John David Summers (born 1941) is the Emeritus William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art Theory and Italian Renaissance Art at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

. He holds a B.A. from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

(1963) and a Ph.D. from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

(1969). He taught at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...

and the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

before accepting an appointment to the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia in 1981. In 1984, he was appointed William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the History of Art and retired in 2015. He was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1996. Summers is generally regarded as an expert on Renaissance art and a notable figure in the field of art historical research. Among his main contributions to art history is the publication '' Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism''. This nearly seven-hundred-page book is the result of twenty years of studies and is an attempt to reformulate the disciplinary approach of art history.James Elkins ''On David Summers' Real Spaces'' in ''Is Art History Global'', Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007, pp. 41-72. Summers is the older brother of the writer

Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and th ...

Select list of Summers' publications

*''Michelangelo and the Language of Art'', Princeton: Princeton University Press 1981. *''The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987. *'' Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism'', London: Phaidon 2003. *''Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting'', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2007.

Notes

References

American art historians Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences University of Virginia faculty Living people Brown University alumni Yale University alumni Bryn Mawr College faculty 1941 births {{US-art-historian-stub