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Steven Ostrow

612/624-4500

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Office Hours - Spring 2012
Mon: 1:30 - 3:00 pm or by appointment

Steven F. Ostrow (Ph.D., Princeton, 1987) specializes in early-modern Italian (especially Roman) visual culture, with an emphasis on the post-Tridentine period and seventeenth-century sculpture. He has published on a diverse range of subjects, from late-sixteenth-century tomb sculpture to early-eighteenth-century illuminated manuscripts, engaging issues concerned with patronage, iconography, and historicism; art theory and artistic practices; the interplay among art, politics, science, and religion; and the literary construction of artists’ biographies. His current research focuses on the art theory and biography of Gianlorenzo Bernini and Spanish Golden Age painting. After teaching at Vassar College and the University of California, Riverside, in 2006 he assumed the chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota.


Specialties

  • Seventeenth-century Roman art
  • Gianlorenzo Bernini and baroque sculpture
  • Caravaggio
  • Post-Tridentine visual culture
  • Artists' biographies
  • Italian baroque art theory
  • Spanish Golden Age painting

Publications

  • Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome: The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore : Ostrow, Steven, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1996.
  • "Cigoli’s Immacolata and Galileo’s Moon: Astronomy and the Virgin in Early Seicento Rome": Ostrow, Steven, Art Bulletin, 78 , 218-35, 1996.
  • Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy. Ostrow, Steven, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Co-Editor, 1998.
  • "Paolo Sanquirico: A Forgotten Virtuoso of Seicento Rome,“ Storia dell’arte, 92 : Ostrow, Steven, 27-59, 1998.
  • "Isaac Laughing: Caravaggio, Non-Traditional Imagery, and Traditional Identification": Ostrow, Steven, Art History , 24 646-81, 2001.
  • "Playing with the Paragone: The Reliefs of Pietro Bernini": Ostrow, Steven, Zeitschrift fí¼r Kunstgeschichte, 67, 329-364, 2004.
  • "The Counter-Reformation and the End of the Century": Ostrow, Steven, M. Hall, ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, Rome“”Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance, 246-320, 2005.
  • "The Discourse of Failure in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Prospero Bresciano’s Moses": Ostrow, Steven, Art Bulletin, 88 267-91, June 2006.
  • Bernini's Biographies: Critical Essays. Ostrow, Steven, Co-Editor and contributor, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, Co-Editor, 2006.
  • “Bernini e il Paragone,“ in Bernini Pittore, T. Montanari, ed. : Ostrow, Steven, Milan: Silvana, 223-33, 2007.
  • ’Sculptors pursue likenesses’: The Typology and Function of Seventeenth-Century Portrait Sculpture in Rome,: Ostrow, Steven, , C. Hess and A. Bacchi, eds. , Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, , in Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, 65-83, 2008.
  • "Paul V, the Column of the Virgin, and the New Pax Romana": Ostrow, Steven, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians , 69 352-77, 2010.
  • “(Re)presenting Francesco I d’Este: An Allegorical Still Life in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,“ : Ostrow, Steven, Artibus et Historiae , 32, no. 63 201-16, 2011.
  • “Caravaggio’s Angels,“ in Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions, : Ostrow, Steven, L. Pericolo and D. Stone, Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming.
  • Critical Perspectives on Early Modern Roman Sculpture: Ostrow, Steven, Co-Editor and contributor, forthcoming.

Professional Activities

  • Member of the Editorial Board, Art Bulletin: 2011 - 2015
  • Chair, Council of Chairs, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota: 2011 - 2015
  • Member of the Advisory Board, Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota : 2010 - present
  • Member of the Editorial Board, caa.reviews, : 2006 - 2010
  • Reader and reviewer of manuscripts (books and articles) for Art Bulletin, Renaissance Quarterly, The Catholic Historical Review, Getty Research Journal, Penn State University Press, Princeton University Press, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Art History, Blackwell Publishers, University of Toronto Press, University of California Press, Jesuit Historical Institute Press, University of Delaware Press, Cambridge University Press

Awards

  • Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California, Riverside
  • NEH Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the History of Art (Rome Prize), American Academy in Rome
  • Samuel H. Kress Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Fellowship, Rome

Courses Taught

  • ArtH 1910 - Freshman Seminar (topics vary)
  • Honors/ArtH 2011H – Honors Seminar (topics vary)
  • ArtH 3311 – Baroque Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe
  • ArtH 3312 – European Art of the Eighteenth Century
  • ArtH3335/5335 – Baroque Rome: Art and Politics in the Papal Capital
  • ArtH 8340 – Graduate Seminar in Baroque Art (topics vary)
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