Education
Pre 1960 |
Windsor Grammar School |
1960–3 |
Downing College, Cambridge University |
1963–5 |
Academic Diploma in the History of Western Art, Courtauld Institute |
Education
Pre 1960 |
Windsor Grammar School |
1960–3 |
Downing College, Cambridge University |
1963–5 |
Academic Diploma in the History of Western Art, Courtauld Institute |
Appointments
& Activities
Teaching and Research Posts, Visiting Professorships, Invited lectures etc
1965–1966 |
Lecturer in the History of Fine Art, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada |
1966–1981 |
Lecturer in the History or Fine Art, University of Glasgow |
1981–1990 |
Professor of Fine Arts, |
1984–1985 |
Member of Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton |
1990–1995 |
Professor of the History and Theory of Art, St. Andrews |
1987–1988 |
Slade Professor, |
1988 |
Benjamin Sonenberg Visiting Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University |
1993 |
Dorothy Ford Wiley Visiting Professor in Renaissance Culture, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
1993–1998 |
British Academy Wolfson Research Professor |
1995–1997 |
Professor of the History of Art, Oxford University |
2000 |
Louise Smith Brosse Professor at the University of Chicago |
2001 |
Research Fellow, Getty Institute, Los Angeles |
2004 |
Mellon Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal |
2007–2008 |
Research Professor in the History of Art, Oxford University |
2008 |
Emeritus Professor in the History of Art, Oxford University |
2010 |
Lila Wallace – Reader’s Digest Visiting Professor, I Tatti, Harvard University |
Invited Lectures
Britain and Ireland (various), America (including Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Bethlehem, Berlin, Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Duke, Emory, Harvard, Los Angeles, Malibu, New York, Penn State, Philadelphia, Princeton, Rice, Santa Cruz, Galveston, Harvard, San Francisco, Stanford, Washington, Williamstown, UCLA, and Yale), Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, China, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and Switzerland, including Selwyn Brinton lecture at the Royal Society of Arts, Aspects of Art lecture at the British Academy, Society for Renaissance Studies Annual lecture, Lettura Vinciana at Vinci, Slade Lectures at Cambridge; Mossman Lecture, Montreal; Hammer Prize lecture, Los Angeles; Bochner ‘Scientia’ Lecture, Rice, Brosse lectures, Chicago, Iconic Turn Lecture, Munich, Einstein Lecture, Berlin, the Page Barbour Lectures, University of Virginia, the Herzberg Lecture, Carleton University.
Awards & Honours
British Academy Wolfson Research Professorship, 1993–8
Mitchell Prize for best first book, for Leonardo da Vinci. The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man
Armand Hammer Prize for Excellence in Leonardo Studies
Prize of the American Italian Association
International Curatorship
and Co-curatorship
1989 |
Leonardo da Vinci. Artist, Scientist, Inventor at the Hayward Gallery, London* |
1992 |
‘Columbus year’ exhibition, Ca 1492. Art in the Age of Discovery for the National Gallery, Washington* |
1993 |
Leonardo da Vinci. The Mystery of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, National Gallery of Scotland. Edinburgh |
2000 |
Spectacular Bodies. The Art and Science of the Human Body, Hayward Gallery, London* |
2002 |
Gergor Mendel, the Genius of Genetics, Abbey of St. Thomas, Brno* Leonardo da Vinci. Experience, Experiment, Design, Victoria and Albert Museum |
2007 |
Seduced. Art & Sex from Antiquity to Now, Barbican Art Gallery,* London |
2019 |
Presenter: I Fagiolini, Leonardo. Shaping the Invisible, music CD and touring concert |
Public Service
Trustee of National Galleries of Scotland
Board of the Scottish Museums Council
Board of the Museum Training Institute
Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Trustee of the British Museum
Trustee of the Wilhemina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust
Board of the Louise T Bloin Institute
Professional Service & Activities
Chair of Association of Art Historians
Chair of Editorial Board, Art History
Chair of Graeme Murray Gallery, Edinburgh
Board member, ‘Interalia’
Professor of History, Royal Scottish Academy
Member of the Council of the British Society for the History of Science
Membre Titulaire, Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art
Founder of Artakt and Director, 2001–5
Public Media
CD-Rom on Leonardo for Bill Gates
Video The Masters of Illusion for the National Gallery, Washington (their best-selling video to that time)
Many appearances on TV programmes, including 50-minute feature on Piero della Francesca for Omnibus, and on Leonardo programmes for British and overseas broadcasters and media companies, including BBC, ITN, National Geographic, Canadian, Australian, Turkish and Japanese TV.
