Welcome to the personal website of
Dr Valerie Mainz
I am an historian of art who has made a particular study of the art and culture of the French Revolution. My Ph.D, from University College, University of London, is entitled ‘History, History Painting and Concepts of Gloire in the Life and Work of Jacques-Louis David’. Besides publishing widely on French art, I have curated three major exhibitions to do with aspects of my research focus, Women at Work, Men in Labour: Work and Image in the French Revolution, University Gallery, University of Leeds, L’Image du Travail et la Révolution française at the Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille, France and, with Dr Richard Williams, Paper, Stone, Flesh and Blood: Transforming Views of Sculpture in French Revolutionary Prints, at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.
My research interests additionally consider the interfaces between history and history painting, the guises of prints and caricature, academic art theory, the representation of the Jew in the Early Modern period, the transmission of the classical tradition in Western Europe and issues of identity, gender, recognition, reception and dissemination.
From Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History. With Illustrations by Edmund J Sullivan, London, Chapman and Hall Limited, 1910.
Volume I, facing page 322. Line print, 15.6cm x 10.6cm.
Between 1992 and 2018, I was a lecturer, then a senior lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. As well as contributing to general surveys at level 1, I taught and was responsible for modules at both MA and BA levels including options on the Early Modern Portrait (Art, Power and Portraiture), on Rubens and the Courts, on Rembrandt and the Jews, on theatricality in 18th century French art, and on various aspects of the French Revolution.