Thomas de Wesselow is an art historian experienced at tackling 'unsolvable' problems. He earned his MA and PhD at London's Courtauld Institute, researching the controversial Guidoriccio fresco in Siena, before becoming a Scholar at the British School in Rome where he worked on another of the great mysteries of Italian art history, the Assisi Problem. After a year in the curatorial department at the National Gallery in London, he was appointed a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at King's College, Cambridge, where he was later awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. He has written on a number of famous Renaissance pictures whose meanings have hitherto defied analysis, including Botticelli's Primavera and Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. He has also developed new ideas about medieval world-maps, in particular the Hereford Mappamundi. Since 2007 he has been researching this book full-time. He is 40 years old and he lives in Cambridge.
