It is with great regret that we report that Dr Anthea Brook, an expert in 17th century Florentine sculpture, alumna and member of staff in the Witt Library from 1987-2009, has passed away.
Dr Anthea Brook worked as a Senior Librarian in the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art between 1987 and 2009 and was an independent scholar specialising in 17th century Florentine sculpture.
She graduated from The Courtauld with a BA in Art History in 1968, and completed her doctoral thesis, Ferdinando Tacca and his Circle at The Courtauld in 1987. Her earliest contributions to this field were catalogue entries for the exhibition Giambologna 1529 – 1608, Sculptor to the Medici (Edinburgh, London, Vienna, 1978 – 79).
She contributed to many scholarly journals, exhibition catalogues, books of collected essays, dictionaries and exhibition reviews on the Florentine contemporaries and followers of Giambologna and their late Baroque successors. Her book, Pietro Tacca a Livorno: il monumento a Ferdinando I de’ Medici, was published by the Comune di Livorno in 2008. Her most recent essay was ‘Cosimo Cappelli in Modena: Ornamental Works for the Cappella Torri in the Madonna del Voto’, in The Eternal Baroque: Studies in Honour of Jennifer Montagu (Ed. C. Miner), Skira (2015). At the time of her death was was working on a publication on Ferdinando Tacca alongside research on the Tuscan sculptor, medallist and fountain architect Rutilio Gaci.
Anthea will be remembered with great affection by colleagues and visitors to the Witt and Conway photographic libraries for her kindness and patience as much as for her dedication to scholarship and the exacting standards she brought to cataloguing and care of the collections.