John T. Spike:
John T. Spike is a noted historian of Italian art of the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
An art critic and art historian of international standing, in 1979 Spike earned his PhD from Harvard University, presenting a thesis on Mattia Preti, the seventeenth-century painter known as Il Cavalier Calabrese.
In recognition of his authoritative studies on Preti, Spike has been named an honorary citizen by Taverna, the artist's birthplace. and has devoted numerous publications to the artist, including the catalogue raisonné of the paintings (1999) and Mattia Preti: The Collected Documents (1998).
During his career, Spike has organized numerous exhibitions of Italian art and has spoken at conferences in leading museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Pinacoteca Nazionale de Bologna, the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Palazzo Te in Mantua, the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, Palazzo Barberini in Rome, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, the La Valletta National Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Dr. Spike is a permanent consultant to two Italian museums, the Museo Civico of Taverna and the Museo Civico of Urbania, as well as of the Cathedral Museum of Mdina, Malta. He has accepted invitations to speak in public at the British Institute in Florence, Harvard University, Yale University and the University of Malta.
Dr. Spike serves as the General Editor of Abaris Books, Norwalk, Connecticut, and has published The Illustrated Bartsch, a multiple volume compendium of the European prints made prior to 1750.
Author of the catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Caravaggio (Abbeville Press, New York-Paris, 2001), Spike has published important books on the Florentine Renaissance including Masaccio (Abbeville Press, 1996), and Fra Angelico (Abbeville Press, 1997), that have also appeared in Italian and French (in German by Hirmer Verlag). Fra Angelico was nominated "Art Book of the Year 1997" by the Hearst press in the United States.
As well as authoring a great number of articles and reviews covering a vast range of themes for art periodicals such as The Burlington Magazine and Il giornale dell-arte, Spike is a permanent member of the international editorial boards of FMR and Studi di storia dell'arte. He is a member of the jury for the Treviso Prize, one of the most prestigious Italian prizes devoted to creation and conservation. In 1998 he was awarded the Anthurium Prize, an annual Calabrian award for services to culture.
Born in New York in 1951, John T. Spike has lived in Florence since 1989 with his wife Michèle and their son Nicholas.
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