Walter S. MelionAsa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1988

Walter Melion is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta, where he has taught since 2004. He was previously Professor and Chair of Art History at The Johns Hopkins University.  He has published extensively on Dutch and Flemish art and art theory of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, on Jesuit image-theory, on the relation between theology and aesthetics in the early modern period, and on the artist Hendrick Goltzius.

In addition to monographs on Jerónimo Nadal's Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (2003-2007) and on scriptural illustration in the 16^th-century Low Countries (2009), his books include Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander's `Schilder-Boeck' (Chicago: 1991) and The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625 (Philadelphia: 2009). He is co-editor of Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: 2008), Early Modern Eyes (Leiden: 2010), Meditatio-Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual Culture (Leiden: 2010), The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400-1700 (Leiden: 2011), and Ut pictura meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500-1700, amongst other volumes. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.

Books

Through a Glass, Darkly: Allegory and Faith in Netherlandish Prints from Lucas van Leyden to Rembrandt, eds. Walter S. Melion and James Clifton (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 2019)

The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550-1625 (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's University Press, 2009)

The Art of Vision in Jerome Nadal's "Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia" [Volume 1 of Jerome Nadal,"Annotations and Meditations on the Liturgical Gospels," trans. Father F. Homann, S.J.] (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's University Press, 2003)

Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander's "Schilder-Boeck" (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1991)

Editions

`Ut pictura meditatio': The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500-1700 [Proteus: Studies in Early Modern Identity Formation 4], eds. W. Melion, R. Dekoninck, and A. Guiderdoni-Bruslé (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012)

The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400-1700 [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 20], eds. C. Brusati, K. A. E. Enenkel, and W. S. Melion (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011)

Meditatio - Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual Culture [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 17], eds. K. A. E. Enenkel and W. S. Melion (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011)

Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century [exh. cat., Museum of Biblical Art, New York City; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta], eds. J. Clifton and W. S. Melion (London and New York: Museum of Biblical Art and D. Giles Ltd., 2009)

Early Modern Eyes [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 13], eds. W. S. Melion and L. Palmer Wandel (Leiden: Brill, 2009)

Image & Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, co-eds. R. Falkenburg and T. Richardson (Turnhout: Brepols Press, Spring 2008)

Images of Memory: On Remembering and Representation, co-ed., S. Küchler (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)

Cultural Differentiation and Cultural Identity in the Visual Arts, co-ed., S. J. Barnes (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989)

Recent Articles

“Signa Resurrectionis: Vision, Image, and Pictorial Proof in Pieter Bruegel’s Resurrection of circa 1562-1563”, in The Art of Visual Exegesis: Rhetoric, Texts, Images, eds. Vernon K. Robbins, Walter S. Melion, and Roy R. Jeal (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 381-440

“Libellus piarum precum (1575): Iterations of the Five Holy Wounds in an Early Jesuit Prayerbook,” in Jesuit Image Theory [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 45], eds. W. de Boer, K. A. E. Enenkel, and W. S. Melion (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016), 189-253

“Introduction: The Jesuit Engagement with the Status and Functions of the Visual Image”, in Jesuit Image Theory [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 45], eds. W. de Boer, K. A. E. Enenkel, and W. S. Melion (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016), 1-49

“Figured Personification and Parabolic Embodiment in Jan David’s Occasio arrepta, neglecta,” in Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 41], eds. W. S. Melion and B. Ramakers (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016), 371-432

“Personification; An Introduction”, in Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 41], eds. W. S. Melion and B. Ramakers (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016), 1-40

“Apellea et ipse manu: Hieronymus Cock and His Allegories of Art—Apollo, Diana, and the Niobids, The Labors of Hercules, Hercules and the Pygmies, and The Raising of the Brazen Serpent”, in Myth, Allegory, and Faith: The Kirk Edward Long Collection of Mannerist Prints, ed. B. Barryte (Stanford: Silvana Editoriale, 2015), 181-201

“Convent and cubiculum cordis: The Incarnational Thematic of Materiality in the Cistercian Prayerbook of Martin Boschman (1610)”, in Image and Incarnation: The Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image, 1400-1700 [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 39], eds. W. S. Melion and L. P. Wandel (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 413-58

“Introduction”, co-authored with L. P. Wandel, in Image and Incarnation: The Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image, 1400-1700 [Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 39], eds. W. S. Melion and L. P. Wandel (Leiden and Boston: 2015), 1-14