Lilian Armstrong

Lilian Armstrong (1936-2021) was Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Art at Wellesley College. She was an internationally renowned expert on Italian Renaissance manuscripts and early printed books.

Education
Armstrong received her PhD from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in 1966. Her doctoral thesis, in two volumes, was entitled The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo. Marco Zoppo was an Italian artist who lived in the fifteenth century. Rudolf Wittkower supervised her PhD. Before completing her PhD, Armstrong was awarded her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College, and a master's degree from Harvard University.

Career
Armstrong focused her research primarily on Italian illuminated manuscripts, hand-illuminated incunabula, and woodcut illustration in early printed books of Venetian origin. She was Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Art, the first holder of the college's prestigious chair. She retired in 2006, and in 2010 she was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship.

Following her death, she was described as 'an inspiration to generations of students and colleagues in her decades teaching' and as a pioneer as a woman scholar with a Venetian focus. Columbia University have launched a fund named after Armstrong to support graduate students in Venice at Casa Muraro. A Festschrift in her honour, The Art of the Renaissance Book, was published by Brepols in 2023 and edited by Iaria Andreoli and Helena Szepe.