Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1983

Patricia Fortini Brown, formerly chair of the Department of Art & Archaeology (1999-2005), taught Italian Renaissance art at Princeton since 1983 and retired in 2010. Venice and its empire, 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.

Brown’s research has been supported by a number of fellowships including a Fulbright grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, a Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, and Delmas grants for research in Venice. She has lectured widely and her books have received a number of awards.

Brown was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge (2001), president of the Renaissance Society of America (2000-2), and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (2004-7). Named Italian American Woman of the Year by the Museo Italo Americano, San Francisco (1992), she was elected a corresponding fellow of the Ateneo Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (2010) and awarded the Serena Medal in Italian Studies by the British Academy (2011).