Dr. Elsje van Kessel focuses on the viewing, use, and display of early modern art. She completed her Ph.D. at Leiden University, the Netherlands (2011), and wrote The Lives of Paintings: Presence, Agency and Likeness in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth-Century (De Gruyter, 2017). She has published articles in Renaissance Studies, the Journal of the History of Collections, Studiolo, and Art History.