Thomas Willette
Assistant Professor RC Department: Arts and Ideas willette@umich.edu
Office: varies Office hours: by appointment only
Tom Willette is an art historian who is interested in why people write about art and in how the activities of writing and reading about art inform the experience of viewing highly crafted objects such as paintings and sculptures. His research and teaching focus on artisan and elite cultures of early modern Europe (c. 1450-1750) and Italy in particular.
While he has published studies of individual objects, his books and articles have more often dealt with topics arising from early modern art-writing, such as the relation of visual art to literature, the relative liberty of the visual artist with respect to other skilled workers, and the role of artistic traditions in the formation of national identities.
Recent Courses
“Reason and Passion in the Eighteenth Century”
“The Art and Poetry of Michelangelo”
“The History of the History of Art: The Vienna School”
Selected Articles
“The First Italian Publication of the Trattato della Pittura: Book Culture, the History of Art, and the Naples Edition of 1733,” in The Historical Reception of Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting: Art as Institution, ed. Claire Farago, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing (to be published in 2009).
Books Published
Massimo Stanzione (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1992).
Art History in the Age of Bellori: Scholarship and Cultural Politics in Seventeenth-Century Rome, co-edited with Janis Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).