Radio programmes, including interviews with artists, appearances on Today, Kaleidoscope, Front Row, Night Waves, Start the Week and the Colin Bell Show.
Arts Blog for The Guardian, 2007
‘A Drawing for the Fabrica and Some Thoughts on the Vesalius Muscle-Men’, Medical History, XIV, 1970, pp. 277-88
Dr. William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts, Glasgow University Press, 1975.
‘Dr. William Hunter on the Windsor Leonardos and his Volume of Drawings Attributed to Pietro da Cortona’, The Burlington Magazine, CXVII, 1976, pp. 228-31.
‘Science, Non-Science and Nonsense: the Interpretation of Brunelleschi’s Perspective’, Art History, I, 1978, pp. 134-161.
‘Glasgow University, Bicentenary Celebrations of Dr. William Hunter’ (1718-83), The Burlington Magazine, No. CXXV, 1983, pp. 380-3.
‘Construction and Cunning: The Perspective of the Edinburgh Saenredam’, Dutch Church Painters, ed. H. Macandrew, Edinburgh, 1984, pp. 30-7.
‘Red, Yellow and Blue: the Limits of Colour Science in Painting’, The Natural Sciences and the Arts, ed. A. Ellenius (Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis no. 22), Uppsala, 1984, pp. 98-105.
‘Geometrical Perspective from Brunelleschi to Desargues: a Pictorial means or an Intellectual End?’ (Aspects of Art Lecture, 1984), Proceedings of the British Academy, (1984), LXX, 1985, pp. 89-132.
‘Simon Stevin and Pieter Saenredam: A Study of Mathematics and Vision in Dutch Science and Art’, The Art Bulletin, LXVIII, 1986, pp. 237-51.
‘”Perspective Rectified”. Some Alternative Systems in the 19th Century’, AA Files, XV, 1987, pp. 30-4.
‘Perspective and Meaning: Illusion, Allusion and Collusion’, Philsophy and the Visual Arts, ed. A. Harrison, Dordrecht, 1987,pp. 255-68.
The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat, Yale University Press 1990, reprinted with revisions 1992; in Italian as La Scienza dell’arte. Prospettiva e percezione visiva da Brunelleschi a Seurat, Giunti, Florence, 1994; in Spanish as La Ciencia del Arte. La óptica en la arte occidental de Brunelleschi a Seurat, Ediciones Alkal,, Madrid, 2000.
‘Geometrical Bodies as Exemplary Forms in Renaissance Space’, World Art. Themes of Unity in Diversity (Acts ofthe XXVI International Congress for the History of Art, Washington, 1986, ed. I. Lavin, Pennsylvania and London, I, 1989, pp. 237-41.
‘Taking it on Trust: Form and Meaning in Naturalistic Representation’, Archives of Natural History, XVII, 1990, pp. 127-88.
‘”La diminutione di ciasun piano”: la rappresentazione delle forme nello spazio di Francesco di Giorgio’, Prima di Leonardo exhibition catalogue, ed. P. Galluzzi, Palazzo Comunale, Siena, 1991, pp.105-12.
‘Prescriptions for Painting: ‘”Optical Information” in Art from the Renaissance to the Late Nineteenth Century’, Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Konferenser (Stockholm), XXIII, 1991, pp. 9-28.
‘Intellectual Ornaments: Style, Interpretation and Function and Society in Some Instruments of Art’, Interpretation and Cultural History, ed. J. Pittock and A. Wear, London, 1991, pp. 135-152
‘True to their Natures: Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, XLVI, 1992, pp. 77-88.
‘”The Mark of Truth”: Looking and Learning in some Anatomical Illustrations from the Renaissance and the Eighteenth Century’, Medicine and the Five Senses, ed. W. Bynum and R. Porter, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 85-121.
‘Picturing the Prehistoric’, review symposium of M. Rudwick’s, Scenes from Deep Time, in Metascience, IV, 1993, pp.70-3.
