Ph.D. 2001 (History of Art), Oxford University; Diploma in the History of Art (with Distinction), 1996 Oxford University; B.A. 1995 (summa cum laude in Art History and English), Williams College, Massachusetts.
Dennis Geronimus
Professor of Art History, Department Chair (2014-21; 2022- )
The visual and material culture of the Italian Renaissance; artistic crosscurrents between Italy and Northern Europe, as well as between Africa and the Mediterranean, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the relationship between art and the natural world; word and image; mythological narrative; pictorial wit and humor; drawings and print culture; properties and meanings of materials; artists' creative processes and working practices.
Member, College Art Association; Renaissance Society of America; The Society for Renaissance Studies, U.K.; The Leonardo da Vinci Society; Italian Art Society; The Medieval and Renaissance Center (MARC), NYU; International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Visiting Scholar, The Dutch University Institute for the History of Art, Florence, spring 2014 and spring-summer 2022; Academic visitor (visiting scholar), History of Art Department, University of Oxford, Fall 2018; Emily Harvey Residency, Venice, Italy, summer 2018; Golden Dozen Award for Outstanding Teaching, NYU, 2004 and 2016; Honorable mention, 2016 PROSE Awards, Art Exhibitions category, for Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Humanities Initiative Faculty Research Fellowship, 2012; Clark Fellowship, 2011; Samuel H. Kress Research Grant, The Renaissance Society of America, 2009; ACLS / Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Junior Faculty, 2004-2005; Chester Dale Research Fellowship, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-2001 and 2004-2005; The Society for Renaissance Studies Fellowship, Warburg Institute, London, 2000; Dutch Institute for Art History Fellowship, Florence, Italy, 1999; Isaiah Berlin Fund Bursary (Italian history and literature), Oxford University, 1997; Richard Blackwell Graduate Scholar/Athlete Grant, Oxford University, 1998 (5-time tennis Blue and team captain); Two-time Tennis All-American (singles), Academic All-American and winner of Tennis Magazine's National Arthur Ashe Award for Sportsmanship and Leadership, Williams College, 1993-95; "1960 Art Scholar," Williams College, 1995; Phi Beta Kappa.
Publications:
Jacopo da Pontormo: Overcoming Nature, in preparation, Yale University Press.
“‘A More Loving and Constant Heart’: Vittoria Colonna, Alfonso d’Avalos, Michelangelo, and the Complicated History of Pontormo’s Noli me tangere,” in Virginia Cox and Shanon McHugh, eds., Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022), pp. 229-70.
Grey Matters, exhibition essay, Nicholas Hall Galery, New York, 2021. View Essay >
“Into the Wild: Living Landscape and Wonderment in Renaissance Art," in Guy Hedreen and Michael W. Kwakkelstein, eds., Material World: Art, Nature, and Science in Ancient Literature and its Renaissance Reception, conference proceedings, The Dutch University Institute for Art History, Florence (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 191-225.
“Magic and Modernity: Apprehending the African Presence in Piero di Cosimo’s Liberation of Andromeda,” in On Being Present: Recovering Blackness in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, a collaborative project organized between the Uffizi and Black History Month, Florence (Jan., 2020). View Entry > View Extended Version >
"Northern Exposure: Pontormo, Dürer and the Humor of the Body," in Rire en images à la Renaissance, eds. Diane Bodart, Andreas Beyer and Francesca Alberti, proceedings from a conference co-sponsored by the Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art and the Centre d’Histoire de l’Art de la Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 381-414.
“Seeing Shadows,” Introduction to Living Bodies: Drawing and Memory, exh. cat. of drawings by Signe Kongsgaard Mogensen, exh. at the Dutch University Institute for Art History, Florence, Feb. 28–Apr. 19, 2019 (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2019), pp. 5–8.
“Wally Reinhardt: A Conversation with Dennis Geronimus and Lynn Gumpert,” in Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt, exh. cat., Grey Art Gallery, New York, Jan. 9–Apr. 6, 2019 (New York, 2018), pp. 13–23.
“Leonardo’s Last Supper and the Motions of the Mind,” catalogue essay in Leonardo da Vinci: The Language of Faces, exh. cat., Michael W. Kwakkelstein and Michiel Plomp, eds., Teylers Museum, Haarlem (2018), pp. 58-75.
Co-editor and essay contributor, Piero di Cosimo: Painter of Faith and Fable (Introduction, "Telling Tales...," and "Beautiful Monsters: The Language of Empathy and Grief in Piero di Cosimo's Representation of Animals and Human-Animal Hybrids"), conference proceedings, The Dutch University Institute for Art History, Florence, Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 2-12, 152-87.
A Vanishing Relic: The Afterlife of Leonardo's Last Supper, in collaboration with photographer Ahmet Ertuğ (Istanbul, 2018).
“Caterpillars in the Grass, Castles in the Air: The Life and Art of Piero di Cosimo,” in Beatriz de Freitas Moreira, ed., Piero di Cosimo: Restauração [Restoration], a MASP publication occasioned by Paola Sannucci’s restoration of the Museum’s Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and an Angel tondo (São Paulo: MASP, 2017), pp. 32-71.
Contributor to: Bastian Eclercly, ed., Maniera: Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence, exh. cat., Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main (Munich and New York, 2016).
Guest curator and co-author (with Gretchen Hirschauer), Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, exh. cat., The National Gallery of Art, Washington (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Lund Humphries, 2015). (Selected as one of the best exhibitions of 2015 by The Wall Street Journal.)
"Pontormos Werkprozess" ("Pontormo’s Process"), in Pontormo. Meisterwerke des Manierismus in Florenz, ed. Bastian Eclercy, exh. cat., Landesmuseum, Hannover (January 27-May 5, 2013) (Hannover and Petersburg: Imhof, 2013).
"Silenus’s Song: High and Low Poetics in Piero di Cosimo’s Bacchanals," in Penser l'étrangeté. L’art de la Renaissance entre bizarrerie, extravagance et singularité, eds. Francesca Alberti, Cyril Gerbron and Jérémie Koering (Paris: Le Presses Universitaire de Rennes, 2012).
Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2006).
Setting Sail for the Vulcan Isle: Piero di Cosimo's Jason and Queen Hypsipyle with the Women of Lemnos and its Companion Scenes (New York: Wildenstein & Co., Inc., 2005).
"Children of Mercury: New Light on the Members of the Florentine Company of St. Luke (c.1475–c.1525)," co-authored with Louis A. Waldman, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 47 (2003), pp. 118–58.
"Arbitrating Artistry: The Case of Domenico di Michelino in 1483," The Burlington Magazine 144 (November 2002), pp. 691–94.
"Two Mythological Panels by Bartolomeo di Giovanni Revisited," in Italian Journeys: Discovering a Taste for the South, Hall & Knight Ltd. exh. cat., Maastricht (March 2001), pp. 50–58.
"The Birth Date, Early Life, and Career of Piero di Cosimo," Art Bulletin 82 (March 2000), pp. 164–70.