Biographical Information:
Benjamin Paul is an art historian and critic. His specialty is Venetian art of the Renaissance, with a focus on the agency of art in the crisis at the end of the sixteenth century. He is also working on a book on Tintoretto's decorum of style. As a critic, he regularly writes for the Brooklyn Rail and the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In the area of contemporary art, he has worked on the German performance artist Anne Imhof and is currently completing a study on nostalgia and lost futures.
Undergraduate Classes Taught:
Introduction to Art History: Early Renaissance to Today (Western survey)
Online: Introduction to Art History: Early Renaissance to Today (Western survey)
Online: Introduction to Global Art History 1400 - Contemporary
Renaissance in Europe
High Renaissance Art in Italy
Venice: The City and Its Art
Art and Propaganda from the Medici to Barack Obama
Venetian Rivals: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese
Titian
Approaches to Art History
Graduate Classes Taught:
Race B4 Race in Early Modern Art
Images of Disaster in the Early Modern Period
Titian
Commemorating the Dead: Tomb Sculpture in Early Modern Italy
Art and Propaganda from the Medici to Barack Obama
Approaches to Art History
Art and Reform in Early Modern Italy
Selected Publications:
Books:
Nuns and Reform Art in Early Modern Venice: The Architecture of Santi Cosma e Damiano and its Decoration from Tintoretto to Tiepolo (Ashgate, 2012)
Wolfgang Tillmans: Still life, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2002).
Book chapters:
“Emulation and Denial: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Homage to Paolo Veronese as a Disavowal of Jacopo Tintoretto,” in Il Seicento e il Settecento alle Gallerie dell’Accademia. Nuovi Studi, ed. Giulio Manieri Elia and Michele Nicolaci, Gallerie dell’Academia (Rome, 2024), pp. 233-50.
“Good Works and Imitatio Christi: Tintoretto’s Visual Exegesis of the Passion in the Albergo of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco,” in Giardino di conversazioni. Scritti in onore di Augusto Gentili, ed. with Costanza Barbieri, Michele Di Monte, Bardi Edizioni, Rome 2023, pp. 345-56.
“Visual Epistemology: Dosso Dossi’s Representation of the Immaculate Conception,” in Voir l’au-delà. L’expérience visionnaire et sa représentation dans l’art italien de la Renaissance, ed. by Andreas Beyer, Philippe Morel, Alessandro Nova (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 313-38.
Articles:
“Verbildlichung und Bildwerdung der Wirklichkeit in der Kontrollgesellschaft: Anne Imhofs Performance Faust,“ in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 83 (2020), pp. 255-79.
“Trace Value: Benjamin Paul on the Art of Karin Sander,” in Artforum (April 2018), pp. 136-43.
“Tintoretto and the Church of San Benedetto in Venice,” in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz, 49 (2005), pp. 377-412.
Edited volumes:
Giardino di conversazioni. Scritti in onore di Augusto Gentili, ed. with Costanza Barbieri, Michele Di Monte, Bardi Edizioni, Rome 2023.
The Tombs of the Doges of Venice from the Beginning of the Serenissima to 1907. Venetiana 18 (Rome, 2016).
Celebrazione e autocritica: La Serenissima e la ricerca dell’identità veneziana nel tardo Cinquecento. Venetiana 14 (Rome, 2014).
Edited issues:
Mimetofobia: Chi ha paura della somiglianza?/ Mimetophobia: Who is Afraid of Resemblance? Special volume of the academic journal Elephant & Castle 23 (2020), edited with Michele Di Monte and Silvia Pedone.
Other publications:
“Memoir of John Kinder Gowran Shearman 1931-2003,” in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy 14 (2015), pp. 549-69.
Exhibition review of Andreas Gursky: Inherited Images. In Brooklyn Rail (April 2025), pp. 30-31.
“Eingelagerte erotische Energie.” Book Review of Andreas Beyer: „Cellini“. Ein Leben im Furor. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (28 February 2025), p. 10.
Selected fellowships, awards and distinctions:
Marie Curie Fellowship in the M4Human program (Gerda Henkel Stiftung) 2013-15
Thyssen Stiftung 2012, 2006
Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom 2007
Deutsches Studienzentrum, Venice 2005
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) 2004-06
Curated exhibitions:
Wolfgang Tillmans: Still life, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2001-02) (with catalogue)
Selected professional activities:
Organized numerous conferences and panels
Advisory board of RiVe. Centro Studi Rinascimento Veneziano since 2020.
Advisory board of Visual Studies-Rome Network (ViStuRN) since 2016.
Download 2025-7_Benjamin Paul CV