Art & Art History

Felicia Else has been pursuing research on water, art and festivals in 16^th-century Florence, including the well-known Neptune Fountain in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence by Bartolomeo Ammannati. In conjunction with the Society for European Festivals Research, she has completed a book for Routledge Press, The Politics of Water in the Art and Festival of Medici Florence: from Neptune Fountain to Naumachia and contributed a chapter on wine and water fountains to Architectures of Festival in Early Modern Europe.  Fashioning and Re-fashioning Urban and Courtly Spaces (2018). She has published articles in Burlington Magazine, Sixteenth Century Journal, Imago Mundi and Medicea. Rivista interdisciplinare di studi medicei, Sculpture Journal and Explorations in Renaissance Culture.

Her teaching draws on her passion for art, history and study abroad. Her courses cover art from Antiquity to the Baroque as well as a First-year Seminar on Art, Money and Power in Renaissance Florence. She team-taught an interdisciplinary course, Wonders of Nature and Artifice: the Renaissance Quest for Knowledge, with Kay Etheridge in Biology, helping students to curate exhibitions in Schmucker Art Gallery, “The Gettysburg Cabinet” (2012), “Wonders of Nature and Artifice” (2017) and "Artful Nature and the Legacy of Maria Sibylla Merian" (2019). For images, videos and student research from these remarkable exhibitions, please visit: http://wonder-cabinet.sites.gettysburg.edu/2012/ , http://wonder-cabinet.sites.gettysburg.edu/2017/, and https://wonder-cabinet.sites.gettysburg.edu/artful-nature/. She has also promoted the use digital technology in art history, directing student research in the development of dynamic interactive websites on Renaissance works in Gettysburg College's Special Collections. These include sites by Daniella Snyder '18 on a 17th century Dutch World Map at http://daniellasnyder.sites.gettysburg.edu/maps_as_art/ and Sophia Gravenstein '22 on a Portrait of Martin Luther by the Workshop of Lucas Crananch the Younger at https://special-collections.sites.gettysburg.edu/martin-luther/gettysburg-colleges-luther/.