Julian Gardner

Julian Richard Gardner (born 6 May 1940) is a British art historian and Professor Emeritus at the University of Warwick. A scholar of late medieval and renaissance Italian art, particularly patronage, and a Giotto di Bondone specialist whose expertise has led to a number of scholarships and appointments as visiting professor at various institutions both in Europe and America.

Early life and education Born in Dumfries, Scotland to John Vincent and Jessie Lamb (Walker) Gardner and raised in Ebbw Vale, Wales, Julian Gardner read for his undergraduate degree (BA) in history at Balliol College, Oxford, A Rivoira fellowship in medieval archaeology at the British School at Rome followed in the academic year 1965-6 earning him an MA from the University of Oxford in 1966.

Career Concurrently with working on his doctoral thesis at the University of London, Julian Gardner taught at the Courtauld and lectured there for 8 years until his appointment as Foundation Professor of the History of Art at Warwick University in 1974; a post he remained in until his retirement in 2008. In 2014 he was appointed an Honorary Professor in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance.

He was also the author of the obituary for Professor John Shearman in 2013.

In a review of his most recent book The Roman Crucible, the author concludes that "Gardner's book fills an important gap in late medieval patronage studies, and with its historical rigor and measured argumentation it is likely to remain the standard work on the topic for decades to come".

Scholarships, appointments, and honours

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries elected 3 March 1977 Research Professor of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome 1983-5 Andrew Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 1999 Visiting Professor, 2005–2006 and Berenson Lecturer, 2009 at Harvard University Centre for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, Florence Samuel H. Kress Professor, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 2011–2012 Visiting scholar in Byzantine studies, Dumbarton Oaks 2014 and was a member of the Curatorium of the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence from 1993 to 2003. and, while he worked at the Courtauld, he contributed photographs to the Conway Library whose archive of primarily architectural images is currently being digitised as part of the Courtauld Connects project.

Personal life Julian Gardner was married to Ann Margaret Stoves who died in 1968. His second wife, they married in 1973, and fellow art historian, Dr Christa Gardner von Teuffe

Selected works

The most important early Italian painting in England? ‘Life:Full Colour’, Online blog by Sara McKee, 2020 The Roman Crucible: the artistic patronage of the Papacy 1198-1304, München: Hirmer Verlag, 2013, Giotto and His Publics: Three Paradigms of Patronage, 'The Bernard Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance' series, Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 2011, Arnolfo's Moment: Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, May 26-7, 2005, eds. David Friedman, Julian Gardner & Margaret Haines, L.S. Olschki, 2009, Giotto in America (and elsewhere), in ‘Italian Panel Painting of the Dugento and Trecento’, ed. V.M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art, Yale University Press, vol.61, pp. 160–81, 2002 Patrons, Painters, and Saints: Studies in Medieval Italian Painting, Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1993, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages, Clarendon, 1992,