Humanities and Social Sciences

Art History

Staff Directory

Dr Robert Gaston

Honorary Associate Room: Humanities Building 3 232 Tel: (613) 9479 2993 Fax: (613) 9479 1942 Email: R.Gaston@latrobe.edu.au Qualifications: BA(Hons), MA Melb, PhD London

Robert Gaston studied history and art history at the University of Melbourne and the Warburg Institute, University of London, and taught as Assistant Professor in Art History at Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A. Subsequently he taught art history at the University of Melbourne and in the University Professors Program, Boston University, U.S.A. He has held Large and Small grants from the Australian Research Council and was Hannah Kiel Fellow, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence, Italy, 1981-82, and Samuel H. Kress Senior Research Fellow, The Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1989-90. He has served as a deputy Head of School for Research, and acted as Associate Dean (Academic) for the Faculty.

>>Research Interests

Research Interests include: Italian art, 1200-1650, especially Renaissance and Mannerism, ranging from the connoisseurship of painting and drawing, style categories, the relations of texts and images, to the specifics of classical and Christian iconography; the development of liturgy in the medieval and Renaissance periods, and its bearing on architectural forms and artistic decoration in churches ; the classical tradition in the West, particularly art and architectural theory and criticism, the impact of classical art excavated during the Renaissance, the historiography of the beginnings of art history and classical archaeology; the formation of modern art history and its relations with other academic disciplines.

>>Research Projects

Book-length project (with J. A. Stinson and P. Howard)Change in the Liturgy at San Lorenzo Florence, 1370-1509.
A critical edition of Pirro Ligorio's manuscript XIII.B.IX at Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, for the Edizione Nazionale di Pirro Ligorio , Rome.
Pirro Ligorio on Rivers, Fountains and Aqueducts in Ancient Rome : book-length study commissioned for the series Studi Ligoriani.
Monograph on decorum in the western tradition.

>>Research Publications

Book

• [with P.A. Tomory] European Paintings Before 1800 in Australian and New Zealand Public Collections, Beagle Press, Sydney, 1989

Edited Book

• Pirro Ligorio Artist and Antiquarian, (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence, Vol. 10) , Silvana Editoriale, Milan, 1988

Journal articles and book chapters

• "Prudentius and Sixteenth-Century Antiquarian Scholarship." Medievalia et humanistica, NS 4, 1973, 161-76.
• "British Scholars and Travellers in the Roman Catacombs, 1450-1900," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 46, 1983, 144-65
• "Iconography and Portraiture in Bronzino's Christ in Limbo," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 27, 1983, 41-72
• "Attention and Inattention in Religious Painting of the Renaissance: Some preliminary observations," Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. A. Morrogh et. al., Florence, Giunti Barbèra, Harvard university Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Vol. 7, 1985, II, 253-76
• "Liturgy and Patronage in San Lorenzo, Florence, 1350-1650," Patronage, Art, and Society in the Italian Renaissance, ed. F. W. Kent and P. Simons, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987, 111-33
• "Love's Sweet Poison: A New Reading of Bronzino's London Allegory," I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance, 4, 1991, 249-88
• "Sacred Erotica: the Classical figura in Religious Painting of the Early Cinquecento," International Journal of the Classical Tradition , 2,2, 1995, 238-64
• "The Renaissance Artist as dantista: a Reassessment," Lectura Dantis (Univ. of Virginia), 22-23, Spring and Fall, 1998 (Univ. of Virginia), 5-44
• "Attention in Court: Visual decorum in medieval prayer theory and early Italian art": in A. Ladis.and S. Zuraw (eds.), Visions of Holiness: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Italy, (Georgia Museum of Art, Studies in the History of Art, No. 4), Athens Ga., 2001, 137-62
• "Merely Antiquarian: Pirro Ligorio and the Critical Tradition of Antiquarian Scholarship," in A. Grieco and F. Superbi Gioffredi (eds.),The Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, (The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, volume 19), Florence, Olschki, 2002, 355-73
• 'Eleonora of Toledo's Chapel: Lineage, Salvation, and the War against the Turks', Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence, Ed(s). Kondrad Eisenbichler, Aldershot UK, Ashgate Press, pp. 157-180,2004
• 'Sacred Place and Liturgical Space: Florence's Renaisance Churches', Renaissance Florence: A Social History, Ed(s). R. Crum, J. Paoletti, Cambridge UK and New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 331-352, 2006