Martin Kemp (art historian)

Martin John Kemp (born 5 March 1942) is an art historian and exhibition curator who is emeritus professor of the history of art at University of Oxford. He is considered one of the world's leading experts on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci and visualisation in art and science.[1][2]

Martin Kemp
Kemp in 2011
Born (1942-03-05) 5 March 1942
Years active1965 – present
Known forLeonardo da Vinci scholarship; attribution of Salvator Mundi and La Bella Principessa
Academic work
DisciplineArt history
InstitutionsDepartment of History of Art, University of Oxford
Websitehttp://www.martinjkemp.com

Career

In his youth Kemp attended Windsor Grammar School.[3][lower-alpha 1] From 1960 to 1963 Kemp studied natural sciences and art history at Downing College, Cambridge[lower-alpha 2] and the history of Western Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London from 1963 to 1965.[4][5][6] For more than 25 years he was based in Scotland where from 1966 to 1981 he was a lecturer at University of Glasgow and Professor of Fine Arts from 1981 to 1990 and Professor of the History and Theory of Art from 1990 to 1995 at University of St Andrews.[7][8] He was Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008, during which he helped create the Centre for Visual Studies, which opened in 1999.[9] Notably, Edgar Wind had held this post from 1955 to 1967 and subsequently Francis Haskell from 1967 to 1995.[6] He has held various visiting professorship posts: Lecturer in the History of Fine Art at Dalhousie University (1965–1966); member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University (1984–1985); Slade Professor at the University of Cambridge (1987–1988); Benjamin Sonenberg Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1988); Dorothy Ford Wiley Visiting Professor in Renaissance Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1993); British Academy Wolfson Research Professor (1993–1998);[lower-alpha 3] Louise Smith Brosse Professor at the University of Chicago (2000); Research Fellow at the Getty Research Institute (2001); Mellon Senior Research Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (2004); Lila Wallace - Reader’s Digest Visiting Professor at Harvard University (2010); and Joseph Janson-La Palme visiting lecturer at Princeton University (2013).[5][6]

Kemp has written books about Leonardo da Vinci, including Leonardo (Oxford University Press, 2004, rev. 2011). He has published on imagery in the sciences of anatomy, natural history and optics, including The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (Yale University Press). He has written a regular column called Science in Culture in Nature (an early selection published as Visualisations, OUP, 2000). The Nature essays are developed in Seen and Unseen (OUP, 2006), in which his concept of "structural intuitions" is explored. In 2011 he published his book Christ to Coke: How Image becomes Icon (OUP, 2011).[11]

Exhibitions

He has curated a series of exhibitions on Leonardo and other themes, including Spectacular Bodies at the Hayward Gallery in London, Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2006[12] and Seduced: Sex and Art from Antiquity to Now, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2007. He was also guest curator for Circa 1492 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1992.

Kemp's projects include:

Leonardo da Vinci. Experience, Experiment and Design
an exhibition about how Leonardo thought on paper. It contains some of his most complex and challenging designs. Although many other artists, inventors and scientists have brainstormed on paper, none of his predecessors, contemporaries or successors used paper quite like he did. The intensity, variety and unpredictability of what happens on a single sheet are unparalleled. This project was last exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from 14 September 2006 to 7 January 2007.
Universal Leonardo
A project aimed exploring of Leonardo da Vinci's work through a series of exhibitions, scientific research and educational resources.[6]

Salvator Mundi

Kemp was a leading authority in authenticating Salvator Mundi to Leonardo da Vinci.[13]

La Bella Principessa

In 2010 he published a monograph together with French engineer Pascal Cotte, recounting the story of how a team of experts – under his guidance – pieced together the evidence for the extraordinary discovery of a major artwork by Leonardo, now named La Bella Principessa. The book, entitled La Bella Principessa (2010), narrates the steps Kemp and Cotte took in authenticating the painting, including the use of forensic methods usually reserved for criminal investigation, matching a fingerprint found on La Bella Principessa to the Renaissance master. The 2012 Italian edition, La bella principessa di Leonardo da Vinci.[14] produces evidence about its origins.

Selected bibliography
  • Leonardo. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 2004. ISBN 9780192805461. OCLC 55682608.
  • Leonardo da Vinci: The 100 Milestones. New York City, New York: Sterling. 2019. ISBN 978-1-4549-304-26. OCLC 1099590992.[15]

Notes
  1. Now known as The Windsor Boys' School
  2. A constituent college of the University of Cambridge
  3. An award offered by the Wolfson Foundation.[10]
gollark: i.e. more seriously "industrial society bad"
gollark: i.e. "yes I want to die of easily preventable diseases after living a life in horrible conditions"
gollark: Anarchoprimitivism.
gollark: anprim BAD. ☭ bad.
gollark: ☭ bad.

References
  1. Vogel 2003.
  2. Charney 2011.
  3. Lankford 2018.
  4. Downing College: Professor Martin John Kemp.
  5. Martin J Kemp: Curriculum Vitae.
  6. Honigman.
  7. The University of Oxford: Martin Kemp.
  8. The British Acadmey: Professor Martin Kemp.
  9. The Department of History of Art: Professor Martin Kemp.
  10. The British Acadmey: Wolfson Research Professorships.
  11. York, Peter. "Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon, By Martin Kemp". The Independent, 9 December 2011. Retrieved 16 August 2020
  12. Riding 2006.
  13. Kinsella 2019.
  14. Kemp, Martin J., and Cotte, Pascal (2012). La bella principessa di Leonardo da Vinci. Ritratto di Bianca Sforza. Firenze: Mandragora. ISBN 9788874611737
  15. Christensen 2016.

Sources
Articles
Web
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