Chloe Reddaway

Visual theology, especially the recovery of historic works of art as a resource for contemporary theology

The artistic use of strangeness as a response to the challenge of painting Christ.

Images of the Visitation in connection to the New Creation. 

The ecclesiastical stained glass of Tom Denny.

Currently writing an introductory handbook for theology and the visual arts and an edited volume on methodology in this field. 

Current research projects:

Theology and the Visual Arts - King's College London (kcl.ac.uk)

Past research projects:

https://thevcs.org/

Theology, Modernity and the Visual Arts (TMVA) (kcl.ac.uk)

Selected publications

• Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts, eds, Ben Quash, Chloë Reddaway (Brepols) 2024. (Also the chapter ‘Revisiting Creation’ in the same).
• ‘Theology and the Visual Arts’, in The Modern Theologians. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2024.
• Strangeness and Recognition: Mystery and Familiarity in Renaissance Paintings of Christ (Brepols) 2019.
• Transformations in Person and Paint: Visual Theology, Historical Images, and the Modern Viewer (Brepols). January 2016.
• Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion. Eds, Ben Quash, Chloë Reddaway, Aaron Rosen (IB Tauris). 2017.
• ‘St Peter’s Church, Martley and St Edburga’s Church, Leigh’ and ‘Windows of Light: St James Grafton Underwood’ in Glory, Azure and Gold: The stained-glass windows of Thomas Denny. (London: Reed Contemporary Books) 2023. 3^rd edn (2025, 2016).
• ‘Reading Hermeneutic Space: Pictorial and Spiritual Transformation in the Brancacci Chapel’ in James Romaine and Linda Stratford (eds), Revisioning, Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art. (Cascade: Oregon) 2014.

Chloë's work focuses on visual theology and Christian art.

After reading Philosophy and Theology at Oxford, Chloë worked in the arts sector and studied Cultural Management.  She moved to KCL for an AHRC-funded PhD on the theology of 14^th/15^th century Florentine fresco cycles.  She held a post-doctoral role in the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge and from 2014-2018 she was the Ahmanson Fellow/Curator in Art and Religion at the National Gallery, where she co-taught the KCL/NG MA in Christianity and the Arts. She returned to the Centre for Arts and the Sacred at King’s in 2018 to join the Visual Commentary on Scripture team, and work on a collaborative project with Duke University, NC: Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts, funded by the McDonald Agape Foundation.  Since 2023 she has been the Co-I on another McDonald Agape project, Theology and the Visual Arts: Firming Foundations, Firing Imaginations, whose purpose is to strengthen the foundations of Theology and the Visual Arts as a discipline within academic Theology, and help to shape its future.  As part of this she is writing an introductory handbook to Theology and the Visual Arts and co-convening a network of scholars to address questions of method and hermeneutics in this area. Chloë is also writing a monograph on the stained glass artist, Thomas Denny, with a catalogue raisonné.

Chloë teaches widely in theology and the arts. She has lectured for the KCL/National Gallery collaborative MA in Christianity and the Arts since 2011 and was the course leader for the National Gallery from 2014-2016. She teaches for Samford University in London, and has also taught for the Vancouver School of Theology, Lambeth Palace, the University of Cambridge, Westminster College Cambridge, Westcott House, and Sarum College, focussing on theological engagement with historic Christian art, contemporary ecclesiastical art, and the role of the arts in Christian ministry.

She is a founding co-editor of the Brepols series, Arts and the Sacred, and an advisor to Art + Christianity.