Professor Geraldine A. Johnson
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.
Research Interests
- Early Modern Art and Culture
- History of Sculpture: Late Medieval to Contemporary
- Women and the Visual Arts
- History of Photography
- Historiography of Art History
I am the co-editor of a prize-winning volume entitled Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and the editor of Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension (Cambridge University Press, 1998). In 2005, Oxford University Press published my book Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction, which has been translated into Chinese, Greek, Turkish, Thai and Vietnamese. At present, I am completing two books, one for Cambridge University Press entitled The Sound of Marble: The Materiality and Immateriality of Italian Renaissance Art, and another entitled Photography and Sculpture, which will be published by Reaktion Books. I have been commissioned by Wiley-Blackwell to edit a major anthology, A Companion to the Theories and Methods of Art History, and I also recently edited a volume entitled Crossing Continents: Exile and Expatriate Histories of Art. Future projects include a co-authored monograph, De-Facing the Portrait: The Early Modern Body in Parts (with Prof. Tatiana String), and an historiographical study entitled Art History's Images.
History of Art Department webpage
Featured Publications
Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005)
In the Media
Medici: Masters of Florence, series 2
Round-up of Sunday Papers
Woman’s Hour
Round-up of Sunday Papers
Raphael
Nightwaves
Teaching
I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding History of Art and Visual/Material Culture.
I currently teach:
Prelims |
FHS | Masters |
European Art 1400-1900 | Approaches to the History of Art | Women, Art and Culture in Early Modern Europe |
Antiquity after Antiquity | Court Culture and Art in Early Modern Europe | Theory and Methods in the History of Art |
Publications
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Embodying Devotion: Multisensory Encounters with Donatello's Crucifix in S. Croce
December 2020|Journal article|Renaissance Quarterly -
Sensing Devotion: Donatello's Crucifix in S. Croce and the Embodied Devotee
December 2020|Journal article|Renaissance Quarterly -
Photography and Sculpture
January 2020|Book -
“in consequence of their whiteness”: Photographing marble sculpture from Talbot to today
January 2018|Chapter|Radical Marble: Architectural Innovation from Antiquity to the Present© 2018 J. Nicholas Napoli and William Tronzo. Marble. Heavy, hard, sometimes smooth, sometimes rough. Or, as the battered Concise Oxford Dictionary sitting on my desk puts it: “Limestone in crystalline (also, in granular) state & capable of taking polish, used in sculpture & architecture.” 1 Unlike my timeworn lexicon, however, an actual piece of marble is not at hand as I write this chapter. Instead, dense, solid marble - more specifically, marble sculpture - is conjured up immaterially through memories, words, and reproductive images. It is this latter mode of engaging the medium that will be the focus of the present chapter, which will explore the role played by photography in the interpretation of marble sculpture, as well as marble sculpture’s impact on the history of photography, from the work of the pioneering photographer William Henry Fox Talbot to that of the Pictorialist Edward Steichen and contemporary artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, and Marc Quinn. 2. -
Photographing Sculpture, Sculpting Photography
December 2017|Chapter|Photography and Sculpture: The Art Object in ReproductionSculpture, Photography, History of Photography, History of Art