faculty

robert williams, professor

curriculum vitae

specialization

Italian Renaissance art and art theory, history of art theory, history and methodology of art history

office hours

Arts 1228, Tuesday and Thursdays 2:00 - 3:00

phone

805 893 7586

B.A., M.A. University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D. Princeton University

Robert Williams is the author of Art, Theory, and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy: From Techne to Metatechne (Cambridge, 1997), Art Theory: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, 2004), and, in collaboration with Thomas Frangenberg, Francesco Bocchi's 'Beauties of the City of Florence', A Guidebook of 1591 (Harvey Miller, 2006). Recent articles include: "Italian Renaissance Art and the Systematicity of Representation" (Rinascimento, 2004), "Leonardo's Modernity: Subjectivity as Symptom" (The Life and the Work, C. Salas, ed., Getty Research Institute, 2005/6), and with Christopher Wood, "A Newer Protagoras" (Art Bulletin, 2006).

His current projects include a book on Raphael, which, by drawing upon the evidence of texts such as Vasari's biography as well as the works of the artist and his followers, seeks to expose fundamental aspects of Raphael's achievement that have been neglected by modern scholarship: the emergence of "synthetic" imitation as a creative technique, the understanding of decorum as a principle implying the deeper "systematicity of representation", and the rationalization of labor documented in Raphael's workshop practice. Recent professional activities include the planning, with James Elkins, of a conference on the future of Renaissance art scholarship, held at University College, Cork, in 2006, the proceedings of which will be published by Routledge, 2007.