Elizabeth Sears

Elizabeth Sears has two areas of specialization: European representational arts from the eighth through the fourteenth century and historiography. Much of her medieval research has involved close study of manuscripts, but her work has been characteristically thematic and problem-based (e.g., the iconography of sensory perception, author portraits and theories of authorship, guild regulations, and the medieval critical eye).  Her historiographical research, archive-based, has led her to study methods of image study. Publications include “Eye training: Goldschmidt/Wölfflin,” and treatments of figures standing in the Warburgian  tradition including H. W. Janson, W. S. Heckscher, Edgar Wind, Fritz Saxl, Jean Seznec, and Kenneth Clark. She is currently engaged in writing a collective biography, tentatively titled Warburg Circles, 1929-1964, that throws light on a highly influential intellectual movement owed to scholars who emigrated from Germany in the Nazi era.

Field(s) of Study

• Medieval art and historiography