Main Focus
- History of knowledge
- History of geology/mineralogy
- Visual and material studies
- Early modern collections
- Environmental history
Research Project
Beyond Shelves and Paper: Stones Investigations in the Late Renaissance
Curriculum Vitae
Alexandre Claude is a predoctoral fellow in the Max Planck Research
Group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions and a PhD candidate in history at the European University Institute in Florence.
His previous training included art history at the École du Louvre, mineralogy
at the Sorbonne University and history of knowledge at the École des hautes
études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and at the Universität Wien in Vienna. He
is currently one of the co-organisers of the EUI Material and Visual History
Working Group, where he co-organised a workshop on the early modern comprehension
of earth materials ‘Where the stones lie: between
historical practices and spatialities’ in June 2025. Combining his interest in art history and history of science, his
dissertation aims at grasping how and why the study of stones emerged at the
time of the first museums, and Wunderkammer in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. By fostering interdisciplinary perspectives and material
studies, he reassesses the roles of crafting and displaying within the
observing and classifying processes. At the Hertziana, he will focus on the
sixteenth and early seventeenth-century depictions of stones to understand how
they were made and used. To conduct this research, he has a specific expertise
in drawing thanks to his art history background and several internships in
graphic art departments in French institutions (Palace of Versailles, Musée des
arts décoratifs, Musée Condé).