Biography

John Henderson is Professor of Italian Renaissance History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, and Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. He works principally on the social, religious and medical history of Tuscany from the renaissance to the early modern periods. His books include: Christianity and the Renaissance, ed. with T.V.Verdon (1990); Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994); The Great Pox. The French Disease in Renaissance Europe, with J. Arrizabalaga and R. French (1997; and The Renaissance Hospital. Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (2006).

Project summary

His book project examines changing ideas and policies towards public health, disease and the urban and rural environment in early modern Tuscany; at I Tatti he will concentrate on a case study, plague in Florence in 1630-1. His archival project focuses on the dual role of religion and medicine as reflected in the iconography of artistic programmes in hospitals in renaissance Tuscany.