Rebekah Compton
Associate Professor
Education
Clemson University: BA, History and BA, English
Washington University, St. Louis: MA, Art History
University of California, Berkeley: PhD, History of Art
Research Interest
Rebekah Compton teaches courses on Renaissance and Baroque art history. She specializes in paintings and illuminated manuscripts created in Italy between 1300 and 1600. Rebekah has written articles and essays on Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti. Her first book examines Venus in Renaissance Florence with a focus on iconography, technical art history, and gender/sexuality studies. Her current research investigates contemplative spirituality, somaesthetics, and environmental history in the context of Camaldolese art and architecture.
Courses Taught
ARTH 102 History of Art: Renaissance through ModernARTH 277 Renaissance Art
ARTH 280 Baroque ArtARTH 299 Research and Methods of Art History
ARTH 303 Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art
ARTH 370 Italian Early Renaissance Art
ARTH 375 Italian High/Late Renaissance Art
ARTH 377: Materials and Techniques of Renaissance Art
ARTH 415: Senior Seminar: The Body and Desire in Renaissance Italy
FYSE 105: The Life of the Senses
HONS 381: Art Humanities: The Western Tradition
Selected Publications
Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Magical Materials in Renaissance Philosophy, Literature and Art. Edited with Donato Verardi. Sarzana-Lugano: Agorà & Co., 2022.
“Pallas and the Centaur.” In Botticelli and Renaissance Florence. Masterworks from the Uffizi. Edited byCecilia Frosinini and Rachel McGarry, 70-73. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Museum of Art, 2022.
“Occult Color Correlations in Renaissance Medicine, Magic, and Art.” In Magical Materials in the History of Renaissance Philosophy, Literature, and Art, 9-15. Sarzana-Lugano: Agorà & Co., 2022.
“Materials in Renaissance Magic.” Co-authored with Donato Verardi. In Magical Materials in the History of Renaissance Philosophy, Literature, and Art, 17-46. Sarzana-Lugano: Agorà & Co., 2022.
“The Green Places of Fra Filippo Lippi and Sandro Botticelli.” In Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth. Edited by Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger, and Leopoldine Prosperetti, 31-48. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.
“Venus Weeps: Chris Jordan’s Photo Mosaic of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 38, n. 2 (2019): 108-118.
“Botticelli’s Garlands.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 35, n. 4 (2016): 283-292.
“Omnia Vincit Amor: The Sovereignty of Love in Tuscan Poetry & Michelangelo’s Venus and Cupid.”Mediaevalia 33 (2012): 229-260.
Honors & Awards
Rush H Kress Fellow, Villa I Tatti (The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies)
Andrew W. Mellon Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University
South Carolina Humanities Speaker Bureau
Finalist for the PROSE Award (Association of American Publishers): Art History & Criticism
Renaissance Society of America, Samuel H. Kress Publication Subvention for Art Historians
Research fellow, Yale’s Summer Teaching Institute for the Study of Technical Art History
Haythe Faculty Research Grant for Renaissance and Baroque Art History
Dean’s Excellence Award for the School of the Arts, College of Charleston
Faculty Research and Development Award, College of Charleston
Innovative Teaching and Learning in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Charleston
Press & Media
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/new-books-renaissance-art-history-1234600744/
Renaissance Letters, Poems & Notes
On a research journey in Florence, Italy, Rebekah Compton studied the massive archives of the famed Medici family, learning firsthand about Renaissance celebrities such as Michelangelo and Catherine de’ Medici.
Read more about Compton's Journey