Sunmin Cha
Sunmin is a PhD candidate in Art History, focusing on devotional art in the Northern European context during the Reformation and global expansion. Her research explores the intersections between religious iconography and artistic production in 16th-century Haarlem, with a particular emphasis on the Man of Sorrows imagery. She is currently writing her dissertation which examines how artists like Maarten van Heemskerck, Cornelis van Haarlem, and Hendrick Goltzius responded to the religious and political shifts of the time through their art.
Her broader research interest includes the act of seeing, spectatorship, and the role of art as spectacle. Recently, her paper on the Ecce Homo altarpiece was published in Renaissance Papers. She has also contributed to various conference presentations, including topics on theological visuality and the construction of identity in early modern occupational portraits. Prior to starting the Ph.D. program, Sunmin completed her M.A. with her thesis “The Negation and Affirmation of Corporeal Sight: Lucas van Leyden’s The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho (1531)” and B.A. from Seoul National University. Sunmin has held internship at the National Museum of Korea, and worked at Arko Art Center, Ilmin Museum of Art, and Songeun Artspace among others.
Recent Conference Talks:
“Bulging Veins and Swollen Eyes: The Netherlandish Images of the Man of Sorrows in the Age of the Reformation.” The Receptions of Medieval Spirituality of the Low Countries and the Rhineland in Early Modern Europe. Legacies, Circulations, and Networks, November 27 – 29, 2024, UC Louvain, Belgium.
“Money, Materiality, and Artistry: Reimagining Merchants and Occupational Portraiture in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp.” 70th Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Annual Conference, March 21 – 23, 2024, Chicago, IL.
“From Scripture to Spectacle: Fiction, Religion, and the Visual in Maarten van Heemskerk's Ecce Homo (1544).” 80th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Renaissance Conference (SRC), September 29 – 30, 2023, Chapel Hill, NC.