Robert Baldwin

Robert Baldwin works on the social history of Late Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art (1300-1700) and late 19th century European art with a focus on political and social issues (the intersection of class, gender, and aesthetics).

Robert Baldwin's 325 articles, essays, conference papers and bibliographies, 9 syllabi, and 70,000 images of Western art arranged in 2,000 slide shows by subject matter can be downloaded from his personal website: socialhistoryofart.com

His Ph.D. thesis, "The Humble Style in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Religious Art" (Harvard, 1983) is available on his website and on CD-ROM (with photos).

Current research projects include: (1) Vuillard, Denis, and the "Feminine" Domestic Interior, (2) Gauguin and Tahiti, (3) the social history of Renaissance landscape, (4) music, class, and gender in Dutch art 1500-1700 (especially Vermeer), (5) mercantilist culture in sixteenth-century Dutch art, (6) late medieval feudal culture in the Limbourg Brother's "Tres Riches Heures," (7) absolutism in the landscapes of Claude Lorrain, (8) three anthologies of primary source writings on music, nature, and gender from antiquity to 1700 (each 2,500 - 5,000 pages), and (9) a digital archive of 110,000 images of Western art (classical and European, 1300-1920), including 15,000 close-ups taken on site.

Professor Baldwin teaches 9 regular courses: (1) Western Art from the Renaissance to the Present; (2) Later Renaissance Art in Italy, 1500-1575; (3) Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer: Art and Society in the 17th-Century "Belgium" and the Netherlands; (4) Art and Ideology in 17th-Century Italy, Spain, and France; (5) Sex, Class, and the Body in Western Art, (6) Nature in Western Art from the Renaissance to Modernity, (7) Mythology in Western Art from the Renaissance to the 20th Century; (9) Post-Impressionism and Symbolism. (Syllabi for most of these courses are available on his personal website, socialhistoryofart.com).

Visit the art history department website.

Major in art history.