John Thomas Spike (born November 8, 1951, in New York City) is an American art historian, curator, and author, specializing in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. He is also a contemporary art critic and past director of the Florence Biennale.
In the course of his career, Spike has organized art exhibitions and read lectures at numerous museums, including the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[citation needed] He has also read lectures at Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities, and the University of Malta.[citation needed] He is permanent consultant to two Italian museums, the Museo Civico di Taverna and the Museo Civico di Urbania, as well as a consultant to the Cathedral Museum of Mdina and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta. In 2006 Spike was also appointed to the Board of the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.[5] His contributions to culture and history have been recognized in Italy by the bestowal of the Premio Anthurium, 1998, the Annual Medal of the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Messina, 2001, the Premio Anassilaos, 2002 and Man of the Year by the Tuscan American Foundation, Florence, 2006.
Among the books Spike has published on the Florentine Renaissance are Masaccio (Abbeville Press 1996),[6] and Fra Angelico (Abbeville Press, 1997), both also available in Italian and French editions. His Fra Angelico, which also appeared in a German edition by Hirmer Verlag, was named “Art Book of the Year 1997” by the Hearst newspapers in the USA. His catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Caravaggio (2001) was published in a second Revised Edition in 2010. His Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine: A Biography was published in 2010 (Vendome Press; ISBN0-86565-266-X).[7]
In 2007, Spike was appointed to the faculty of the master's program in Sacred Art History jointly offered by the European University of Rome and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum.
Between 2012 and 2019 Spike was Assistant Director and Chief Curator of the Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia. During his tenure, Spike curated and authored the catalogues for several international loan exhibitions of Italian art including Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpiece Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti and A Brush with Passion: Mattia Preti (1613-1699) as part of the "2013 Year of Italian Culture" in the United States in cooperation with the Italian foreign ministry;[8]Caravaggio Connoisseurship: Saint Francis in Meditation and the Capitoline Fortune Teller in 2014; Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty in 2015;[9] and Botticelli and the Search for the Divine: Florentine Painting between the Medici and the Bonfire of the Vanities, with Alessandro Cecchi, in 2017.[10] These exhibitions were under the auspices of the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpiece Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti; Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty; and Botticelli and the Search for the Divine were also exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.[11] Additionally, the Leonardo exhibition under the title Leonardo da Vinci y la Idea de la Belleza drew record crowds during its exhibition at the Palacio Real, Ciudad de Mexico in 2015.[12]
For the fall of 2017, Spike curated for the Muscarelle the exhibition, Fred Eversley: 50 Years an Artist: Light & Space & Energy, that was shown as part of the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of African-American students to The College of William & Mary, 1967–2017. In the spring of 2018, Spike curated for the Muscarelle the exhibition, Women with Vision: Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, that was shown as part of the celebrations of the one hundredth anniversary of the admission of women students to The College of William & Mary.
Career as contemporary art critic
Spike has written essays for books and exhibition catalogues on many contemporary artists, both in New York City and in Italy.
In 1992 Spike published the biography Fairfield Porter: An American Classic, drawing upon previously unpublished correspondence to which Porter's widow, Anne, gave Spike unrestricted access. The book drew acclaim for its discussion of Porter's oeuvre as a leading figurative painter who struggled to achieve recognition in the post-war decades dominated by Abstract Expressionism.[citation needed]
Spike has spoken on David Hockney's theory that Old Masters of the early 16th century used optical devices at symposiums on the topic at New York University in 2001,[13] at Optics, Optical Instruments and Painting: The Hockney-Falco Thesis Revisited in Ghent in 2003, at the Royal Society in London in 2006, and in Florence in 2007.[14]
In 2010, Spike also oversaw the production of the Catalogue Raisonné for Richard Anuszkiewicz, the leading American artist of the Op Art movement by David Madden and Nicholas Spike.
