Joaneath Spicer
The James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art.
Dr. Spicer received her BA from Smith College and PhD from Yale University (1979). After teaching at University of Toronto for over fifteen years, she came to the Walters in 1990. Besides publications on Netherlandish drawings (recently Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada [2004], art and science at the court of Rudolf II in Prague ca. 1600, the role of the visitor in 17th-century art collections and in exhibitions today, body language, collecting bronzes in the Renaissance, and Italian painting (recently Masterpieces of Italian Painting in the Walters Art Museum [2005], with Morten Hansen), she has been responsible for several exhibitions and catalogues at the Walters. These include The Allure of Bronze (1995), Going for Baroque (1995, co-curator with Lisa Corrin), Bernardo Strozzi (1995), and Masters of Light, Dutch Painters in Utrecht in the Golden Age (1997-98). In 1998-2005 she focused on re-installing the Renaissance and Baroque collections in a way intended to reflect the settings for the use and appreciation of the art in its own time. This includes an acclaimed suite of rooms capturing the spirit of Holland under William and Mary and a further sequence of rooms recreating a collection of art and wonders in 17th century Flanders.
Fellowships & Grants
NEA, grants, 1993-5, 1996-1998
NEH, implementation grant for exhibition of 17th-century painting from Utrecht, 1996-1998
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, presentation of Walters Renaissance-Baroque collection, 2000-2002
Center of Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (Senior Fellow) 2000-2001
Getty Curatorial Research Grant, 2001
Clark Fellow, Clark Art Institute, Summer 2002
Dubois Institute, Harvard University, travel grant, 2009
NEH, planning grant for Face to Face, the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, 2009-10
Books & Catalogues
The Allure of Bronze, Masterpieces from the Walters Art Gallery (exhibition catalogue; Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 1995).
Bernardo Strozzi: Master Painter of the Italian Baroque (exh. cat.; Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 1995), editor and author, "Bernardo Strozzi and the Counter Reformation."
Going for Baroque (exh. cat., Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 1995) editor with Lisa Corrin and author, "The Response to the Art of the Past by Northern 17th-Century Artists."
Masters of Light, Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, primary author and editor with the collaboration of Lynn F. Orr (exh. cat.; Baltimore/London/San Francisco, 1997).
An Eye for Detail: 17th-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Collection of Henry T. Weldon, Baltimore 1999, co-authored with Nancy Minty.
Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada (with Odilia Bonebakker), Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2004
Fifty Masterpieces of Italian Painting 1300-1800 in the Walters Art Museum (author and co-editor with Morten S. Hansen), (Baltimore, 2005).
Professional Activities
Reinstallation of Renaissance and Baroque collections, including Chamber of Wonders, 2000-2005
Historians of Netherlandish Art, program committee for quadrennial conference 2006
Center for the Study of Race and Culture, Maryland Institute College of Art, resident fellow 2009-
Singleton Center for Early Modern Studies, Johns Hopkins University, associate, 2009-
Articles
"The Renaissance Elbow" in H.Roodenburgh (ed.), A Cultural History of Gesture (Oxford 1991), 84-128.
"Anthony van Dyck's `Iconography': an Overview of its Preparation," Studies in the History of Art, 46 (National Gallery of Art [Symposium Papers XXVI] 1994), 327-363.
"The Exhibition: Lecture or Conversation?" Curator Magazine, 37/3, 1994, 185-197.
"Criteria for Breast Reconstruction Surgery: Another Viewpoint," Annals of Plastic Surgery (6,1995)1-9.
"The Star of David and Jewish Culture in Prague ca. 1600, Reflected in Drawings by Roelandt Savery and Paulus van Vianen," Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 54 (1996), 203-24.
"Roelandt Savery and the 'Discovery' of the Alpine Waterfall," in E. Fucikova (ed.) Rudolf II and Prague (Prague 1997), 146-56 (also thirty entries on Saverij, Froeschl, Van Vianen)
"A Pictorial Vocabulary of Otherness: Roelandt Saverij, Adam Willarts, and the Representation of Foreign Coasts," in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 48 (1997), 23-52
"The Role of Printmaking in Utrecht during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century," in J. Spicer and W. Melion, eds., Culture and Place in Northern Art, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57, (1999), 105-32
"Roelandt Saverij as an Etcher," in H. Widauer, ed., Festschrift für Konrad Oberhuber (Milan 2000), 294-301.
Small Northern European Portraits from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (with Arthur Wheelock; booklet, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2000)
"Pontormo's Maria Salviati with Giulia de' Medici, Is this the earliest portrait of a child of African descent in European art?" The Walters Members Magazine (Summer 2001), 4-6.
"The Significance of Drawing naer het leven, or "from life," in Netherlandish Art in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Center 21, National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Research Reports 2000- 2001 (Washington 2001), 160-3.
"The Antwerp-Baltimore Quadriptych," in S. Jugie and St. Fliegel, ed., L'Art àla Cour de Bourgogne, Le Mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur 1364-1419 (exh.Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon 2004)
"The Role of Invention in Art and Science at the Court of Rudolf II in Prague," Studia Rudolphina, Bulletin of the Research Center for Visual Arts in the Age of Rudolf II, 5 (2005), 7-16.
"Heemskerck's Rainbow: Symbol or Narrative?," B. Bukovinská and L. Slavíček, ed., Pictura Verba Cupit, Essays in Honor of Lubomir Konečný (Prague 2006, 143-50).
An "`Antique' Brass Candlestick in the Shape of Hercules by Peter Vischer the Younger and Workshop," in Journal of the Walters Art Museum 63 [2005] (Baltimore 2009), 149-57.
"Jacob Saverÿ, Winterlandscahft bei Amsterdam," in K.A. Schröder and M. Bisanz-Prakken, ed., Das Zeitlater Rembrandts (Vienna, 2009), pp. 40-43.
"Bartolomeo Passarotti, Portrait of Pope Pius V," in D. Franklin, ed., The Art of Papal Rome (Ottawa 2009), 282-4.
"The Shifting Identity of a Thai Buddha in 17th-century Europe," in H. Ginsburg and W. Noel, eds., A Curator's Choice: Essays in Honor of Hiram Woodward, The Journal of the Walters Art Museum, v. 64/64, 2006-2007 (Baltimore 2009), 207-10.
"Referencing Invention and Novelty at the court of Rudolf II" for Novita". Das �Neue� in der Kunst um 1600 (Munich 2009) in press
"A Rock Crystal Reliquary from the Time of Charles the Bold," in Splendour of Burgundy (1419-82), A Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. by Til-Holger Borchert (in press, Bruges 2009)
"Review of Pictura et Scriptura, Textes, images et herméneutique des mappae mundi (xiiie-xvie siècle). Margriet Hoogvliet. Terrarum Orbis, Histoire des représentations de l'espace: texts, images / History of the Representation of Space in Text and Image. Turnhout 2007" for Sixteenth-century Studies Journal (in press)
"Representations of Heliodorus' AEthiopica in 17th-century European art" for D. Bindman, ed., Images of the Black in 17th-century European Art (2010, Harvard, DuBois Institute), in press
Publications in Preparation
article on the history of "naer het leven/ ad vivum" in the Netherlands for Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek
article on the emergence of the black nude in the 16th century
article on Michelangelo's representations of black Africans
Book on the Walters' Chamber of Wonders