Jasmin Mersmann

Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)

Fiendish attacks: the devil as iconoclast and victim of defacing

2023–2024: Spring

Jasmin Mersmann is a professor of Early Modern Art History at Freie Universität Berlin, with a focus on Italian art and art theory. Previously she taught at the University of Arts in Linz (Austria) and at Humboldt University Berlin. She was head of the research project "unBinding Bodies" and a research fellow at the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel, at the IKKM in Weimar and at the IFK in Vienna. In 2012, she completed her PhD on Lodovico Cigoli and conflicting concepts of truth in early modern times (Lodovico Cigoli. Formen der Wahrheit um 1600, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016). She studied art history, philosophy, and history in Freiburg, Paris, and Berlin, and holds MA degrees from Humboldt University and the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Her research focuses on the intersection of art history and cultural history. Currently, she is finishing a book on early modern demonology and the motif of the devil’s pact. At the Academy, she will be working on iconoclastic attacks alleged to have been inspired by demons.