J. J. G. Alexander

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Jonathan James Graham Alexander, FBA (born August 1935), known in print as J. J. G. Alexander, is a medievalist and expert on manuscripts, "one of the most profound and wide-ranging of all historians of illuminated manuscripts". [1]

Contents

Education and career

Jonathan Alexander matriculated at the University of Oxford in the 1960s (BA, MA, D.Phil.) [2] before becoming a Lecturer and Reader in History of Art at the University of Manchester from 1971 to 1987. [3]

Alexander edited the Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles from 1975 onwards [4] and wrote the first volume of the six volume series, Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th century, just one of the many books and articles he has written on manuscripts. The outcome of the survey he undertook with Elzbieta Temple of the illuminated manuscripts held in the collections of the University of Oxford colleges resulted in the co-authored book Illuminated Manuscripts in the Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives and the Taylor Institution which was published in 1985. This work is said to be the inspiration for the more recent cataloguing of the manuscripts in the University of Cambridge collection [5] with which J.J.G. Alexander was also involved. [6]

In 1987 Alexander worked on the exhibition Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 1200-1400 at the Royal Academy of Arts [7] and co-edited the catalogue with Paul Binski (see below).

He moved to New York in 1988 becoming Professor of Fine Arts at New York University Institute of Fine Arts [3] and was awarded the Sherman Fairchild Professorship of Fine Arts [8] in 2002. He is now Emeritus Professor of Fine Arts following his retirement from university life in 2011. [9]

Honours

1981 Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries [10]

1982-1983 Lyell Lecturer in Bibliography at the University of Oxford

1984-1985 Sandars Readership in Bibliography at Cambridge University

1985 Fellow, British Academy [3]

1995 Honorary Fellow, Pierpont Morgan Library

1995-1996 Guggenheim Fellowship

1999 Fellow, Medieval Academy of America

2002 J. Clawson Mills Art History Fellowship, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [2]

The festschrift collection Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander: the Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, Art & Architecture (London: Harvey Miller, 2006, ISBN   978-1-872501-47-5) was edited by Susan L’Engle and Gerald B. Guest. Contributors included Walter Cahn and Madeline H. Caviness. [11]

Selected works

Professor Alexander wrote the obituary of T. S. R. Boase, a former director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, for The British Academy. [13]

Alexander has also contributed photographs to the Conway Library that are currently being digitised by the Courtauld Institute of Art, as part of the Courtauld Connects project. [14]

Related Research Articles

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An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers and liturgical books such as psalters and courtly literature, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories, and deeds.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of hours</span> Type of Christian devotional book, popular in the Middle Ages

Books of hours are Christian prayer books, which were used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures. These illustrations would combine picturesque scenes of country life with sacred images.

Jeffrey F. Hamburger is an American art historian specializing in medieval religious art and illuminated manuscripts. In 2000 he joined the faculty of Harvard University, where in 2008 he was appointed the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture. Hamburger received his B.A., M.A and Ph.D from Yale and has previously held professorships at Oberlin College and the University of Toronto. Elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy in 2001, he has won numerous awards for his publications, among them: the Charles Rufus Morey Prize of the College Art Association (1999), the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize in Art & Music (1999), the Otto Gründler Prize of the International Congress on Medieval Studies (1999), the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History of the American Philosophical Society (1998), the John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America (1994), and the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities of the American Council of Graduate Schools (1991). His research has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2009 Hamburger was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2010, of the American Philosophical Society. In 2015 he was awarded an Anneliese Maier Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2022 he was awarded the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz and the Internationale Gutenberg-Gesellschaft.

Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase was a British art historian, university teacher, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University.

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Otto Pächt was an Austrian art historian and one of the representatives of the second wave of the Vienna School of Art History. He mostly wrote on the medieval and Renaissance art of Europe. An exile from the Nazis, he taught in England and United States, before returning to Austria in 1963.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Bober</span> American art historian (1915–1988)

Harry Bober was an American art historian, a university professor, and a writer. He was the first Avalon Professor of the Humanities a New York University (NYU). He wrote and edited several books and published numerous articles on the art, architecture and historiography of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal manuscripts, British Library</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Westminster Psalter</span>

The Westminster Psalter, British Library, MS Royal 2 A XXII, is an English illuminated psalter of about 1200, with some extra sheets with tinted drawings added around 1250. It is the oldest surviving psalter used at Westminster Abbey, and is presumed to have left Westminster after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It joined the Old Royal Library as part of the collection of John Theyer, bought by Charles II of England in 1678. Both campaigns of decoration, both the illuminations of the original and the interpolated full-page drawings, are important examples of English manuscript painting from their respective periods.

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References

  1. Christopher de Hamel, review of Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander, From: The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Vol. 10., No. 4, 2009.
  2. 1 2 "NYU The Institute of Fine Arts".
  3. 1 2 3 "Professor Jonathan Alexander FBA". The British Academy. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  4. Alexander, Jonathan J[ames] G[raham], Dictionary of Art Historians Archived 2016-03-06 at the Wayback Machine
  5. "Collaboration in Special Collections, Parker Library" (PDF).
  6. "Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge. Part 1, vol. 1: The Frankish Kingdoms, Northern Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Austria (256 pp, 358 color illus.). Part 1, vol. 2: The Meuse Region, Southern Netherlands (296 pp, 389 color illus.)". Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  7. "The Making of the Age of Chivalry | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  8. Library of Congress Name Authority File
  9. "Alexander, Jonathan James Graham, (born 20 Aug. 1935), Sherman Fairchild Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York, 2002–11, now Emeritus (Professor of Fine Arts, 1988–2011)". WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U5217. ISBN   978-0-19-954088-4 . Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  10. "Professor Jonathan Alexander". Society of Antiquaries of London. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
  11. Collard, Judith (2007). "Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander: the Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, Art & Architecture (review)". Parergon. 24 (2): 202–204. doi:10.1353/pgn.2008.0024. ISSN   1832-8334. S2CID   144285706.
  12. "Illuminators' Work" in The Book Collector 44 (no 4) Winter, 1995: 455-469.
  13. "The British Academy T.S.R.Boase obituary" (PDF).
  14. "Who made the Conway Library?". Digital Media. 2020-06-30. Archived from the original on 2020-07-03. Retrieved 2020-10-16.