Century England.” In The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Sergio La Porta and Kevork Bardakjian (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 640–654. 

Bartal, R., “Ducitur et Reducitur: Passion Devotion and Mental Motion in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi manuscript.” In Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 369–380. 

Bartal, R., “Repetition, Opposition and Invention in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi.” Gesta 53.2 (2014): 155–174.

Bartal, R., “Bridal Mysticism and Eucharistic Devotion: The Marriage of the Lamb in an Illustrated Apocalypse from Fourteenth-Century England.” Viator  42.1 (2011): 227–246. 

Bartal, R., “The Pepys Apocalypse (Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 1803) and the Readership of Religious Women.” Journal of Medieval History 37.4 (2011): 1–20. 

Bartal, R., “The Illuminator of Bodleian Library MS. Selden Supra 38 and his Working Methods.” In Du scriptorium à l'atelier: copistes et artisans dans la conception du livre manuscrit au Moyen Age, ed. Jean-Luc Deuffic, special issue of Pecia: ressources en médiévistique 13 (2010): 387–404. 

Bartal, R., “Heavenly Visions and Constructed Devotion in Fourteenth-Century Vernacular Apocalypses.”  Immediations 2.2 (2009): 143–146. 

Bartal, R., “A Note on Bodleian Library MS. Selden Supra 38, Jehan Raynsford and Johanna de Bishopsdon.” Bodleian Library Record 19.2 (2006): 239–244.