Jessica Barker

Jessica Barker is a specialist in medieval art, with a particular emphasis on sculpture. She studied at the University of Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she was subsequently Henry Moore Postdoctoral Fellow. She joined The Courtauld in 2018, after two years as a lecturer in world art at the University of East Anglia.

Jessica’s research ranges across northern Europe and the Iberian peninsular, addressing questions of the macabre, gender, materiality and the body. Her prize-winning monograph, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture, based on work from her doctoral thesis, explores the intersection of love and death in funerary art. She is the co-editor of Revisiting the Monument. Fifty Years Since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture, a collection of essays addressing Erwin Panofsky’s scholarship on tomb sculpture. She has published widely on death and commemoration, with articles in journals including: Art Bulletin, Art History, British Art Studies, The Burlington Magazine, Gesta, and The Sculpture Journal.

Forthcoming publications include two essays on the artistic patronage of Iberian noblewomen in England. Her current projects include co-curating an exhibition exploring rules in medieval and contemporary art, entitled Living by the Rule: Contemporary meets Medieval , which opens at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich on 16 May 2026. A related book, Living by the Rule: Contemporary Art meets the Medieval Monastery, co-authored with Ed Krčma, will be published at the same time.