Trinity Martinez Visiting Assistant Professor of Art

As a New Jersey native living near the border of New York City, I have been blessed living in close proximity to the artworks, architecture, and meditative spaces found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters, the Frick Museum, and the Morgan Library & Museum.

During my junior year as an undergraduate, I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, where half of my weekly Early Renaissance classes took place within the centuries-old walls of cathedrals, churches, palaces, villas, and museums. Experiential learning profoundly changed my way of assimilating information and now, it informs my pedagogy.

I received my Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, of the City University of New York, in 2019, where I studied Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean World: 1300-1600. My dissertation, “The Evolution of the Centaur in Italian Renaissance Art: Monster, Healer, Mentor, Constellation,” analyzes the brief transformation of centaur imagery from savage beast into the more positive depiction of a civilized creature.

My current research interests include Greco-Roman mythology in Renaissance artworks, as well as the role of hybrid creatures, fantastic beasts, and animal imagery in the early modern world. I am especially interested in the visual and literary culture of Quattrocento Florence, as well as female patronage, gender roles, domestic life, gastronomy, and global trends in Renaissance Europe.

Since 2015, I have presented my research at conferences of the Renaissance Society of America and the Southeastern College Art Association. While I work towards preparing my dissertation for publication, I have published in the peer-reviewed journal Source: Notes in the History of Art.

Currently, I am researching the function of the centaur in Italian Renaissance paintings that feature the creature’s encounter with St. Anthony Abbott.

Prior to my position at Davidson College, I taught courses at Brooklyn College, Queens College, and The Cooper Union.