‘”Philosophy in Sport” and the “Sacred Precincts’: Sir David Brewster on the Kaleidoscope and Stereoscope’, Muse and Reason. The Relation of Arts and Sciences 1650-1850, ed. B. Castel, J. Leith and A. Riley, Kingston (Ontario), 1994, pp.203-32 (with Appendix by B. Pert)
‘Piero and the Idiots: the Early Fortuna of his Theories’, ‘Monarca della pittura’. Piero della Francesca and his Legacy, ed. M. Lavin, National Gallery, Washington, 1995, pp.199-211.
Materia Medica. A New Cabinet of Art and Medicine, exhibition and catalogue with K. Arnold, Wellcome Institute, London, 1995.
Bodyscapes. Images of Human Anatomy from the University of St. Andrews, exhibition and catalogue, Crawford Centre, 1995.
‘Spirals of Life: D’Arcy Thompson and Theodore Cook, with Leonardo and Dürer in Retrospect’, Physis, XXXII, 1995, pp. 37-54.
“Realtivity not Relativism: Thoughts on the Histories of Art and science having ReRread Panofsky”, Meaning in the Visual Arts. Visons from the Outside (Erwin Panofsky. A Centennial Celebration), ed. I. Lavin, 1995, pp. **-**.
‘New Light on Old Theories: Piero della Francesca and the Transmission of Light’, Piero della Francesca tra arte e scienza, ed. M. Dalai Emiliani and V. Curzi, Venice, 1996, pp. 33-46.
‘Temples of the Body and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualisation in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolutions’, for volume on Picturing Knowledge. Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, ed. B. Baigrie, Toronto, 1996, pp. 40-85.
‘”Wrought by No Artist’s Hand”: the Natural, Artificial and Exotic in Some Artefacts from the Sixteenth Century’, Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650, ed. C. Farago, New Haven and London, 1996, pp. 177-96.
‘”Implanted in our Natures”: Humans, Plants and the Stories of Art’, Visions of Empire. Voyages, Botany and Representations of Nature, ed. D. Miller, Los Angeles, 1996, pp. 197-229.
‘Doing What Comes Naturally: Morphogenesis and the Limits of the Genetic Code’, Art Journal, ed. B. Sichel and E. Levy, Spring 1996, pp.27-32.
‘The Ambiguous Object: the Perception of Artefacts within Changing Taxonomies’, The World, the Image and Aesthetic Experience. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Perception and Understanding, ed. C. Murath and S. Price, Bradford, 1996, pp. 193-222.
‘In the Light of Dante: Meditations on Natural Light and Divine Light in Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Michelangelo’, Ars naturam adiuvans. Festschift für Matthias Winner, ed. V. von Flemming and S, Schütze, 1996, pp. 160-77.
‘Art and Science, The Art Quarterly, Spring 1996, pp. 33-5.
‘Seeing Subjects and Picturing Science: Visual Representation in 20th-Century Science’, for 20th- Century Science, ed. J. Krige and D. Pestre, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 361-90.
‘Medicine in View: Art and Representation’, for Western Medicine. An Illustrated History, ed. I. Loudon, Oxford, 1997, pp. 1-24.
‘Parading the Horse’, The Art Quarterly, XXX, 1997, pp. 24-31.
‘Hidden Dimensions’, ‘tate’. The Art Magazine, 13, 1997, pp. 40-4.
‘Art and Science’, 28 articles in weekly series in Nature from 23 October 1997, to 30 April 1998 (essays on topics from the Renaissance to now)
‘Science and Image’, 36 articles in weekly series in Nature from 7 May 1998 to Dec 1998 (essays on the visual aspects of the sciences from the Renaissance to now; see also below)
‘‘Palissy’s Philosophical Pots: ceramics, grottos and the “Matrice” of the earth’, Le origini della Modernità, ed. W. Tega, 2 vols., Florence, 1999, pp. 69-88
Imagine e Verità. Per una storia dei rapporti fra arte e scienza, Il Saggiatore, Milan, 1999.
Introductory essay in The Physician’s Art. Representations in Art and Medicine, Duke Univeristy Medical Centre, 1999, pp.13-19.
“Vision and Visualisation in the Illustration of Anatomy and Astronomy from Leonardo to Galileo”, 1543 and All That, ed. A. Corones and G. Freeland, Kluver, Amsterdam, 2000, pp. 17-51.
with Debora Schultz, ‘Us and Them, This and That, Here and Trere, Now and Then: Collecting, Classifying and Creating’, Strange and Charmed. Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts, ed. S. Ede, London, 2000, pp.84-103.
