Timothy Verdon | |
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Personal details | |
Born | April 24, 1946 Hoboken, New Jersey, United States |
Nationality | American and Italian |
Residence(s) | Florence, Italy |
Education | M.A., M. Phil. – 1973, Ph.D. – 1975 Yale University B.A. – 1968 St. Peter's College |
Occupation | Art historian, museum director, author |
Known for | Art History |
Website | https://web.archive.org/web/20120224031821/http://www.timothyverdon.com/ |
Timothy Christopher Verdon (born 24 April 1946), is a Roman Catholic priest and art historian, specialized in Christian Sacred Art on which he has written numerous books and articles. He has organized international scholarly conferences and curated exhibitions in Italy and the USA. He was born and raised in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States, and has lived in Italy for more than 50 years, now residing in Florence. [1] [2]
Verdon is a Canon of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence's Cathedral Church. He is Director of the Office of Sacred Art of the Archdiocese of Florence and of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Cathedral Museum), whose new installation he designed in 2012–15 with the architects Adolfo Natalini, Marco Magni, and Piero Guicciardini. [3] [4] [5]
He is the director of Centre for Ecumenism, Archdiocese of Florence [6] and Academic Director of the Ecumenical Center for Art and Spirituality, Mount Tabor, Barga. [2]
Verdon is an author in Italian and English of more than 100 books and articles on Christian Sacred Art [7] and has been an Official Advisor to the Vatican Commission for Church Cultural Heritage. He has also been a Fellow of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti)., [8] [3] [1] and for 20 years has taught in the Florence Program of Stanford University. [9]
From 2010 to 2015, he curated museum art exhibitions in Florence, Seoul, New York, Washington D.C., and Turin. He regularly contributes to the cultural page of the Osservatore Romano. [3] [6] [1]
After a year in Venice (1964–65), Verdon studied in Art History at St. Peter's College, New Jersey, with Sabine Spiero Gova, a former Bauhaus member and lecturer at the Ecole du Louvre. Then, following a semester in Paris and a second year in Venice as a Fulbright grant holder, he obtained a Ph.D. at Yale University, writing his dissertation on Italian Renaissance sculptor Guido Mazzoni under the direction of Charles Seymour, Jr., former head of the Renaissance sculpture department of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. [10] [11]
In 1976, Verdon entered a Benedictine priory, Mount Saviour Monastery, near Elmira, New York, later transferring to St. Anselm's Abbey, Washington, D.C., where he took courses in theology at the Catholic University of America. [12] In 1980, with John Dally of Yale Divinity School, he organized a two-part conference for the 1500th anniversary of the birth of St. Benedict of Nursia, Monasticism and the Arts, promoted by the Yale Divinity School, the National Gallery of Art, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Catholic University. [13]
Leaving monastic life, in 1985 Verdon, with John Henderson of Cambridge (later London University), organized a second two-part conference on religion and the arts, Christianity and the Renaissance, promoted by Florida State University together with the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa Tatti) and the Istituto di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence. [14]
After teaching art history for American University programs in Florence, Verdon was ordained as a priest there in 1994, and in 1995 was invited by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Francesco Marchisano, Secretary of the Vatican Commission for the Conservation of the Church's Artistic and Historical Heritage, to serve as Consultor to the commission. [15] In the same period, he authored a Pastoral Note on art and faith for the Tuscan Bishops' Conference: La vita si è fatta visible. L'arte e la comunicazione della fede. [16]
Several years later Verdon was asked by the lay editor Arnoldo Mondadori to write a book on sacred art in Italy, and by another lay editor, Electa, to write on Mary in art, Maria nell'arte europea, [17] followed by a book on Christ, Cristo nell'arte europea. [18] Italy's main Catholic publisher, Le Edizioni Paoline, [19] commissioned him to organize and edit three volumes on Christian art in Italy, the second of which, on the Renaissance, is entirely by Verdon, and for the National Bishops' Conference he wrote three volumes commenting on the readings of the Catholic liturgical cycle through traditional and contemporary Christian art. La bellezza nella parola. [20]
These texts, which Interweave iconographical analysis, theology, and liturgical information, set a new benchmark for the interdisciplinary study of religion and culture, especially in the Renaissance, as do Verdon's four volumes on the scriptural sources of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, commissioned by Antonio Paolucci, then Director of the Vatican Museums, and published by the Vatican Museum Press. [21] Verdon's volume on Beato Angelico, published in Italian by 24 Ore Cultura in 2015 and in English by Brepols in 2021 (Fra Angelico), similarly opens new methodological perspectives. [22]
A member of the Florence Cathedral Foundation board of directors in 1997, when the Foundation or 'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore' bought a former theatre adjacent to its museum in view of enlarging the latter, Verdon was asked to define the new structure's museological project, finally realized in 2012–2015. Since 2011, he has served as Museo dell'Opera del Duomo's director. [23]
Timothy Verdon has given invited lectures at Florence University, [9] Cambridge University, [24] Oxford University, [25] Yale University, [10] Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, [26] the Gregorian University, Rome, the Vatican Museums, [27] the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, [28] the National Gallery of Art, London, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., [11] and the Collège de France, the Louvre.
In 2016, he was keynote speaker at the United Nations World Tourism Organization Conference on Religious Tourism, Utrecht. [25]
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