Borsook, Eve

Date born: 1929

Place born: Toronto, Canada

Date died:

Place died:

Scholar of Renaissance art at the Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Harvard. Borsook was the daughter of Henry Borsook (1897-1984), a renowned chemist, and Lisl Hummel (Borsook). The year she was born, her father joined the Department of Biology at California Technical Institute. She attended Vassar College, receiving her B.A in studio art (winning a competition design given by Harper's Bazaar magazine) before graduate work at New York University in 1949. She received her M.A. there in 1952 writing a thesis on the early Baroque painter Carlo Saraceni under Richard Offner. Borsook moved to London and the Courtauld Institute, University of London, to study under Johannes Wilde. Using a Fulbright scholarship, she studied in Italy. There she collaborated with the group of mural conservators in Florence headed by Leonetto Tintori. Early articles in the Burlington Magazine followed. She wrote her thesis on Italian mural painting at the Courtauld. In 1960 Borsook published a revised version dissertation, which was quickly recognized as a groundbreaking survey of Italian mural painting. She collaborated with Tintori on a book on the Peruzzi Chapel in 1965. The 1966 flood of the Arno River in Florence damaged many of the works about which she wrote. That year she published the first edition of what has become one of the most readable scholarly guidebooks for Florence. A volume on the frescos of Monesiepi appeared in Italian in 1969. Borsook assisted Offner in his later years in Florence on his life-project, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The interest in Italian mural painting raised by the flood spurred Borsook to reevaluate her research. She issued an expanded and revised version of Mural Painters in 1980. A book on the Sassetti and Ghilandaio frescos at Santa Trinita was co-authored with Johannes Offerhaus in 1981. She declined a Samuel H. Kress Professorship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, because the year-long fellowship would take her way from Italy for too long. In 1990, Borsook transferred interest to mosaics with Messages in Mosaic: The Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily, 1130-1187 a consideration of the medieval mosaics at Cefalu, the Cappella Palatina at Palermo, and Monreale. She was appointed to the advisory commision on the cleaning of the Sisteen Chapel ceiling by the Vatican. She lives in Florence, working as a research associate at the Villa I Tatti.

Borsook's contribution to art history was to explain mural painting within its architectural context and to concentrate on mural painting technique as part of the art-historical analysis (Smyth, 1999). The photographs and details taken by herself were so techically excellent that she advised Roman officials in their photographic documentation of Roman churches.

Home Country: Canada/United States/Italy

Sources: Smyth, Craig Hugh. "Glimpses of Richard Offner." in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p. 38; Smyth, Craig Hugh. "Preface." in Osti, Ornella Francisci, ed. Mosaics of Friendship: Studies in Art and History for Eve Borsook. Florence: Centro Di, 1999, pp. 7-10;

Bibliography: [complete bibliography:] "Eve Borsook, a Bibliography." in Osti, Ornella Francisci, ed. Mosaics of Friendship: Studies in Art and History for Eve Borsook. Florence: Centro Di, 1999, pp. 11-14; [dissertation:] The Mural Painters of Tuscany, from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto. Courtauld Insititue of Art, University of London, published, London: Phaidon Press, 1960; and Tintori, Leonetto. Giotto: the Peruzzi Chapel. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1965; The Companion Guide to Florence. London: Collins, 1966; and Offerhaus, Johannes. Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinità, Florence: History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel. Doornspijk, Holland: Davaco Publishers, 1981; Messages in Mosaic: the Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily, 1130-1187. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; edited, with Gioffredi Superbi, Fiorella. Italian Altarpieces, 1250-1550: Function and Design. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; edited, with Gioffredi Superbi, Fiorella. and Pagliarulo, Giovanni. Medieval Mosaics: Light, Color, Materials. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: Silvana Editorale, 2000.