Professor Peter Davidson

Research Interests

His research focuses on the inter-relations of the arts in the early-modern period: symbols and emblems, festivals, gardens, the applied arts. He is particularly interested in baroque internationalism and in the literary and visual arts of the Counter-reformation.

He is Honorary Curator of Aberdeen University's Manuscript, Rare Book and Museum Collections from the Renaissance and Baroque periods and is writing the history of the collections for publication in 2008. He has supervised original research on those collections at Doctoral and Post-Doctoral levels. 

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Current Research

An edited volume of essays on 'The Festivals of the Defeated in Early-Modern Europe' is in press in the Wolfenbuettler Forschungen series.

An essay on 'John Talman and Catholic Antiquarianism' has been comissioned by Yale University Press for their forthcoming volume on Talman and his collections.

A monograph on Baroque internationalism, with particular focus on Scotland, Ireland, and Ibero-America, is in press with Manchester University Press. 

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Selected Publications

Books:

2005 The Idea of North, Reaktion Books

2005 Visual Words and Verbal Pictures, essays in honour of Michael Bath, ed. with Alison Saunders (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2005)

2004 Europa Triumphans : Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe (MHRA in association with Ashgate), Chief editor for 'The Netherlands' vol. I, pp. 465- 602 and for 'The New World' vol II, pp. 342-433.

2001 Early Modern Women's Poetry: An Oxford Anthology, with Jane Stevenson (contributions from Kate Chedgzoy, Julie Saunders, Meg Bateman), Oxford University Press

Articles:

'The Jesuit Garden', The Jesuits: Culture Sciences and the Arts, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, January 2006, pp. 86-107

'Pope's Recusancy' in Alexander Pope, a poet on the margins and in the centre (ed Flavio Gregori) ; Studies in the Literary Imagination, 38:1, Spring 2005, Georgia State University.

'Recusant Archives and remains from three kingdoms, 1560-1789: Catholics in exile at home and abroad', with Andrew Nicoll, The Downside Review,no. 429, vol.122, October 2004, pp.289-312.

'Il sogno di Raffaello', Sogno e Racconto: Archetipi e Funzioni. Atti del convegno di Macerata (7-9 maggio 2002), ed. Gabriele Cingolani and Marco Riccini, Florence, Le Monnier, 2003, 160-73 [about Giorgio Ghisi's engraving "Il Sogno di Raffaele", deciphering its notoriously complex iconography as an allegorical representation of the political and dynastic position of Cathérine de Médicis, after the death of her husband.]

'Paper Gardens, Garden Ideas and Garden Poems in Scotland and the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century' in Emblems of the Low Countries ed Alison Adams and Marleen van der Wieij (Glasgow, Glasgow Emblem Studies) 2003.

'The Theatrum for the entry of Claudia de'Medici and Federigo Ubaldo della Rovere into Urbino, 1621', Court Festivals of the European Renaissance, art , politics and performance, eds. J.R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002), pp. 311-334

'The Inscribed House', Emblem Studies in Honor of Peter M. Daly, ed. Michael Bath et al, Baden-Baden, Verlag Valentin Koerner, 2002, pp. 41-62

'The Literary Material in the Archives of the Venerable English College, Rome', Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 20.1, 2002, pp. 13-18

'Saint Mary, Queen and Martyr', History Scotland, Jan/Feb 2002, pp. 32-37

'The Casket Sonnets: New Evidence Concerning Mary Queen of Scots', History Scotland, Winter 2001, 28-34 with Thomas McCoog, SJ.

'Father Robert's Convert - the private Catholicism of Anne of Denmark', TLS, November 24, 2000, pp. 16-17 (with Penny Roberts), 'Valois Monarchy and visual Propaganda: a suggested reading of Giorgio Ghisi's Dream of Raphael or Allegory of Life' Emblematica 10 1996 (actual publication 2000) pp. 115-220 

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