Job title: Teaching Fellow in Renaissance Art History

Email: bryony.coombs@ed.ac.uk

Office address: 0.15, Hunter Building

Dr Bryony Coombs is a Teaching Fellow specialising in late-medieval art in northern Europe. She studied Fine Art as an undergraduate and her doctorate at Edinburgh University focussed on Franco-Scottish cultural connections during the late-medieval and early-modern periods: ‘Distantia Jungit,’ Scots Patronage of the Visual Arts in France, c.1445 – c.1545. Her research interests include the transfer of ideas in northern Europe and text and image relationships in late-medieval manuscripts.

Her recent published works include ‘Material Diplomacy: French Manuscripts and the Stuart Kings of Scotland, Edinburgh University Library, MS 195’ SHR (2019), and ‘From Dunbar to Rome: John Stuart, Duke of Albany and his Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Military Science in Scotland and Italy, 1514-1536.’ PSAS (2019), which was awarded the Murray Medal for History. In 2021 she received the Jack Medal from the IASSL for her work ‘Albany and the Poets: John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and the Transfer of Ideas Between Scotland and the Continent 1509-1536.’

She is currently writing a monograph under contract with Edinburgh University Press entitled Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550.

Current research projects include:

  • Chapters entitled 'Illuminations and Miniatures' and 'Imported Manuscripts' for The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, volume 1 (to 1707) (E.U.P).

  • Work on cultural hybridity in Renaissance France.

  • ‘Repetition and Innovation: Scottish Patrons & Netherlandish Artists, Visual & Archival Evidence’ for the forthcoming book: Reviving the Trinity; Networks and Materialities in Scotland and Europe 1400-1600 (Brepols).

  • Editor and contributor to the forthcoming volume Anselm Adornes: Art, Commerce and Piety in Fifteenth Century Scotland, Bruges and Beyond, with a chapter entitled: ‘Lost Books: The Manuscript Patronage of James III and Anselm Adornes.’

  • Books, Trees and Pagan Gods in Renaissance Scotland. A collaborative project looking at illustrated printed books and nascent humanism in Scotland.

Analysing Art History: Texts, Objects and Institutions: Parts 1 and 2 (3rd yr) [SEM 1 and 2]

Expanding Vision: Visual Culture in France from the Limbourgs to Leonardo (4th yr) [SEM 1]

The Detailed Imagination: Netherlandish Painting in the Age of Jan van Eyck (3rd yr) [SEM 2]

Expanding the Book: Image and Literacy in Valois France (Post-graduate) [SEM 2]

Bryony contributes a series of lectures focussing on northern Europe and cultural hybridity to History of Art 1a and 1b. She also contributes to the postgraduate course Approaching World Objects.

 

Monographs

Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550

(Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming)

 

Refereed Journal Articles

‘Icon to Image: René of Anjou, Cultural Hybridity, and Aesthetics of the East’, Viator (forthcoming).

‘Les Abus du Monde: A French Manuscript Produced for James IV, c. 1509, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M. 42.’ The Scottish Historical Review (April 2021).

‘Drawing Blood: The Visual Patronage of Robert Stuart d’Aubigny, Maréchal of France, in relation to James V’s French Sojourn in 1536.’ Études Épistémè, 37 (2020).

‘From Dunbar to Rome: John Stuart, Duke of Albany and his Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Military Science in Scotland and Italy, 1514-1536.’ The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 148 (2019), 231-266. This paper was awarded the Murray Medal for History.

‘Material Diplomacy: French Manuscripts and the Stuart Kings of Scotland, Edinburgh University Library, MS 195’ The Scottish Historical Review, 98: 2 (2019), 183-213.

‘The Tapestries of St Anatoile (1502-1506): Burgundian Perceptions of a ‘Scottish Saint’ and the Royal House of Scotland at the turn of the Sixteenth Century.’ The Innes Review, 70.1 (2019), 1-35.

‘The Artistic Patronage of John Stuart, Duke of Albany 1520-1530: Vic-le-Comte, the Last Sainte-Chapelle.’ The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 147 (2017), 175-217.

‘Identity and Agency in the Patronage of Bérault Stuart d’Aubigny: the Political Self-Fashioning of a Franco-Scottish Soldier and Diplomat.’ The Medieval Journal, 7:1 (2017), 89-143.

‘Are the Petites Heures d'Anne de Bretagne really the Petites Heures de Jeanne de France?’ Reinardus, 27 (2015), 58-87.

‘The Artistic Patronage of John Stuart, Duke of Albany 1518-19: The “Discovery” of the Artist and Author, Bremond Domat.’ The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 144 (2014), 277-309.

Chapters and Edited Collections

'Translating Identities: Tracing the Transfer of a Scottish Origin Myth from Scotland to France c. 1519.' in Writing Scottishness: literature and the shaping of Scottish national identities eds. Ian Brown and Clarisse Godard Desmarest (Association for Scottish Literature, forthcoming).

‘Albany and the Poets: John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and the transfer of ideas between Scotland and the Continent, 1509-1536.’ this paper is forthcoming in Britain and its Neighbours: Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2021). This paper was awarded the Jack Medal.

Dirk H. Steinforth, Bryony Coombs, and Charles C. Rozier, ‘Introduction,’ Britain and its Neighbours: Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2021).

Related links

View Bryony's profile on Academia