Jean K. Cadogan

Jean K. Cadogan, a professor of fine arts at Trinity College, Hartford, was for many years Charles and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. A specialist in Italian art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, she seeks to understand how works of art were encountered and understood by denizens of the late medieval city, and how they were imagined and produced by artists and artisans. As a former museum curator, she is fascinated by the physical attributes of works of art—materials, technique, condition—as well as their social function as indicators of social behavior and cultural values. Her classes in Medieval and Renaissance art history encourage students to see works of art from many different perspectives, but especially she advocates encountering them “in the flesh,” in museums or wherever they may be.