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The History of Art Department's Emeritus Faculty Member - Loren Partridge


Loren_Partridge Loren Partridge
Professor Emeritus
Art of the Italian Renaissance

email: lpart@berkeley.edu
address: 1012 The Alameda, Berkeley, CA 94720
phone: 510-527-3480
more info.: download Partridge's CV (as a pdf)

Notes on picture to the left: Loren Partridge, Professor of Early Modern Art, with his student Rebekah Compton, after receiving the Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award. April 2009. Photo: Meryl Bailey.
LOREN PARTRIDGE RETIRES SPRING 2009
 After forty years of teaching in (and often chairing) our department, we are indebted to you and thank you.

A Personal Tribute by two of Loren’s students

From 1972 to 1977, I studied with Loren Partridge at Berkeley. My first seminar on “History Painting in Sixteenth-Century Rome” set the stage for my future research. Celebrating the conclusion of the course with a picnic dinner, we students tried to create an intermezzo to offer thanks. We got no farther than the opening word—“Ca-a-a-a-prarola!”—sung with appropriate gusto to the tune of “Oklahoma.” But it did sum up our admiration of Loren’s scholarship, knowledge of the archives, and intellectual standards. Later, when accompanying Loren on an American Academy in Rome excursion to the Farnese villa, I remember being awed not only by its magnificence, but also by Loren’s eloquent discussion in situ—a spectacular culmination to my earliest Berkeley experience. In 1976, Loren joined forces with Randy Starn to create an experimental interdisciplinary seminar on Pope Julius II, resulting in their groundbreaking, co-authored book A Renaissance Likeness (1980). This kind of contextual art history was virtually unprecedented, and left a deep impression on my own approach to research and teaching. I credit my dedication to interdisciplinary studies and collaboration to this unique experience. It seems fitting that my special fields of study are confraternities and festive culture; for only through extensive collaboration, uniting diverse voices and visions, were significant confraternal works of art and architecture as well as ephemeral spectacle possible. So, too, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, patron of the Villa Caprarola and protector of “my” confraternity of the Gonfalone, is another connecting thread in this rich tapestry of Loren’s guidance and inspiration. For almost four decades, I have treasured this association, and I trust that it will continue long past his retirement. Congratulations, Loren!

Barbara Wisch, M.A. 1975, Ph.D. 1985
Professor, Dept. of Art and Art History, SUNY Cortland



Loren has been on the faculty of History of Art since 1969. I chose to pursue my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley because I wanted to work with him. For four decades students like me, with an interest in the Italian Renaissance, have sought him out as an advisor. Professor Barbara Wisch of SUNY Cortland was one of Loren’s first graduate advisees, and I will be one of his last. Coincidentally, our dissertations both focus on the art patronage and ritual practices of confraternities. Together, our experiences bracket an exceptional career dedicated to scholarship and teaching at U.C. Berkeley.

In honor of Loren’s impending retirement, I would like to share a few things about his career and his many achievements. Loren graduated from Yale in 1958, and then spent a year studying Latin American literature as a Fulbright fellow at the University of Buenos Aires. His flair for languages caught the attention of the United States Army. The Army trained him in Russian and sent him to Frankfurt, where he monitored secret communiqués from the Soviet Bloc. But cold war espionage proved too dull, so when he left the Army, he naturally turned to Art History. In 1969, Loren received his Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard and joined the faculty here at Berkeley.

Loren’s scholarly interests are broad – one of his first books was on the architecture of John Galen Howard – but his passion is the Italian Renaissance. An interdisciplinary approach is a hallmark of his work. The Villa Farnese at Caprarola, the focus of his dissertation, was also the subject of a 1988 book and a series of articles in the Art Bulletin. He is the author of two books on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The second of these, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: A Glorious Restoration was described by one reviewer as “almost an artwork in its own right.” In collaboration with History Professor Randolph Starn, Loren authored two groundbreaking interdisciplinary texts, one on Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Julius II and the other on Italian halls of state. His book on the art of Renaissance Rome has become a standard teaching text, available in four languages. A new book on Renaissance Florence, meant for undergraduate teaching, will be published this year. Throughout his career, Loren has tirelessly served the department and the university. He has been Chair of History of Art for a total of fifteen years. He also spent four years as chair of the Art Practice department. He is the instructor of a series of very popular classes on Renaissance art and architecture, and I was delighted to hear that he has agreed to continue teaching one course each year during his so-called “retirement”. Student evaluations note that his courses are both the hardest and the best they had ever taken. They describe the man himself as “surprisingly nice”, “not intimidating after all”—and “compassionate”. I can confirm that these words also apply to his training of graduate students. And it was no surprise that Loren won this year’s Faculty Mentor Award, a university-wide award given by the Graduate Assembly to recognize exceptional graduate student mentors. Congratulations Loren!

Meryl Bailey, M.A. 2007, Ph.D. Candidate
Dept. of History of Art, U.C. Berkeley


Education

B.A. in English, Yale, 1958
Ph.D. in Fine Arts, Harvard, 1969

Selected Honors:

  • Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome, 1966-68
  • Kress Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, 1974-75
  • Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, 1975
  • Guggenheim Fellowship, 1981-82
  • Getty Senior Research Fellowship, 1988-89

Teaching and research:

Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture 1400-1600
Selected Publications


A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in Raphael's "Julius II", co-authored with Randolph Starn (Berkeley, 1980)

Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy 1300-1600, co-authored with Randolph Starn (Berkeley, 1992)

The Art of Renaissance Rome 1400-1600 (New York, 1996)

Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Rome (New York, 1996)

Michelangelo, Last Judgment: A Glorious Restoration, with contributions by Fabrizio Mancinelli and Gianluigi Colalucci (New York, 1997)

Art of Renaissance Florence 1400-1600 (Berkeley, 2009)

Books in progress:

The Villa Farnese at Caprarola