Bernard Aikema - Biography#
Bernard Aikema studied art history at the University of Amsterdam, where he obtained both his MA and his PhD degrees. He has taught art history of the early modern period at the University of Nijmegen, and has held a chair for the history of Italian art at the University of Louvain. He has been a guest professor at Princeton and Harvard Universities in the United States and at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales and the Ecole Pratique des hautes études in Paris. He regularly holds courses and lectures at universities, museums and other scholarly and cultural institutions in various countries in Europe (Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Monaco, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Great Britain, the Czech Republic), the United States and Canada.
Presently, he is full professor (professore ordinario) for art history of the early modern period at the University of Verona (excellence chair, chiamata per chiara fama).
His field of expertise is Venetian art of the 15th-18th centuries (especially painting and the graphic arts) and the diffusion and reception of the Renaissance in Europe. He is considered a leading expert on these topics and their methodological reflection. Apart from more than twenty books and exhibition catalogues, he has published over 180 scholarly articles, comments, reviews etc. in various languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Czech, Greek, Spanish), and contributes regularly to leading periodicals in the field (Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Arte Veneta, Bollettino Centro Palladio, Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte, Paragone Arte, Venezia Cinquecento, Kunstchronik, Journal fur Kunstgeschichte, Kunstchronik, etc.), catalogues and essay-volumes in the field and is (co)author of a number of books. He is a regular lecturer and debater at conferences and other scholarly and cultural events in various countries.
Among his books may be mentioned Willem Schellinks: viaggio al Sud (1983), Nel regno dei poveri: Arte e storia dei grandi ospedali veneziani in eta moderna 1474-1797 (1989, with Dulcia Meijers); Pietro della Vecchia and the heritage of the Renaissance in Venice (1990); Italian paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries in Dutch public collections (1997, with Ewoud Mijnlieff and Bert Treffers); Jacopo Bassano and his public: moralizing pictures in an age of reform, ca.1535-1600 (1996); Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima (2005, atti del convegno, with Rosella Lauber and Max Seidel); Le botteghe di Tiziano (2009, with Giorgio Tagliaferro). A book-length study on Giorgione, and exhibition projects on Hieronymus Bosch and the Mediterranean world, and on the early career of Titian (Padua, 2019) are in preparation.
He has been curator of a number of major exhibitions with scholarly catalogues in Europe and the United States, among which Disegni veneti delle collezioni olandesi (Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, with Bert Meijer, 1986), Painters of Venice (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1989, with Boudewijn Bakker), Tiepolo and his circle. Drawings from American collections (Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum and New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1996), Tiepolo in Holland (Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, with Marguerite Tuijn, 1996), Renaissance Venice and the North (Venice, Palazzo Grassi, with Beverly Brown and Giovanna Nepi Scirè, 1999), Cranach, l’altro rinascimento (Rome, Galleria Borghese, with Anna Coliva, 2010), Tiziano, Venezia e il papa Borgia (Pieve di Cadore, Palazzo COSMO, 2013), Paolo Veronese. L’illusione della realtà (Verona, Palazzo di Gran Guardia, with Paola Marini, 2014), Jheronimus Bosch e Venezia (Venice, Palazzo Ducale, 2017), Durer e il Rinascimento fra Germania e Italia (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 2018). He has been, and is, a member of the curatorial committees of several major exhibitions in Europe and the United States, most recently Late Titian (Vienna-Venice, 2007-2008), Hans von Aachen: Hofkunstler in Europa 1552-1615 (Aachen-Prague-Vienna, 2010-2011), Il Settecento a Verona (Verona, 2011-2012), The European Renaissance (Zürich, 2016), Antonio Balestra (Verona, 2017), Tintoretto (Venice, 2018).
Bernard Aikema is chairman of the comitato scientifico of the Fondazione Centro Studi Tiziano e Cadore and director of the scholarly periodical Studi Tizianeschi. He is a member of the board of the scholarly periodicals Venezia Cinquecento, Ateneo Veneto and Ricche Minere.
Bernard Aikema is a member (on invitation) of several scholarly and cultural associations, among which the Ateneo Veneto and the Academia Europaea.
As president of the Stichting Nederlands Venetie Comite (Netherlands Foundation for the Saveguarding of Venice), and member of the executive board of the Association of private committees for Venice, Bernard Aikema is actively involved in problems concerning the safeguarding of Venice and the preservation of monuments, in collaboration with UNESCO.
Bernard Aikema is Ufficiale nell’Ordine del Merito of the Italian Republic (nomination 1992).
