Ariella Minden

Ariella Minden is scientific assistant in the department of Prof. Dr. Tristan Weddigen at the Bibliotheca Hertziana-Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte. She completed her doctoral dissertation entitled “In Dialogue: Medial Thinking in Bolognese Printmaking, 1500–1530” at the University of Toronto in 2024, having been granted her B.A. from the same institution in 2015. Minden received an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2016 with a thesis on the early-sixteenth-century literary reception of Francesco Francia. Minden's current research evaluates Bologna’s role as a centre of printmaking by using media theory as a lens through which to explore the emergence of new artistic technologies. From the study of these practices in their infancy, she developed an interest in the role of failure as a central component of artistic process. This resulted in the organization of the international conference “Failure: Understanding Art as Process, 1150–1750” with Alessandro Nova and Luca Palozzi in November 2020.

Minden has gained curatorial experience at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in Toronto, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Gallerie Estensi in Modena. Prior to joining Prof. Weddigen’s department in November 2023, she was a predoctoral fellow in Dr. Sietske Fransen’s research group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions also at the Bibliotheca Hertziana from March 2022 and in the department of Prof. Dr. Alessandro Nova at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz-Max-Planck-Institut from 2018 to 2022.

Selected Publications:

• “Crafting Surgical Expertise in the Medical Manuals of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (1518-1523)”, in Ut pictura medicina? Visual Arts and Medicine, ed. Robert Brennan, Fabian Jonietz, and Romana Sammern, Manchester forthcoming 2024.
• (together with Paolo Savoia) "The Body Between Life and Death: Berengario da Carpi and the Anatomical Imagery of the Sixteenth Century", in Understanding Medical Humanities, ed. Rinaldo F. Canalis, Massimo Ciavolella and Valeria Finucci, Berlin 2022, pp. 174–204.

Honours, Awards, and Grants:

• Doctoral Fellowship, "Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions," Bibliotheca Hertziana-Max Planck Institute for Art History, 2022-2023
• Doctoral Fellowship, Kunsthistorisches Institut inFlorenz–Max-Planck-Institut, 2018–2022
• Peter H. Brieger Fellowship, Department of Art History, University of Toronto, 2020
• Faculty of Arts & Science Top (FAST) Doctoral Fellowship, University of Toronto, 2017–2021
• Robson Graduate Fellowship, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 2017