Spike's most noteworthy contribution to contemporary art has been his involvement with the Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy - more commonly known in English as the Florence Biennale.[citation needed] He was a member of the Jury for the inaugural exhibition in December 1997, and thereafter served as director from 1998 to 2005. In 2005, Spike was also the sole juror of the Turku Biennial in Turku, Finland, as well as a member of the jury for the Triennale of India in New Delhi.
Selected works
Botticelli and the Search for the Divine. Florentine Painting Between the Medici and the Bonfires of the Vanities, with Alessandro Cecchi and additional essay by Frederick Ilchman and Victoria S. Reed, exh. cat. Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Centro Di Florence 2017.
Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty, with additional essays by David Alan Brown and Paul Joannides, exh. cat., Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Centro Di Florence 2015.
A Brush with Passion Mattia Preti (1613 – 1699), Paintings from North American Collections in Honor of the 400th Anniversary of His Birth, exh cat Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA, Centro Di Florence, 2013.
Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpiece Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti, exh. cat, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Centro Di Florence, 2013.
Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine. Vendome Press, New York, 312 pp. with 60 full-color and black-and-white illustrations, 2010.
Caravaggio. Abbeville Press, New York, 272 pp. with 153 color plates + 29 b/w ills., plus CD-ROM, 2nd revised edition, 2010.
Mattia Preti. Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings / Catalogo ragionato dei dipinti. [Centro Di, Firenze, per il Comune di Taverna], 454 pp. with 108 color plates + 460 b/w ills., 1999.
Mattia Preti. I documenti / The Collected Documents. [Centro Di, Firenze per la Banca di Credito Cooperativo della Sila Piccola - Taverna], 285 pp. with 30 color plates + 120 b/w ills., 1998.
Masaccio, Fabbri Editori, 1995, 244 pp. with 97 color plates + 96 b/w ills. (French edition: Éditions Liana Levi, Paris; American edition, 1996: Abbeville Press, New York).
Fra Angelico, Fabbri Editori, 1996, 280 pp. with 90 color plates + 285 b/w ills. (French edition: Éditions Liana Levi, Paris; American edition, 1997: Abbeville Press, New York; German edition, 1997: Hirmer Verlag, München).
Fairfield Porter: An American Classic, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1992, 320 pp. with numerous color plates + b/w ills.
A Connoisseur's Guide to the Met, with Paul Magriel, Random House, New York, 1988, 235 pp. with 100 b/w ills.
The Age of Monarchy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Franklin Mint, Japanese edition, 1987; English and French editions, 1988.
Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy, The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1986, 245 pp. with 52 color plates + 111 b/w ills.
Baroque Portraiture in Italy: Works from North American Collections, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL., 1984, 214 pp. with 19 col pls + 130 b/w ills.
Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries, National Academy of Design, New York, 1983, 149 pp. with 50 color plates + 87 b/w ills.
Italian Baroque Paintings from New York Private Collections, The Art Museum, Princeton University, with Princeton University Press, 1980, 127 pp., color cover + 71 b/w ills.
Alessandro di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino Allori was an Italian painter of the late Mannerist Florentine school.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded to have been a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best-known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.
The Gallerie dell'Accademia is a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, the art academy of Venice, from which it became independent in 1879, and for which the Ponte dell'Accademia and the Accademia boat landing station for the vaporetto water bus are named. The two institutions remained in the same building until 2004, when the art school moved to the Ospedale degli Incurabili.
The Annunciation is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1472–1476. Leonardo's earliest extant major work, it was completed in Florence while he was an apprentice in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio. The painting was made using oil and tempera on a large poplar panel and depicts the Annunciation, a popular biblical subject in 15th-century Florence. Since 1867 it has been housed in the Uffizi in Florence, the city where it was created. Though the work has been criticized for inaccuracies in its composition, it is among the best-known portrayals of the Annunciation in Christian art.
The Adoration of the Magi is an unfinished early painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was given the commission by the Augustinian monks of San Donato in Scopeto in Florence in 1481, but he departed for Milan the following year, leaving the painting unfinished. It has been in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence since 1670.
Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (1578–1635) was an Italian artist and important Neapolitan follower of Caravaggio. He was a member of the murderous Cabal of Naples, with Belisario Corenzio and Giambattista Caracciolo, who were rumoured to have poisoned and disappeared their competition for painting contracts.
The cultural and artistic events of Italy during the period 1500 to 1599 are collectively referred to as the Cinquecento, from the Italian for the number 500, in turn from millecinquecento, which is Italian for the year 1500. Cinquecento encompasses the styles and events of the High Italian Renaissance, and Mannerism.
Michèle Kahn Spike is an American lawyer, historian, and lecturer. She graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1976 and became a member of the Bar of the State of New York in 1977, concentrating in international corporate law. From the late 1980s until 2011, she lived in Florence, Italy together with her husband, art historian John Spike. Since fall 2012 she has been teaching at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary, and she was appointed as Visiting Professor of the Practice of Law in 2017.
Mattia Preti was an Italian Baroque artist who worked in Italy and Malta. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Saint John.
Clovis Whitfield is an art historian and art dealer based in London, where he runs Whitfield Fine Art. He is a member of the Society of London Art Dealers.
Giovanni Volpato (1735–1803) was an Italian engraver. He was also an excavator, dealer in antiquities and manufacturer of biscuit porcelain figurines.
Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk is a drawing currently in the collection of the Royal Library of Turin. It is widely, though not universally, accepted as a self-portrait of the Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is thought that da Vinci drew this self-portrait at about the age of 60. The portrait has been extensively reproduced and has become an iconic representation of him as a polymath or "Renaissance man". Despite this, some historians and scholars disagree as to the true identity of the sitter.
Louis Alexander Waldman is an American art historian and author specializing in the Italian Renaissance.
Alessandro Vezzosi is an Italian art critic, Leonardo scholar, artist, expert on interdisciplinary studies and creative museology, he is also the author of hundreds of exhibits, publications and conferences, in Italy and abroad on Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance, contemporary art and design. Amongst others, he was the first scholar from the Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo Studies from the University of California in Los Angeles (1981), directed by Carlo Pedretti; he taught at the University of Progetto in Reggio Emilia; and he is honorary professor at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno of Florence. He began as an artist from 1964 to 1971 winning more than 80 prizes in painting competitions. In the Seventies he was the founder of the "Archivio Leonardisimi" and of Strumenti-Memoria del Territorio; he coordinated "ArteCronaca", he was the historical-artistic consultant of the Municipality of Vinci and he collaborated on the publications on Tuscany and Leonardo, modern and contemporary art. In 1980 he curated the Centro di Documentazione Arti Visive of the Municipality of Florence.
The Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci is located in Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci's birthplace, in the province of Florence, Italy. It is part of the Museo leonardiano di Vinci.
The Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale (MuMe). or Regional Museum of Messina (Italian - Museo regionale interdisciplinare di Messina), is an art museum located on the northern coast of the city of Messina, Sicily, Italy. MuMe illustrates the development of art and culture in Messina from the 12th to the 18th centuries, with outstanding figures such as the renowned artists Andrea della Robbia, Antonello da Messina, Girolamo Alibrandi, Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), and Polidoro da Caravaggio.
Aaron Herbert De Groft is a former American museum director, author, and art curator. He was the former deputy director and chief curator at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the former director for the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary before he joined the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida in 2021. He was fired from the latter position in June 2022 amid a scandal caused by inauthentic Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings and an FBI raid.
Vanitas is an oil-on-canvas painting executed ca. 1650–1670 by the Italian artist Mattia Preti, now inventory number 9283 in the Uffizi in Florence, for which it was bought in 1951 from a private collection. Art historians diasgree on whether the painting is a fragment of a larger work or retains its original dimensions, as well as whether it is a general vanitas or depicts Mary Magdalene.
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