Lilian Armstrong

Pliny's Naturalis Historia, copied in 1481 by Nicolò Mascarino and illuminated by the "Master of the Pico Pliny". The Master of the Pico Pliny was a specialist area of research for Lilian Armstrong. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana - ms. Lat. VI. 245, f. 3 (115). Lilian Armstrong (May 4, 1936 – November 26, 2021) was an American professor of art at Wellesley College. She specialized in Italian Renaissance manuscripts and early printed books.

Education Armstrong received her PhD from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in 1966. Her doctoral thesis, in two volumes, was entitled The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo. Marco Zoppo was an Italian artist who lived in the fifteenth century. Rudolf Wittkower supervised her PhD. Before completing her PhD, Armstrong was awarded her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College, and a master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Career Armstrong focused her research primarily on Italian illuminated manuscripts, hand-illuminated incunabula, and woodcut illustration in early printed books of Venetian origin. She was Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Art, the first holder of the college's prestigious chair. She retired in 2006, and in 2010 she was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship.

Death On November 26,2021, Armstrong died from an unexpected fatal heart failiure in her home in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Following her death, she was described as 'an inspiration to generations of students and colleagues in her decades teaching' and as a pioneer as a woman scholar with a Venetian focus.