Sydney J. Freedberg Lectures on Italian Art

The Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art features distinguished scholars present­ing original research. This annual lecture series offered by the National Gallery of Art began in 1997 and is named after the great specialist of Italian art Sydney J. Freedberg (1914–1997). Since 2017, the lecture series has been organized by the Center. Professor Freedberg earned his PhD in 1940 from Harvard University, where he taught for 29 years until he was appointed chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in 1983.

2021
“More perfect and excellent than men”: The Women Artists of Bologna
Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University
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2020
Telling the Past Differently: Italian Renaissance Art in the Hands of the Beholder
Megan Holmes, University of Michigan
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2019
Andrea Mantegna’s Stones, Caves, and Clouds
Gabriele Finaldi, National Gallery, London
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2018
Against Titian
Stephen J. Campbell, Johns Hopkins University

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2017
Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice? Titian's Portrait of Clarice Strozzi
Beverly Louise Brown, The Warburg Institute
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2016
The Aesthetics of Water: Wellheads, Cisterns, and Fountains in the Venetian Dominion
Patricia Fortini Brown, Princeton University
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2015
Canova and Color
David Bindman, University College London
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2014
Venice 1548: Titian Looking at Tintoretto’s Miracle of the Slave
Miguel Falomir, Museo Nacional del Prado
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2013
Circa 1515: Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo
Carmen C. Bambach, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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2012
“Not a painting, but a Vision!”: Raphael's Sistine Madonna Turns Five Hundred
Andreas Henning, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
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2011
Bernard Berenson and Lorenzo Lotto
Carl Brandon Strehlke, Philadelphia Museum of Art
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2010
Thoughts on the Caravaggisti
Michael Fried, Johns Hopkins University
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2009
Ghiberti and the Painters of Florence
Keith Christiansen, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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2008
To Live with Myths in Pompeii and Beyond
Paul Zanker, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
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2007
Aunt Gertrude to Sydney J. Freedberg: My Provenance
Bruce Cole, National Endowment for the Humanities

2006
Modernity is Old: The Landscape of Italy as Seen by the Painters of the Early Nineteenth Century
Anna Ottani Cavina, Università di Bologna
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2005
Illuminated Choral Manuscripts of the Italian Renaissance
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
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2004
The Third Italian Renaissance: Art of the Lombard Plain
Charles Dempsey, Johns Hopkins University
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2003
Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the Art of the Renaissance and Baroque Masters
Paul Barolsky, University of Virginia
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2002
The Turning Figure
Nicholas Penny, National Gallery of Art
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2001
Michelangelo and the Medici
Caroline Elam, The Burlington Magazine, London
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2000
The Fashioning of a Public Persona: Duchess Eleonora di Toledo’s Ceremonial Dress and Her Portraits by Bronzino
Janet Cox-Rearick, City University of New York
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1999
Art and Science in the Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
James S. Ackerman, Harvard University (emeritus)
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1998
A Carpaccio Masterpiece Rediscovered
William R. Rearick, University of Maryland (emeritus)
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1997
The Young Michelangelo
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
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