The art of deception, the deception of art.

Professor Hickson’s research examines the social economies of art in the Italian Renaissance –on patronage studies, collecting and collections but also the social life of works of art as objects that circulated among artists, patrons and collectors. Art itself informed and structured Renaissance sociabilities.  She is also interested in art and deception, especially in Michelangelo’s use of deception as a marketing tool over the course of his career, and in the various discourses surrounding copies, forgeries and fakes among artists and collectors.