Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History
Expertise: Early and High Renaissance Art, Italian Renaissance Architecture, Leonardo, Mannerism, Michelangelo, Old Master drawings, Raphael, Renaissance patronage, Titian, Venice
Bio:
Wallace is an internationally recognized authority on Michelangelo and his contemporaries. In addition to more than forty articles (as well as two works of fiction), he is the author and editor of four books on Michelangelo: Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: The Genius as Entrepreneur (Cambridge 1994); Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English (Garland, 1996), Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture (Hugh Lauter Levin, 1998), and most recently, Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English (Garland 1999). He is currently writing a new biography of Michelangelo.
WUSTL Contact Information:
| Work: | (314) 935-5270 |
| Fax: | (314) 935-8775 |
| Department: | (314) 935-5270 |
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Education:
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Ph.D. in Art History at Columbia University
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M.A. in Art History at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign
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B.A. in Art History at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa.

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An ancient masterpiece or a master's forgery?
The New York Times
and 1 others

April 19,
2005 -- A scholar has suggested that ''Laocoon,'' a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery -- possibly by Michelangelo himself.
WUSTL art history professor William Wallace comments.

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Additional Background: Wallace serves on the editorial boards of The Sixteenth Century Journal and Explorations in Renaissance Culture and is a manuscript referee for several university presses and other journals. He has received numerous grants and awards, including four from the National Endowment for the Humanities and five University faculty research grants. Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture was awarded the 1999 Umhoefer Prize for Achievement in Humanities. In 1995, he received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Coordinating Board for Higher Education, a state policy board that oversees the Missouri Department of Higher Education.
In 1990-91, Wallace was a fellow at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University's Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence; in 1996-97 he was at the American Academy in Rome, and in Spring 1999 he was the Robert Sterling Clark Distinguished Visiting Professor at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.
Wallace earned a bachelor's degree in 1974 from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.; a master's degree in 1976 from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign; and a doctorate in 1983 from Columbia University, all in art history. He joined the faculty of Arts & Sciences as assistant professor in 1983, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1990 and to full professor in 1999.
Articles:
"Michelangelo's Leda: The Diplomatic Context," Renaissance Studies, 2001
"Michael Angelus Bonarotus Patritius Florentinus" in Innovation and Tradition: Essays on Renaissance Art and Culture, Rome, 2000
"Michelangelo, Tiberio Calcagni, and the Florentine Pieta," Artibus et Hisoriae, 2000
"Friends and Relics at San Silvestro in Capite, Rome." Sixteenth Century Journal, 1999.
"A Week in the Life of Michelangelo," in Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Cambridge, 1998
"Matters of Life and Death: Galileo in the Afterlife of Michelangelo," Source, 1998
"Michelangelo's Risen Christ, " Sixteenth Century Journal, 1997
"Manoeuvring for Patronage: Michelangelo's Dagger," Renaissance Studies, 1997
"Verrocchio's "Giudizio dell'occhio'," Source, 1995
"Instruction and Originality in Michelangelo's Drawings," in The Craft of Art: Originality and Industry in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque Workshop, 1995
"Miscellanae Curiositae Michelangelo: A Steep Tariff, a Half-Doze Horses, and Yards of Taffeta." Renaissance Quarterly, 1994
"The Myth of Michelangelo and il Magnifico." Co-author with Paul Barolsky, Source, 1993
"Drawings from the Fabbrica of San Lorenzo during the Tenure of Michelangelo," in Michelangelo Drawings, 1992
"How Did Michelangelo Become a Sculptor?" in The Genius of the Sculptor in Michelangelo's Work, 1992
"Michelangelo's Rome Pieta: Altarpiece or Grave Memorial?" in Verrocchio and Late Quattrocento Italian Sculpture, 1992
Book Reviews in Renaissance Quarterly, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Master Drawings, Sixteenth Century Journal