Sacred Art and Women’s Visions: Julia Margaret Cameron and Paula Rego as Modern Interpreters of Renaissance Art

The Revd Dr Ayla Lepine is an art historian and theologian. MA and Ph.D. at the Courtauld Institute of Art, focused on the Gothic Revival and medievalism in modern Britain. She held an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship within the Courtauld’s Research Forum and was 2013 Associate Fellow at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music; 2021-22 Ahmanson Fellow in Art and Religion at the National Gallery. Currently the Associate Rector at St James’s, Piccadilly in London. She publishes and lectures widely. Her research has been published in Architectural History, British Art Studies, Tate’s In Focus series, and the Journal of Theology and Sexuality; publications include essays on the Crimean Memorial Church in Istanbul, the intersections of music and visual culture in G.F. Bodley’s Cambridge architecture, Kenneth Clark and the Gothic Revival, and the history of Victorian Anglican art and architecture; her co-edited books include Architecture and Modern Religious Communities: Building the Kingdom and Revival: Memories, Identities, Utopias. She is co-editor of Pickering and Chatto’s book series Religion, Architecture and Visual Culture, a Contributing Historian for the Architectural Review, and Arts Editor of the Marginalia Review of Books. Her book Women, Art, God will be published with SCM Press in 2025.