Professor Emerita

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Andrea Pearson Professor Emerita Art

Degrees: PhD University of California, Santa Barbara; MA University of Iowa; BA Augustana College
Bio: Dr. Andrea Pearson specializes in the visual culture of late medieval and early modern northern Europe, with research interests pertaining to women, gender, and sexuality in the southern Low Countries. Her latest book, Gardens of Love and the Limits of Morality in Early Netherlandish Art, was published by Brill in 2019. She is the author of Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350-1530: Experience, Authority, Resistance (Ashgate, 2005), which was awarded Honorable Mention for Best First Book by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and was distinguished as a new book of interest by the Chronicle of Higher Education. She is editor of Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe: Gender, Agency, Identity (Ashgate, 2008). Dr. Pearson has contributed articles to Art History, Gesta, the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, and Renaissance Quarterly among others, and to a number of anthologies. Her new book project investigates the enigmatic Housebook Master. She is Vice President of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and has served on the board of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. For more information: andreapearson.org.

See Also: Department of Art
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Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Research Interests

Professor Pearson is a specialist in late medieval and northern Renaissance art, with research interests in women, gender, and sexuality.

Work In Progress

Book: Sex, Gender, and Virtue Ethics in the “Medieval Housebook” (working title)

Essays: "Gendering the Ghent Altarpiece"

Honors, Awards, and Fellowships

Selected examples��

Publication fellowships from the Historians of Netherlandish Art and the Renaissance Society of America, 2017-18.

Honorable Mention for Best First Book by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, for Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350-1530: Experience, Authority Resistance (Ashgate, 2005), 2008.

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Article of the Month Prize for January, 2006 from Feminae, an index on women and gender in the Middle Ages compiled at Haverford University with the cooperation of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, for ‘Gendered Subject, Gendered Spectator: Mary Magdalen in the Gaze of Margaret of York,’ Gesta 44/1 (2005): 47-66.

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Affiliate, Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, 2002-03.

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Distinguished Teaching Award, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, 2000. ��

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Selected Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Author: Gardens of Love and the Limits of Morality in Early Netherlandish Art. Series: Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, ed. Walter Melion. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Editor: Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe: Gender, Agency, Identity. Series: ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World,’ ed. Allyson M. Poska and Abby Zanger. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing, 2008.

Author: Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350-1530: Experience, Authority Resistance.�� Series: ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World,’ ed. Allyson M. Poska and Abby Zanger. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing.

Journal Articles and Contributions to Anthologies, Published or in Press

"Gender, Sexuality, and the Future of Agency Studies in Northern Art, 1400-1600." Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, in press.

“Prudence, Memory, and Liminal Child in the ‘Medieval Housebook,’” in Holy Children and Liminality in Early Modern Art. Series: The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe (SACRIMA) 2, ed. Chiara Franceschini and Cloe Cavero de Carondelet. Turnhout: Brepols, in press.

'Rulership, Ridership, and the Perils of Sealing,' in Marie de Bourgogne: Figure, Principat et Postérité d’une Duchesse Tardo-Médiévale/Mary of Burgundy: Reign, ‘Persona’, and Legacy of a Late Medieval Duchess, ed. Michael Depreter, Jonathan Dumont, Elizabeth L'Estrange, and Samuel Mareel, 119-47. Turnhout: Brepols.

Marking Female Ocular Agency in the "Medieval Housebook’",' in Challenging Women's Agency and Activism in Early Modernity, ed. Merry Wiesner Hanks, 229-49. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2021.

'Consumption as Eroticism in Early Netherlandish Art,' in Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, ed. Alisa Carlson, Catharine Ingersoll, and Jessica Weiss, 18-28. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.

'The Painted Wings of the Mechelen Enclosed Gardens,' in Mechelen Enclosed Gardens: Late Medieval Paradise Gardens Revealed, ed. Lieve Watteeuw, 122-31. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2018.

'Sensory Piety as Social Intervention in a Mechelen Besloten Hofje,' Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9/2 (2017): 1-50, DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.2.1.