‘The Temple of Flora. Robert Thornton, Plant Sexulaity and Romantic Science’, Natura-Cultura. L’interpretazione del mondo fisico nei testi e nelle immagini, ed. G. Olmi, L. Tongorgi Tomasi and A. Zanca, Florence, 2000, pp. 15-28.
“The Handyworke of the Incomprehensible Creator”, Writing on Hands. Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. C.R. Sherman and P.M. Lukehart, Dickinson College and Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, 2000, pp. 22-7.
Visualizations: the Nature Book of Art and Science (based on articles for Nature), 2000, Oxford University Press and University of California Press (also in German)
with Marina Wallace, Spectacular Bodies. The Art and Science of the Human Body from the Renaissance to Now, book for exhibition at Hayward Gallery in London , University of California Press, 2000.
‘Vedere lo spazio e misurare le immagini: Brunelleschi e la prospettiva urbana’, La Cattedrale come spazio sacro (Atti del VII centenario del Duomo di Firenze, vol. II, pt. 2), ed. T. Verdon and A, Innocenti, Florence, 2001, pp. 661-72.
“From Diffferent Points of View: Corrgeggio, Copernicus & the Mobile Observer”, Coming About… A Festschrift for John Shaeraman, ed. L. Jones and L. Matthew, Cambridge (Mass.), 2001, pp. 207-13.
“The Flower of Mathematics: Perspective in Perspective”, Geometry and Space. The Celebrated Books on Geometry, Optics and Perspective of M. Arnaud de Vitry, Sotheby’s, London, 10-11 April 2002
“Looking and Counting. From the Visual to the Non-Visual”, Gergor Mendel. The Genius of Genetics, ed. C. Albano and M. Wallace, Brno, 2002, pp. 56-63.
“Gergor Mendel; the genius of genetics”, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, XXVII, 2002, pp. 120-124.
“The Mona Lisa of Modern Science”, 50 Years of DNA, ed. J. Clayton and C. Dennis, Nature / Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2003, pp. 102-6; also in The Double Helix – 50 years, Nature Supplment, 23 Jan 2003.
“Wissen in Bildern – Intuitionen in Kunst und Wissenschaft”, Iconic Turn. Die Macht der Bilder, ed. C. Marr and H. Burda, Cologne, 2004, pp. 382-406.
with Antonio Criminisi and Sing Bing Kang, “Reflections of Reality in Jan van Eyck and Roger Campin”, Historical Methods, III, 2004, pp. 109-21.
“From science in art to the art of science”, Nature, 434, 17 March 2005, pp. 308-9, also as Supplement: artists on science; scientists on art.
Seen and Unseen. Art, Science, and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble Telescope, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.
“Imitation, Optics and Photography”, Inside the Camera Obscura. Optics and Art under the Spell of the Projected Image, ed. Wolgang Lefrèvre, Max-Plank-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2007, 243-64
With Antonio Criminisi, “Computer Vision and Painter’s Visions in Italian and Netherlandish Art of the Fifteenth Century”, Perspective, Projections and Design. Technologies of Architectural Representation, ed. Mario Carpo and Frédérique Lemerle, London and New York, 2007, pp. 31-46
“Th Human Animal”. History Today, LVII, 11, 2007, pp. 34-41.
Th Human Animal in Western Art and Science, Chicago, 2007
“Foreword”, Karl Grimes, Dignified Kings Play Chess on Fine Green Silk, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, 2007
“The Natural Philosopher as Builder”, Cecil Balmond. Frontiers of Architecture I, ex. cat., ed. M. Holm and K. Kjeldsen, Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art, 2007, pp.90-8.
“Microcosm, Macrocosm”, The World opf 1607, ex cat., Jamestown / Williamsburg, 2007-8, pp. 135-42
Acts of Seeing. Artists, Scientists and the History of the Visual. A volume dedicated to Martin Kemp, ed. Assimina Kaniari and Marina Wallace, Zidane Press, London, 2009 (with small contributions from MK)
“Style and Non-Style in Aanantomical Illustration: from Renaissance Humanism to Henry Gray, Journal of Anatomy, 216, 2010, pp. 192-208.
‘Science and Culture’, continuing series of monthly articles in Nature from Jan 1999 (continuation of column begun in 1997).