Barbara Baert


Barbara Baert is a Belgian art historian and professor of art history as well as a fellow at the Illuminare – Center for Medieval and Renaissance Art at KU Leuven. She is the founder of the Iconology Research Group, an international and interdisciplinary platform dedicated to the study of image interpretation.
Baert has received numerous awards and prizes in her field such as the Francqui Prize for Human Sciences, as well as the Commander of the Order of Léopold, Belgium's oldest and highest order.

Early life

Baert was born in Turnhout, Antwerp, in Belgium in 1967. She studied at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, obtaining a doctoral degree in 1997 with her research on the True Cross that was later published in Englishin 2004 under the title ''A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image.''

Career

Baert is affiliated as a research fellow with the Illuminare – Center for Medieval and Renaissance Art at KU Leuven), where she also teaches in the fields of iconology, art theory and analysis, and medieval art. In 2006, she founded the Iconology Research Group, an international and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation of images promoting collaboration among three visual research traditions that pursue similar goals but often follow separate—usually national—trajectories: visual anthropology, Bildwissenschaft, and iconology.
Baert is also editor-in-chief of three peer-reviewed journals: Studies in Iconology, Art and Religion, and Iconologies.
She has directed several international research programmes, including:
  • Mary Magdalene and the Touching of Jesus, an intra- and interdisciplinary investigation of the interpretation of John 20:17, sponsored by the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders, Belgium
  • The Woman with the Hemorrhage, an iconological study of the interpretation of the Haemorrhoissa in medieval art, funded by the KU Leuven
  • Caput Ioanis in Disco. Object-medium-function, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, KU Leuven en Universität Wien
  • Ornamenta sacra ''. Iconology of liturgical objects and iconology
Baert is also a member of the editorial board of Brepols–Series IKON Studies and La rivista di engramma .

Prizes and awards

Baert was honoured twice by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts : in 1993 for her outstanding thesis in art history entitled Het Boec van den Houte'' and in 2006 for her outstanding scientific career before the age of 40. In 2016, she was honoured with the Pioneer's Award of the KU Leuven as well as the Francqui Prize by the Francqui Foundation for her pioneering work in iconology and medieval visual culture, awarded annually to a scientist associated with a Belgian academic institution and also under the age of 50 at the start of the year of winning the prize.
Since January 2014, she has been a life member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. She is also a member of the Academia Europaea, a pan-European academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. Between April and September 2015, she held a fellowship at the International Research Institute for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy in Weimar, Germany.
In 2017, Baert received the honour of Commander of the Order of Léopold, Belgium's oldest and highest order. In 2019, she became a member in residence of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and in 2020, a fellow at the Berlin Center for Advanced Studies BildEvidenz. In 2021 she gave the James Loeb Lecture at the Central Institute for Art History in Munich, Germany, on 'How Kairos transformed into Occasio ', about the Kairos/Occasio motif. With her paper on the same motif, she offered the first complete status quaestionis on the meanings attributed to grisaille from the first hypothesis of Aby Warburg to the present.
In 2023, Baert became a professor at the Warburg House, Hamburg, a German art and history forum. In 2024, she was asked to give a lecture as part of the Dahlem Humanities Center Lectures programme at the Free University of Berlin, and the same year was made a visiting professor at the André Chastel Center – University of the Sorbonne in Paris at the invitation of Stéphane Toussaint.

Publications (selection)

