Professor Geraldine A. Johnson
Associate Professor of the History of Art; Fellow of Christ Church
Christ Church
01865 286 830
Much of my research has focused on the history of sculpture from the late Medieval period to the present day, as well as on the visual arts more generally in Early Modern Europe. I have also worked on the history of photography, the historiography of Art History, and women and the visual arts. I have published on subjects ranging from the sculpture of Donatello and Rubens's female patrons, to art historians' reliance on photography and the contemporary sculptor Richard Serra.
Featured Publication
'(Un)richtige Aufnahme’: Renaissance Sculpture and the Visual Historiography of Art History, Art History, vol. 36, no. 1 (2013): 12-51.
In three ground-breaking articles published in 1896-97 and 1915, which focused primarily on Italian Renaissance sculpture, Heinrich Wölfflin asked: ‘How should one photograph sculpture?’ In trying to answer this question, he became one of the first scholars to consider explicitly the ‘visual historiography’ of Art History as a discipline. Following Wölfflin’s lead, this essay uses the photographic and, briefly, pre-photographic reproduction of Renaissance sculpture to explore how such images have both reflected and shaped art-historical approaches from Winckelmann’s illustrated surveys, Wölfflin’s and Malraux’s formalism, Berenson’s connoisseurship, Janson’s monographic interests and Panofsky’s iconology, to more recent socio-historical studies and digital applications. By doing so, this article hopes to serve as a prolegomenon for further research on the ‘visual historiography’ of art objects made in many other periods, places and media.
Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Botticelli, Holbein, Leonardo, Dürer, Michelangelo: the names are familiar, as are the works, such as the Last Supper fresco, or the monumental marble statue of David. But who were these artists, why did they produce such memorable images, and how would their original beholders have viewed these objects? Was the Renaissance only about great masters and masterpieces, or were "mistresses" also involved, such as women artists and patrons? And what about the 'minor'-pieces that Renaissance men and women would have encountered in homes, churches and civic spaces? This exciting and stimulating volume will answer such questions by considering both famous and lesser-known artists, patrons and works of art within the cultural and historical context of Renaissance Europe.
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