Dr Matthew Landrus

Dr Matthew Landrus
Supernumerary Fellow
Wolfson College
matthew.landrus@history.ox.ac.uk

I examine innovative interactions with natural philosophy, technology and the practical arts during the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries. As a specialist on the working methods and intellectual interests of artist/engineers, I study cross-disciplinary investigative and inventive approaches in the histories of ideas, science and technology. Much of this work focuses on European material culture, though often in connection with global, transcultural developments. Examining the transmission and development of knowledge, I work mainly with early notebooks, manuscripts, informative objects and built environments that help assess trajectories of innovative engagements.

 

Although I focus on early modern Italy, my research has extended beyond core subjects to developments of the following courses: the science of art, history of medicine, history of collecting, princely courts, the Grand Tour, British history, architectural history, historiography, philosophy, transcultural objects, South Asian visual culture, illuminated manuscripts, paradoxes in visual culture, and modern art. I have also worked on a broad range of exhibitions, focusing in recent years on the work and reception of Leonardo da Vinci.

 

This work assists with teaching courses on ‘global networks of innovation, 1000-1700: China, Islam and the rise of the west’, ‘theories and methods in historical analysis’, a short course on the ‘history of medicine’; and assists with tutorials on ‘histories of madness and mental healing in a global context’, medieval and early modern British history, nature and art in the Renaissance, conquest and colonisation in the sixteenth century, Flanders and Italy in the quattrocento, and South Asian sculpture.

 

Research Interests

  • Visual culture of science, medicine, mathematics and technology
  • Early modern notebooks, manuscripts and the history of printing
  • Preparatory marks on medieval and Renaissance drawings and paintings
  • Early modern philosophy of natural history
  • Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries
  • Civil and military engineering, c. 1000-1700
  • Music, festivals and the mechanical arts
  • Conquest and colonisation
  • South Asian visual culture

 

See page on Wolfson College website

Teaching

I currently teach:

Prelims

 FHS
History of the British Isles, 1330-1550

History of the British Isles: The Late Medieval British Isles, 1330-1550

European and World History:  Renaissance, Recovery and Reform, 1400-1650

Further Subject: Anglo-Saxon Archaeology of the Early Christian Period, c. 600–750

Optional Subject: Nature and Art in the Renaissance

Further Subject: Culture and Society in Early Renaissance Italy, 1290–1348

Optional Subject: Conquest and Colonisation: Spain and America in the Sixteenth Century

Further Subject: Flanders and Italy in the Quattrocento, 1420–1480
Paper IV: Art and History

Further Subject: Encountering South Asian Sculpture
 

Further Subject: Histories of Madness and Mental Healing in a Global Context.
  European and World History: Global Networks of Innovation, 1000-1700: China, Islam and the Rise of the West
  Honour School of Natural Science - Supplementary Subject: History and Philosophy of Science

 

Graduate Papers: 

  • MSt History: Theory and Methods
  • Ideas meet Things: Why Materiality Matters in History of Science, Medicine and Technology 
  • Science and Practice: Instruments, Collections and Museums
  • State and Society in Early Modern Europe
  • The Dawn of the Global World, 1450-1800: Ideas, Objects, Connections
  • The Global Middle Ages
  • The Scientific Revolution, 1540-1740

Publications