BA (UCL), MA, PhD (Courtauld, University of London)


Contact details:

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House

Strand

London WC2R 0RN



Dr Janet Robson

After graduating in History from UCL in 1980, Janet Robson worked for fifteen years as a business and financial editor and analyst before becoming a postgraduate student at the Courtauld, gaining her PhD in 2001. During the last decade, she has regularly taught BA and MA courses at the Courtauld, Birkbeck (University of London) and Christie’s Education. She has just returned from a year in residence as the Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti) in Florence, and she currently divides her time between London and Assisi.

 

Research Interests

 

  • The meaning, spatial context and function of religious narrative art in Italy from around 1150 to 1450.
  • The relationships between images, theological and spiritual texts, and devotional practices.
  • The art of the Franciscan Order, in particular the frescoes of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, on which she has just completed a book, co-authored with Donal Cooper.

Courses to be taught in 2011/12


MA (jointly with Professor John Lowden and Dr. Joanna Cannon): City of God/City of Man: Paris and Siena in the late Middle Ages


Publications


In preparation:

Pope Nicholas IV, the Franciscans, and the Painting of the Upper Basilica at Assisi [with Donal Cooper]

In press:

“Florence before the Black Death,” book chapter, Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance: Florence, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis (Cambridge University Press, publication expected late 2011)

Publications:

“Florentine Painting 1370-1430”, review of the redesigned galleries of the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, The Burlington Magazine, cliii, October 2011: 701-702.

 “Assisi, Rome, and the Miracle of the Crib at Greccio,” in Image, Memory and Devotion, Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, Studies in Gothic Art, vol. 2, eds. Zoe Opacic and Achim Timmerman (Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2011)

“ ‘A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings’: Frescos and Franciscan Poverty at Assisi in 1288 and 1312,” The Burlington Magazine cli, October 2009: 656-662 [with Donal Cooper]

“The Pilgrim’s Progress: Re-interpreting the Trecento Fresco Programme in the Lower Church at Assisi,” in The Art of the Franciscan Order In Italy, The Medieval Franciscans, vol. 1, ed. William R. Cook (Brill, 2005): 39-70
 
“Judas and the Franciscans: Perfidy Pictured in Lorenzetti’s Passion Cycle at Assisi,” Art Bulletin, 86/1 (2004): 31-57.

“Pope Nicholas IV and the Upper Church at Assisi,” Apollo clvii, no.492 (2003): 31-35 [with Donal Cooper]

“Fear of Falling: Depicting Judas in Late Medieval Italy,” Fear and its Representations in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, vol. 6, eds. Anne Scott and Cynthia Kosso (Brepols, 2002): 33-65.

 

Other media


“The Wickedest Man”, a 30-minute radio programme on the representation of Judas, written and presented by Janet Robson, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2004.

 

Tags:  Assisi, San Francesco, St. Francis, Judas, Florentine painting, narrative art, medieval Italian art, pilgrimage, Lorenzetti, Pope Nicholas IV