To complement Allison Katz’s exhibition Artery, writer and seventeenth-century literary scholar Dr Kathryn Murphy presented a lecture about the ‘combination of distancing and tenderness’ displayed in Titian’s painting Noli Me Tangere, exploring the repeated use and philosophical significance of this traditional motif throughout art history.
Dr Kathryn Murphy is Fellow in English Literature at Oriel College, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of English, University of Oxford. Her academic work focuses on Renaissance poetry and philosophy, and on the literary essay. She is also a critic and essayist, writing regularly about art for Apollo Magazine, and reviewing Czech literature for the TLS. She is the co-editor of the recent volume On Essays: From Montaigne to the Present, co-curator of the current Bodleian exhibition Melancholy: A New Anatomy, and finishing a book entitled Robert Burton: A Vital Melancholy.
