Patricia L Rubin

My research has been eclectically motivated: it has been inspired by a love of great writing and grand narratives, prompted by courses I have offered, by the attraction of a given work of art, by seeming anomalies, or by being asked a question that has no immediate answer. I have written on the history of collecting, on drawings, Raphael, altarpieces, and on modes of seeing. My first book, "Giorgio Vasari: Art and History" (Yale University Press, 1995; awarded the Eric Mitchell Prize), originated in my dissertation. In addition to essays and articles on the Lives (including one, “’Not  … what I would fain offer, but … what I am able to present’: Mrs. Jonathan Foster’s translation of Vasari’s Lives,” in "Le Vite del Vasari: Genesi, Topoi, Ricezione", 2010), work on the "Lives" resulted in publications on rhetoric, invention, and the meaning of history. An interest in exploring the Florentine archives and exploiting a generation of new work by historians of the city led me to produce a socially-grounded history of its art ("Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence", Yale University Press, 2007). Spin-offs from that included an invitation to co-curate an exhibition at the National Gallery London ("Renaissance Florence: the Art of the 1470s", with Alison Wright, 1999) and an international conference and book of essays, "Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence" (with Giovanni Ciappelli, Cambridge University Press, 2000). A seminar series that I organized on “Naming Names” led to an article on artists’ signatures (published in the journal "Art History", 2000) and a working group that I founded at the Courtauld Institute – the Courtauld Women Teachers – resulted in a contribution to the group’s edited volume, "Manifestations of Venus: Art and Sexuality" (“The seductions of antiquity”; Manchester University Press, 2000). Another working group that I created at the Courtauld – the Writing Art History project – gave me a chance to read novels for work, leading to an essay on Henry James and portraiture in the special issue of "Art History" edited by the group (“’The Liar’: Fictions of the Person,” 2011). Paradoxically perhaps, since I am never quite sure what can be said about portraiture, I have tried more than once, including an essay "Portraits by the Artist as a Young Man: Parmigianino ca. 1524" (2007) and one on “Understanding Renaissance Portraiture,” for the catalogue of the exhibitions held in Berlin and New York ("The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini", 2011). To balance out all of that facing up to faces, I took to studiously examining the other end of the body, particularly the male bottom, with articles on the subject in the "Oxford Art Journal" and "Art History" (2009, 2013) and a book, "Seen from Behind: The Male Body and Renaissance Art", published by Yale University Press in 2018. Subsequent projects have included essays on Botticelli’s illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, on episodes in the history of art history (“Art and the Masquerade of History”), and on questions of mimesis and the configuring of emotion (“Perverse Images: Monstrous Beauty and Monkey Business in Italian Renaissance Art from Botticelli to Bronzino” and “Michelangelo’s Monkey and the Melancholy of Death”). Bibliographic details of my publications are posted here in the document “PatriciaLeeRubin.Publications.”

I began teaching in 1979, with the fortune to work at specialist institutes in resource-rich cities - London and New York - with very specially talented students. I have supervised well over 100 MA theses and over 30 dissertations, many of them published. Probably the greatest surprise and most meaningful honor I have ever received is the book of essays edited by my former students at the Courtauld, "‘Una insalata di più erbe’: Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin" (2011).

Further information regarding my research interests can be found at www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/people/faculty/rubin.htr