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Dr Christina Faraday is a historian of art and ideas, with a special interest in Tudor and Stuart Britain and the wider 16th and 17th-century world. She is a Research Fellow in History of Art at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a BBC New Generation Thinker. In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Her first book, Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England was published by the Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press in April 2023. This was based on her PhD research (University of Cambridge, 2019) and explored the idea of ‘liveliness’ or vividness in the art and culture of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Alongside her PhD she worked part-time as a Curatorial Intern at the National Portrait Gallery, London, on the exhibition ‘Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver’ (2019). She previously graduated with a First Class BA in History of Art and Architecture at St John’s College, Cambridge, and an MPhil in History of Art with Distinction, her research focusing on the symbolism of clocks and watches in Tudor portraits. Her academic work has been published in leading scholarly journals, including Renaissance Studies, British Art Studies and Print Quarterly.

Christina contributes regularly to popular media, including BBC Radio 3 and Apollo Magazine. In 2021 she was shortlisted for the British Journalism Awards in the Arts and Entertainment category. She has appeared on podcasts including Not Just The Tudors, Talking Tudors and the Evening Standard’s The Leader, and has presented a series of London history podcasts for PlaceCloud on Spotify. Christina teaches for the History of Art Department and History Faculty at Cambridge, and The Wallace Collection in London. She’s also a Tutor for the Institute for Continuing Education at Cambridge, where she co-directs the MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture.

Recent Publications

Books:

Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England (Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press, 2023)
A groundbreaking approach to the problem of realism in Tudor art: in this wide-ranging and innovative book, Christina Faraday excavates a uniquely Tudor model of vividness, one grounded in rhetorical techniques for creating powerful mental images for audiences. By drawing parallels with the dominant communicative framework of the day, Tudor Liveliness sheds new light on a lost mode of Tudor art criticism and appreciation, revealing how objects across a vast range of genres and contexts were taking part in the same intellectual and aesthetic conversations. By resurrecting a lost model for art theory, Faraday re-enlivens the vivid visual and material culture of Tudor and Jacobean England, recovering its original power to move, impress and delight.

Articles:

‘Elizabeth I in Contemporary Art’, Burlington Contemporary, Issue 10 (2024)

‘Inquiry: Women’s Work’, Apollo Magazine (December), pp. 29-31 (2023)
Review of a recent trend for exhibitions of art by women.

‘Vivit Post Funera Virtus: The Elizabethan and Jacobean Monuments in Gonville and Caius College Chapel, Cambridge’, Church Monuments Journal (2021)
Winner: Church Monuments Society Essay Prize 2021

‘Horology Verbalised, Horology Visualised’ in Anthony Turner, ed., A General History of Horology (Oxford University Press)
Article on clocks in art and literature from 1300 AD to now.

‘Talking Heads: The Prattling Paintings of Renaissance England’, Apollo Magazine (June) pp.54-59 (2021)
Article about the trend for ‘speaking pictures’ and objects.

‘Two Newly Discovered Anatomy Flap Engravings by Thomas Gemini’, Print Quarterly, XXXVII, 2 (September 2020), pp.254-266 (2020)

‘Lively Limning: Presence in Portrait Miniatures and John White’s Images of the New World’, British Art Studies, Issue 17 (September 2020)

‘Hilary Mantel and Tudor Material Culture’, Apollo (online feature, 23^rd April 2020): https://www.apollo-magazine.com/hilary-mantel-thomas-cromwell/
One of Apollo Magazine’s most-read articles of the year.

Online Exhibitions for the Visual Commentary on Scripture, King’s College London (2020 and ongoing)

‘“it seemeth to be the thing itsefe”: Directness and Intimacy in Nicholas Hilliard’s Portrait Miniatures’, Études Épistémè, no.36 (2019), online at: https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/5292

‘Painted as a Villain – Tudor Portraits of Richard III’, Apollo (online feature 8^th October 2019): https://www.apollo-magazine.com/richard-iii-tudors-hever-castle/

‘Tudor Time Machines: Clocks and Watches in British Portraits, c.1530-c.1630’, Renaissance Studies 33:2 (April 2019), pp.239-266: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rest.12517

‘Portrait Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver’, Apollo CLXXXIX (March 2019) pp.134-139

Nine catalogue entries in C. Macleod et al, Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard & Oliver (London: National Portrait Gallery exh cat, 2019)

(as Christina Farley), Guide to St Vincent’s Parish Church, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire, (Heritage Lincolnshire, 2017) ISBN: 9780948639678. Winner: Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology’s Flora Murray Award for Excellence, 2017.

‘Waltham Abbey Panelled Room, Essex’, Transactions for the Essex Society for Archaeology and History, 4th ser., vol. 7, 2016, pp.211-223.

Media Coverage

My BBC Radio and other media appearances can be found on my website: https://www.christinajfaraday.com/new-generation-thinkers

Social Media

cjfaraday

Country Focus

England and Wales

Expertise by Geography

England, United Kingdom, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Medieval, Pre-17th century, Early Modern

Expertise by Topic

Art & Architectural History, Book History, Material Culture, Museums, Public History, Technology, Women