Biography

Frank Fehrenbach is an art historian whose work focuses on the interrelations between art, natural philosophy, and science in early modern Europe. He was a senior professor at Harvard University until 2013, when he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at Hamburg University. Since 2019, he is co-director of an interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Study on Imaginaria of Force. Fehrenbach published widely on Leonardo da Vinci, including the LVIII Lettura Vinciana (2020); together with Fabio Frosini, he is the editor of a new, annotated German translation of Leonardo's Codex Urbinas / Book on Painting (forthcoming 2026).

Project Summary

Frank Fehrenbach will work on his new book project, The Forces of the Italian Renaissance. The project examines visual strategies, semantics, and themes of forces in relation to concepts in physics, theories of perception, medicine, and theology, ca. 1300-1650.