Saskia C. Quené is an Assistant Professor in Medieval Art History at the University of Tübingen. From October 2023 to September 2024, she is a visiting fellow at the Utrecht University Center for Medieval Studies, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
 
Trained in Art History, Philosophy, and Musicology at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she earned her doctoral degree in Art History (summa cum laude) from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 2020. Her dissertation focused on the use of gold leaf and perspectival modes of representation in late medieval Italian panel painting. Her book 'Goldgrund und Perspektive. Fra Angelico im Glanz des Quattrocento' (2022), argues for the complementary rather than exclusionary nature of gold leaf and perspectival modes of representation. This achievement earned her the Willibald Sauerländer Preis from the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, Germany.
 
Currently, Quené is working on her second book project, exploring visualizations of time and eternity in 9th and 10th-century manuscripts. Her curiosity centers on understanding the strategies employed by artisans and scribes in representing the fourth dimension on the two-dimensional perceived surface of parchment, particularly in musical and cosmological diagrams. A one-year grant facilitated this research at the University of California, Berkeley. At UC Berkeley, she also co-organized a two-day workshop entitled 'Space – Raum – topos. Anachronisms and Material Culture.'
 
In the fall of 2024, Quené's edited volume, 'Between Figure and Ground: Seeing in Premodernity,' will be published Open Access with Deutscher Kunstverlag (De Gruyter). Stemming from a conference held at eikones – Center for the Theory and History of the Image in Basel, the volume explores how the modern dichotomy between 'figure' and 'ground' enables, complicates, and limits our perception of premodern painted artifacts. What can be seen and described between picture planes and pictorial spaces and thus between figure and ground? The overarching objective is to argue for the benefits of transcending binary structures.

Beyond academia, Saskia enjoys being back in her home country after fifteen years of living abroad. She appreciates strolling through Dutch bookstores and is still holding out hope for frozen canals, eagerly awaiting the chance to use her schaatsen again.

• Download "Goldgrund und Perspektive"
• Visit Saskia Quené at the University of Tübingen
• Browse through a list of publications and talks on her Academia page