"Art is less an autonomous set of objects than a cultural arena where different social groups interact, discuss differences, and negotiate new identities within a changing world. Everything 'outside' the world of art is relevant to its history."- Robert Baldwin

Read Professor Robert Baldwin's 2006 essay on "Debunking The Da Vinci Code" (PDF)

Read Professor Robert Baldwin's 2006 short critique, "Debunking The Da Vinci Code" (PDF)

Robert W.Baldwin
Associate Professor of Art History
Chair of Art History Department 1997-2001
On Sabbatical Spring 2009

Specialization:

• Renaissance and Baroque art, early modern cultural studies
• Mercantile culture in Renaissance art and literature
• Landscape in European art and literature, 1350-1700
• Music in European art, literature, and society, 1400-1700
• Gender and art

Robert Baldwin works on the social history of Renaissance and Baroque art (1400-1700) exploring the intersection of class and gender with political, social, moral and aesthetic values. He is the author of a textbook, A Critical History of Western Art, 1300-2000 (2,000 pp.) available on CD-ROM and described further on his web site (address below). His Ph.D. thesis, "The Humble Style in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Religious Art" (Harvard, 1983) is also available on CD-ROM.

Current research projects include: (1) Renaissance landscape and burgher society in the work of Pieter Bruegel, (2) mercantilist culture in sixteenth-century Dutch art, (3) late medieval feudal culture in the Limbourg Brother's "Tres Riches Heures," (4) absolutism in the landscapes of Claude Lorrain, (5) music, class, and gender in Dutch art 1500-1700 (especially Vermeer), (6) three extensive anthologies of primary source writings on music, nature, and gender from antiquity to 1700, and (6) digitizing 20,000 works of Western art from 1300-1940.

Professor Baldwin lectures locally on these and other topics, including "Debunking The Da Vinci Code." (Download this essay, PDF format.)

Professor Baldwin teaches seven regular courses: (1) Western Art from the Renaissance to the Present; (2) Early Renaissance Art in Italy, 1400-1500; (3) Later Renaissance Art in Italy, 1500-1575; (4) Northern Renaissance Art, 1400-1575; (5) Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer: Art and Society in the 17th-Century "Belgium" and the Netherlands; (6) Art and Ideology in 17th-Century Italy, Spain, and France; and (7) Gender and Representation in Early Modern European Art and Literature, 1300-1700.

Various lectures, publications, unpublished talks, and bibliographies can be downloaded from Professor Baldwin's web site:
http://oak.conncoll.edu/rwbal