Craig S. Harbison (April 19, 1944 – May 17, 2018)Obituary: Craig Harbison, Professor Emeritus of Art History
/ref> was an American art historian specialising in 15th and 16th-century

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

and

Northern Renaissance The Northern Renaissance was the Renaissance that occurred in Europe north of the Alps. From the last years of the 15th century, its Renaissance spread around Europe. Called the Northern Renaissance because it occurred north of the Italian Renais ...

painting. He was Professor Emeritus of Art History at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

. While attending

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in the early 1970s, he studied

iconographic Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...

analysis under

Erwin Panofsky Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 in Hannover – March 14, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a German-Jewish art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. Panofsky's work represents a high ...

and

Wolfgang Stechow Wolfgang Ferdinand Ernst Günther Stechow (5 June 1896 Kiel – 12 October 1974 Princeton, New Jersey) was a German American art historian Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context ...

. He had previously studied at Oberlin College, Ohio. While Panofsky was a large influence early in Harbison's career, and he described himself as once being "sort of a rebellious Panofsky-ite",Buchholz, Sarah R.
A Picture Worth Many Thousand Words
. ''Chronicle'',

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system and the only public research system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and a medical ...

, 14 April 2000. Retrieved 15 December 2012. he move away from pure study of iconography toward placing the paintings in the context of the social history of their time.Craig Harbison
". University of Massachusetts. Retrieved 15 December 2012. He said, "Social history was becoming increasingly important. Panofsky had never really talked about what kind of people these were. I went after the people in all of these van Eyck paintings, researched about patrons." Harbison published a number of books on the Northern Renaissance and wrote extensively for such publications as '' Art Quarterly'', ''

The Art Bulletin The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understa ...

'', ''

Renaissance Quarterly The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

'' and ''Simiolus''. He wrote extensively on Jan van Eyck, especially the painter's '' Arnolfini Portrait''.

Publications

* ''The Last Judgment in Sixteenth Century Northern Europe, A Study in the Relation between Art and the Reformation''. New York: Garland, 1975. * Religious imagination and art- historical method: a reply to Barbara Lane's 'Sacred versus profane'. "Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art" 19, 3 (1989), 198- 205. * ''Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism''. London: Reaktion Books, 1991. * ''The Mirror of the Artist: Northern Renaissance Art in its Historical Context''. New York: Abrams, 1995. * ''The Art of the Northern Renaissance''. London:

Weidenfeld & Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld a ...

, 1995.

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harbison, Craig 1944 births 2018 deaths American art historians University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty Princeton University alumni Scholars of Netherlandish art