Dr. Sara N. James, Professor of Art History, holds a B.A. in Art from Mary Baldwin College, an M.A. in Humanities (Medieval Studies) from Old Dominion University, and a Ph.D. in Art History (Italian Renaissance) from the University of Virginia. She teaches art history and interdisciplinary courses in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art and architecture. Recently she has expanded her research to include art in England.

    In addition to teaching, Dr. James is an active scholar. She has most recently received a grant from the Samuel Kress Foundation in New York to participate in a Summer Institute at the New York University and Metropolitan Museum to study art history and Technology in late July, 2011. She was invited by the international Chief Executives Organization to serve as speaker in Florence, Italy in May 2008. She spent her sabbatical semesters, Spring 2007 and spring 2000, doing research in Italy. She lived in Orvieto and at the American Academy, where she was appointed a Visiting Scholar. She returned to Italy in June 2007 to present her research at a Convegno Internazionale in Orvieto, Italy.

     Dr. James has several publications. Her book, entitled Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry and a Vision of the End-time, Ashgate (2003) is available in museum bookstores internationally.  In 2005, she published an article, "Vasari on Signorelli: The Origins of the Grand Manner of Painting" in Reading Vasari (Philip Wilson, 2005). Her article "Penance and Redemption: The Role of the Roman Liturgy in  Luca Signorelli's Frescoes at Orvieto" was published in the fall 2001 issue of Artibus et Historiae.  She contributes regularly to the Sixteenth Century Journal, the Renaissance Quarterly, and newsletters for Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History and Historians of British Art as a book reviewer.          Most recently, in the fall of 2008, Dr. James presented a paper, "Thomas Wolsey: The English Cardinal Italianate," at the Southeast Renaissance Conference, which will be published in Art Papers 2009. She also presented "Inventions and Variations on a Marian Theme: The Life of the Virgin at the Cathedral of Orvieto" at the Southeast College Art Conference in New Orleans. Dr. James spoke about sharing personal collections of images at a Visual Resources panel at the College Art Association Annual Meeting in Dallas in February 2008. Over 600 of her images of English architecture are in the ArtStor database. At the October, 2002 SECAC conference in Mobile, Alabama she gave a paper entitled "Signorelli’s Frescoes at Orvieto and Shades from the Classical Past."  She was invited to present a paper entitled "Vasari on Signorelli: The Origins of the Grand Manner of Painting"  at the "Reading Vasari" symposium in honor of Paul Barolsky at the University of Georgia November 16-17, 2001. She has given additional papers at the College Art Association (1996),  the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (1998), and many at the Southeast College Art Conference.

     Highlights of other scholarly events  include two articles, “Antichrist in the Visual Arts”  and “Apocalypse in the Visual Arts” for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, published by Verlag Walter de Gruyter in Berlin (Germany), Volume A, 2009. In 2006,  she co-authored with Dr. Ulysse Desportes a biography of Horace Day, The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, the Virginia State Library.   

Sara N. James, May 2008, Florence CEO University, Florence, Italy

   In 2005, she presented a paper, "Cardinal Wolsey, his Court, His King, and the Italian Rhetoric of Magnificence,"  presented at the joint meeting of the Renaissance Society of America and the Society for Renaissance Studies (Britain) in Cambridge, England. Then, following 6 weeks of research in England funded by a grant from the Yum and Ross Arnold Fund, she went to Orvieto, Italy to give a paper entitled "Liturgy as a Source of Narrative Design in The Duomo of Orvieto" at the International Conference on Eucharist and Eschatology in the Duomo (Cathedral) of Orvieto," sponsored by the Archdiocese of  Central Italy, the Cathedrals of Orvieto and Florence, the Commune of Orvieto, Gordon College (USA) and local businesses. During July 2002, Dr. James received a Mary Baldwin College/Jesse Ball DuPont Grant for research in England in order to do research for a graduate level course in English Art.

     Sara James has written on topic of local interest, including stained glass windows in First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, VA, and in two historic churches in Staunton, St. Francis Church and Trinity Episcopal Church. Trinity Church holds  an especially rich collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century glass, including a dozen windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Her chapter, "Stained Glass Windows in Trinity Church,” appears in Conformable to Doctrine: and Discipline A History of Augusta Parish, Trinity Church, Staunton, Virginia by Nancy Sorrells, Katharine Brown, & Suzanne Simmons (1996).

      Currently, in addition to her continuing interest in Italian Renaissance art, Dr. James is researching the fourteenth century paintings of the life of the Virgin Mary in Orvieto and art in the England that Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew. She is also active in the college community. She has served as chair of the art department, chair of the Honor Scholars, and in 2003-04, she chaired the committee to inaugurate Dr. Pamela Fox on April 2, 2004 as the ninth president of Mary Baldwin College.

     Dr. James has traveled widely in Western Europe, especially in England and Italy. Annually during May Term, she leads groups of Mary Baldwin students on a trip --- usually to Italy --- to share her knowledge of, and enthusiasm for art, history and contemporary culture.

list of publications