'Imaging and Imagining Colette of Corbie: An Illuminated Version of Pierre de Vaux’s Vie de Colette,' in A Companion to Colette of Corbie, ed. Joan Mueller and Nancy Bradley Warren, 130-72. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

'Margaret of York, Colette of Corbie, and the Possibilities of Female Agency,' in Les Femmes, la culture et les arts en Europe, entre Moyen âge et Renaissance, ed. Cynthia L. Brown and Anne Marie Legaré, 357-65. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016

'Visuality, Morality, and Same-Sex Desire: The Infants Christ and St. John the Baptist in Early Netherlandish Art.' Art History 38/3 (2015): 434-61.

‘Images of Women,’ in the Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Eds. Jane Couchman, Katherine McIver, and Allyson Poska, 489-508. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing, 2013.

‘Productions of Meaning in Portraits of Margaret of York,’ Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Andrea Pearson, 36-54. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing, 2008.

‘Gendered Subject, Gendered Spectator: Mary Magdalen in the Gaze of Margaret of York,’ Gesta 44/1 (2005): 47-66.

‘Spirituality, Authority, and Monastic Vows: An Antependium from the Community of Flines,’ in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture VI, ed. Meredith Parsons Lillich, 323-363. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2005.

Catalogue entries for illuminated manuscripts, Le dyalogue de la duchesse de Bourgogne à Jésus Christ (London, British Library, ms. 7907) and La vie abrégée de la tressaincte vierge seur Colette (Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 461), for Women of Distinction: Margaret of York/Margaret of Austria, ed. Dagmar Eichberger. Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2005: Nos. 83, pp. 244-245 and 96, pp. 257-258.

‘Margaret of Austria’s Devotional Portrait Diptychs,’ Woman’s Art Journal 22/2 (2001/02): 9-25.

‘Nuns, Images, and the Ideals of Women’s Monasticism: Two Paintings from the Cistercian Convent of Flines,’ Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 1356-1402.

‘Personal Worship, Gender, and the Devotional Portrait Diptych,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 99-122.

Representative examples of papers presented

'Margaret of York, Colette of Corbie, and the Possibilities of Female Agency,’ presented at an international colloquium, ‘Les Femmes, la culture et les arts en Europe, entre Moyen âge et Renaissance,’ Lille, France, 2012.

‘On Edge: Privileged Women Contend with the Margins,’ Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, 2011.

‘It’s in His Kiss: Holiness and Homoeroticism in Early Netherlandish Art,’ presented at the First Annual Feminist Art History Conference, �鶹��ý, 2010 and at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, 2008.

'Inside Out: Domesticity as Public Spectacle at the Burgundian Court,’ College Art Association, Boston, 2006.

‘Authority and Community in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy,’ presented at an international colloquium, ‘Femmes à la Cour de Bourgogne: Présence et Influence’, Mechelen, Belgium, 2005.

‘Women, Art, and Power in the Renaissance,’ invited public lecture, Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, 2005.

Representative examples of sessions organized

'Gender and Artistic Practice in Early Modern Europe: Media, Genres, and Formats.' College Art Association, New York, 2013. Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

'Feminism and Early Modern Art,’ College Art Association, Los Angeles, 2012. Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

‘Early Modern Women and Religious Art: What’s Next?’ College Art Association, Los Angeles, 2009.

‘Fathers and Sons in Renaissance Art.’ Attending to Early Modern Women Conference, Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, 2006. Workshop organized with Allison Levy.

‘The Face of Gender: Women and Portraits in the Early Modern World,’ College Art Association, Atlanta, 2005.

‘Gender and Figure in the Arts of the Renaissance,’ Attending to Early Modern Women Conference, University of Maryland, 2003. Workshop organized with Stephen Whitworth and Todd Borgerding.��

‘Exploring the Boundaries of Public and Private in Northern European Art, 1350-1600,’ College Art Association, New York City, 2003. With Lisa Deam.

‘Seeing Double: Duality in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Art.’ Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference, Antwerp, 2002. With Laura Gelfand, Ann M. Roberts, and Ron Spronk.

'Fashioning the Figure of Woman: The Question of Agency in Visual and Material Culture,’ Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, 2001. Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

‘New Directions in the Study of Northern European Devotional Art, 1300-1600,’ College Art Association, New York, 2000. With Bret Rothstein.

Professional Services

Current national service

President, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

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