Holmes, Megan 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born December 19, 1959. Education: Harvard University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History of Art, University of Michigan, 170E Tappan Hall, 519 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1357. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, associate professor of Italian Renaissance art history.

WRITINGS:

Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1999.

Contributor to books, including Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by S. Matthews Grieco and G. Johnson, 1997; Coming About? A Festschrift for John Shearman, edited by L. Jones and L. Matthew, 2002; The Art Market in Italy, edited by M. Fantoni, L. Matthew, and S. Matthews Grieco, Ferrara, 2003; Italian Renaissance Cities: Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation, edited by S. Campbell and S. Milner, 2004; and The Miraculous Image in Late Medieval and Renaissance Culture, edited by E. Thunø and G. Wolf, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

A specialist in the art of Renaissance Italy, Megan Holmes is interested not only in the art of that period, but also the culture and social history surrounding it. Her first book, Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, has been widely praised for its research, presentation, and perspicuity. Library Journal contributor Ellen Bates warned, however, that "the highly abstract and philosophical level of discourse addresses a scholarly audience." That said, this thoroughly illustrated monograph is "fluid and beautifully crafted," according to Susan McKillop in a Renaissance Quarterly assessment. Church History writer Jill R. Webster similarly described the work as "unusually well written and presented."

Fra Filippo Lippi was both a Carmelite monk and an artist who prospered in fifteenth-century Florence under the aegis of the Medici family. The book is organized into three parts: the first part dealing with his early works while he was an active monk, the second addressing his later artworks, and the third providing the reader with comparisons to the artist's contemporaries. The book is not as simple as this summary indicates, however, as many critics were quick to note. "Holmes gives new and rich insight into the religious context and the societal patterns that framed the works made between the 1430s and the 1450s by the Carmelite painter Fra Filippo Lippi," stated McKillop. Books & Culture contributor E. John Walford elaborated: "While Holmes is not so convincing in adducing the specifically Carmelite influence in either his pictorial style or his iconography, which can be demonstrated as having a currency far beyond this specific order, she does nevertheless shed considerable light on how Lippi negotiated the dual worlds of religion and art. Most of all, she demonstrates how art and artists, even within the domain of Florentine religious art, were implicated in the wider negotiation of social and political power. Thus, in one of the most lucid chapters of what is a well-constructed, carefully researched, and beautifully illustrated book, Holmes focuses on a single work of Lippi's, his Madonna and Child with Sts. Francis, Damian, Cosmas, and Anthony of Padua." He continued: "Through her chosen meth- odology, Holmes clearly offers the reader far more than stylistic analysis by providing substantial contextual material on matters of religious practice, art patronage, and the working conditions of a Renaissance artist such as Lippi.… This makes for both engaging and illuminating reading in terms of understanding art in relation to the institutional functioning of Florentine religious life." In an Art Bulletin review, Adrian W.B. Randolph further remarked: "In composing this monograph, Holmes not only forays beyond biographical parameters—as good biographical texts have regularly done—but also explicitly seeks to deconstruct the biographical monograph itself."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art Bulletin, September, 2002, Adrian W.B. Randolph, "Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State, Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter & the Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy," p. 528.

Booklist, January 1, 2000, Ray Olson, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, p. 856.

Books & Culture, July 1, 2007, E. John Walford, "Renaissance Art and the Mediation of Belief," p. 10.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May, 2000, W.E. Wallace, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, p. 1638.

Church History, December, 2000, Jill R. Webster, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, p. 886.

Library Journal, March 1, 2000, Ellen Bates, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, p. 84.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 2002, Susan McKillop, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 2000, Yael Even, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter.

Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, October, 2002, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, p. 1320.

Times Literary Supplement, June 2, 2000, Paul Hills, review of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite Painter, p. 18.

ONLINE

University of Michigan, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Web site,http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ (February 25, 2008), faculty profile of Megan Holmes.