  • B. Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image, Leiden: Brill, 2004.
  • B. Baert, "The Gaze in the Garden. Noli me tangere and embodiment in the 15th century Netherlands and Rhineland", in Body and Embodiment. Nederlands kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 2007, pp. 37–61.
  • B. Baert, "Touching the Hem. The Thread between Garment and Blood in the Story of the Woman with the Hemorrhage ", in Das Kleid der Bilder, eds. Marius Rimmele & David Ganz, Konstanz-Zürich, 2012, pp. 159–182.
  • B. Baert, Interspaces between Word, Gaze and Touch. The Bible and the Visual Medium in the Middle Ages. Collected essays on Noli me tangere, the Woman with the Haemorrhage, the Head of John the Baptist, Leuven: Peeters, 2011.
  • B. Baert, Caput Joannis in Disco. Essay on a Man's Head, Leiden: Brill, 2012.
  • B. Baert, L. Kusters and E. Sidgwick, "An issue of blood. The healing of the woman with the Haemorrhage in early medieval visual culture", in Blood, Sweat and Tears - The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Horstmanshoff, Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 307–338.
  • B. Baert, "Adam, Seth and Jerusalem. The Legend of the Wood of the Cross in Medieval Literature and Iconography", in Adam, le premier home, Firenze, 2012, pp. 69–99.
  • B. Baert, Ann-Sophie Lehmann & Jenke van der Akkerveken, New Perspectives in Iconology: Visual Studies and Anthropology Brussels, 2012.
  • B. Baert, "The Johannesschüssel as Andachtsbild. The Gaze, the Medium and the Senses", in Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. Catrien Santing, B. Baert & Anita Traninger, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 117–160.
  • B. Baert, Late Mediaeval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries: Contributions to Gender and Artistic Expression, Leuven: Peeters, 2015.
  • B. Baert, Pneuma and the Visual arts in the Middle Ages and early Modernity, Leuven-Walpole, 2016.
  • B. Baert, "Pentecost and the Senses. A Hermeneutical Contribution to the Visual Medium and the Sensorium in Early Medieval Manuscript Tradition", in Preaching after Easter, eds. Johan Leemans & Rich Bishop, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 346–370.
  • B. Baert, Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium. Nachleben, Iconography, Hermeneutics Leuven: Peeters, 2016.
  • B. Baert, In Response to Echo. Beyond Mimesis or Dissolution as Scopic Regime , Leuven-Walpole, 2016.
  • B. Baert, Revisiting Salome's Dance in Medieval and Early Modern Iconology, Leuven-Walpole, 2016.
  • B. Baert, "Stains. Trace-Cloth-Symptom", in Textile. Journal of Cloth and Culture, 15, 3, 2017, pp. 270–291.
  • B. Baert, About Stains or the Image as Residue, Leuven-Walpole, 2017.
  • B. Baert, "Marble and the Sea or Echo Emerging. ", in Treasures of the sea. Art or Craft, ed. Avinoam Shalem, Espacio, 2017, pp. 35–54.
  • B. Baert, "He or she who glimpses, desires, is wounded. A dialogue in the interspace between Aby Warburg and Georges Didi-Huberman", in Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 23, 4, 2018, pp. 47–79.
  • B. Baert, What about Enthusiasm? A Rehabilitation. Pentecost, Pygmalion, Pathosformel, Leuven-Walpole, 2018.
  • B. Baert, "Fragments", ed. S. Heremans, Leuven-Walpole, 2018.
  • B. Baert, Interruptions & Transitions. Essays on the Senses in Medieval and early Modern Visual Culture, Leiden, 2018.
  • B. Baert, About Sieves and Sieving. Motif, Symbol, Technique, Paradigm, Berlin, 2019.
  • B. Baert, De uil in de grot. Gesprekken met beelden, kunstenaars en schrijvers, Antwerp, 2019.
  • B. Baert, The Weeping Rock. Revisiting Niobe through Paragone, Pathosformel and Petrification, Leuven-Walpole, 2020.
  • B. Baert, Signed PAN. Erwin Panofsky's "The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline", Leuven-Walpole-Paris-Bristol, 2020.
  • B. Baert, "Noli me tangere in the Codex Egberti and in the Gospel-Book of Otto III : Visual Exegesis in Context," in Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden, eds. Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, Leiden, 2020, pp. 36–5.
  • B. Baert, "Afterlife Studies and the Occasio Grisaille in Mantua," in Ikon, 13, 2020, pp. 95–108.
  • B. Baert, "Life is Short, Art is Long, Crisis is Fleeting, Kairos or Weaving the Right Moment," in Textile. Journal of Cloth and Culture, 2020, pp. 1–23
  • The Right Moment. Essays offered to Barbara Baert, Laureate of the 2016 Francqui Prize in Human Sciences, on the Occasion of the Celebratory Symposium at the Francqui Foundation, Brussels, 18–19 October 2018, in consultation with Han Lamers. Editorial assistance: Stephanie Heremans & Laura Tack,, Leuven - Paris - Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2021.
  • From Kairos to Occasio Through Fortuna. Text/ Image/ Afterlife. On the Antique Critical Moment, a Grisaille in Mantua and the Fortunes of Aby Warburg , Brepols & Harvey Miller, 2021.
  • The Gaze from Above. Reflections on Cosmic Eyes in Visual Culture.. Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2021.
  • Petrifying Gazes. Danaë and the Uncanny Space.. Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2021.
  • Baert, B., Hertog, T. & Van der Stock, J. Big Bang. Imagining the Universe. Veurne: Hannibal, 2021.
  • "The Critical Moment. Revisiting the Annunciation in the Quattrocento: Wind, Kairos, Snail." In: J. Clifton, B. Haeger, E. Wise, Marian Images in Context: Doctrines, Devotions, and Cults.. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
  • Looking Into The Rain. Magic - Moisture - Medium. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.
  • Baert, B., Claes, M-C. & Dekoninck, R. Ornamenta Sacra. Late Medieval and Early Modern Liturgical Objects in a European Context.. Leuven: Peeters, 2022.
  • Baert B. On Barbara Baert. Compendium Questionnaires, in Iconographica. Studies in the History of Images, Supplementum, 21, 2022/23, p. 10-18.
  • Baert B. Op een dag zonder datum. Brieven over kunst en literatuur, Snoeck, 2023.
  • Baert B. Bark / Birch / Birkenau. , in Textile. Cloth and Culture, 22, 2, 2024, p. 1-9.