Patricia Fortini Brown

Patricia Fortini Brown (born 16 November 1936) is Professor Emerita of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

Venice and its empire, from the late middle ages through the early modern period, has been the primary site of her scholarly research, with a focus on how works of art and architecture can materialize and sum up significant aspects of the culture in which they were produced. Her recent work has focused on Venetian territories in the Mediterranean and the Terraferma, particularly the Friuli.

Life and career
Brown was born and raised in Oakland, California, where she graduated from Fremont High School (1954). After attending Brigham Young University, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with an A.B. in Political Science (1959). Brown was active as a studio artist for 17 years and raised two sons before beginning graduate work. Returning to Berkeley in 1976, she earned an M.A. (1978) and PhD (1983) in the History of Art. Brown taught at Princeton for 27 years (1983-2010), where she was the first woman to be promoted to tenure (1989) in the Department of Art & Archaeology and served as department chair for six years (1999 -2005).

Brown was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge (2000-2001). She served as president of the Renaissance Society of America (2000-2002), and was a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (2004-7). She serves on an Advisory committee for “Mediterranean Palimpsests: Connecting the Art and Architectural Histories of Medieval and Early Modern Cities," a Getty-funded research project (with research trips with the MCities group to Nicosia, Cordoba, Granada, Rhodes, and Thessaloniki), 2018-20, and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Save Venice since 2004.

In recognition of her retirement in 2010, Brown was honored with eight sessions at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Venice, as well as with a symposium at Princeton University: "Giorgione and His Times: Confronting Alternate Realities" on the 500th anniversary of the death of Giorgione. Selected papers from the two symposia were published in a Festschrift edited by Blake de Maria and Mary E. Frank, Reflections on Renaissance Venice: a celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown (Milan: 5 Continents Editions; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2013) (Winner of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Book Prize in 2015 from the Renaissance Society of America).

Honors and awards

 * 1980: Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies International Doctoral Research Fellowship
 * 1980: Fulbright-Hays Grant for dissertation research in Italy
 * 1982, 1998: Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grants for Research in Venice
 * 1989: Rome Prize Fellowship, American Academy in Rome
 * 1989: John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 1991-95: Andrew W. Mellon Professorship, Princeton University
 * 1992: Museo Italo Americano, San Francisco, Italian American Woman of the Year for scholarship in Italian Studies
 * 1998: Folger Shakespeare Library, Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
 * 2010: Ateneo Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, elected Socio Straniero (Corresponding Fellow)
 * 2010: Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitor in the Visual Arts, Reed College
 * 2011: Serena Medal, awarded annually by the British Academy for ‘eminent services towards the furtherance of the study of Italian history, literature, art and economics’
 * 2014: Edward J. Olszewski Lecture in Italian Art, Case Western Reserve University
 * 2016: Sydney Freedberg Lecture in Italian Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
 * 2020: Renaissance Society of America, Paul Oscar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award

Selected publications

 * Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (Yale University Press, 1988, 310 pp.). (Finalist, Premio "Salotto Veneto 89", for the best book published on Venetian culture)
 * Le scuole (extract from Storia di Venezia, vol. 5, Italian Enciclopedia Treccani, translated by Luis Contarello, Roma : 1996)
 * Venice & Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (Yale University Press, 1996, 361 pp.). (Winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize; (Finalist, Charles Rufus Morey Prize, College Art Association)
 * Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (Harry N. Abrams, 1997, 176 pp.). (with French, German, Korean, Chinese, Spanish translations)
 * Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (Yale University Press, 2004, 312 pp.). (Finalist, Charles Rufus Morey Prize, College Art Association; Honorable Mention, Premio Salimbeni per La Storia e la Critica d’Arte)
 * Gabriele Matino and Patricia Fortini Brown, Carpaccio in Venice. A Guide (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2020).; idem, Carpaccio a Venezia: Itinerari (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2020).
 * The Venetian Bride: Bloodlines and Blood Feuds in Venice and its Empire (Oxford University Press, 2021, 448 pp.)