Bailey, Gauvin Alexander

PERSONAL: Education: Trinity College at the University of Toronto, B.A., 1989; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1996.

ADDRESSES: Office— Department of Theology, Boston College, 21 Campanella Way, Rm. 349, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467; fax: 617-552-0794. E-mail— gauvin.bailey.1@bc.edu.

CAREER: Writer, art historian, curator, and educator. Clark University, Worcester, MA, assistant professor, 1997-2003, associate professor of Renaissance and Baroque art, 2003-06; Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, associate professor of the history of art and religion, 2006—. Boston University, Luce Visiting Professor in Scripture and the Visual Arts, 2006. Conducts graduate seminars in art and religion at Weston Jesuit School of Theology. Curator of museum exhibitions on Renaissance, Baroque, and Asian art, including Saints and Sinners: Art and Culture in Caravaggio’s Italy, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston, College, 1999;Baroque: vision jésuite du Tintoret à Rubens, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, 2003; and Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800, Worcester Art Museum, 2005.

AWARDS, HONORS: Hanna Kiel Fellowship, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2000-01; Rome Prize, American Academy of Rome, 2000-01 (declined); Robert Lehman Foundation research grant, Renaissance Society of America, 2000, 2003; and National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 2004, 2004-05.

WRITINGS

(With Lisa Bolombek and Robert B. Mason) Tamerlane’s Tableware: A New Approach to Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Iran, Mazda Publishers in association with the Royal Ontario Museum (Costa Mesa, CA), 1996.

The Jesuits and the Grand Mogul: Renaissance Art at the Imperial Court of India, 1580-1630 (exhibition catalogue), Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), 1998.

Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Ignazio e l’arte dei gesuiti, edited by Giovanni Sale, Jaca Book (Milan, Italy), 2003, published as The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540-1773, edited by John W. O’Malley and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, St. Joseph’s University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2005.

Art of Colonial Latin America, Phaidon (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Pamela M. Jones and Franco Mormando) Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800, Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, MA), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Fundaciones jesuiticas en Iberoamerica, Luisa Elena Alcala, Ediciones El Viso (Madrid, Spain), 2002;Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003;The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ II, edited by Roman Malek, Sankt Augustin, 2003;Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800, edited by Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer, Victoria and Albert Museum (London, England), 2004;The Jesuits II, edited by John W. O’Malley and others, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006; and Tesoros/Reasures/Tesouros: The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820, edited by Joseph J. Rishel, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA) and Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2006. Contributor to journals, including Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Apollo, Renaissance Quarterly, Catholic Historical Review, and Oriental Art.

SIDELIGHTS: Gauvin Alexander Bailey is a scholar of the “intersection of art and Catholicism in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, especially in Italy, Latin America, and Asia,” noted a biographer on the Boston College Department of Theology Web site, with a specialty in the “arts patronage of the Society of Jesus” (the Jesuits). Bailey explores this topic in a number of his books. In Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773, Bailey considers how Jesuits “effectively utilized images of all kinds in their mission to educate Catholics,” and how these educational activities were conducted outside of Europe, commented Claire Farago in the Renaissance Quarterly. He looks specifically at missions in Japan, China, Mughal India, and Paraguay. In Japan, Christian art was accepted and even became an influence on Japanese painting, Farago noted. In China, however, the realistic Christian artwork was rejected. In Mughal India, locals had already adopted many Christian images and subjects, and the Jesuits had to encourage the Indians to adopt a different interpretation of the meaning of those images. Jesuit missions in Paraguay adopted local art and sculpture styles to help bring their religious message to local populations.

Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610 contains Bailey’s scholarly examination of pre-Baroque Jesuit art in Rome, and how it came to involve the Jesuits in later Counter-Reformation art. He “argues that much Jesuit art deserves a second look, not only because the Jesuits themselves were deeply concerned with images and their efficacy in religious devotion, but also because of the inherent interest of the objects themselves,” commented Ian Verstegen in the Canadian Journal of History. Verstegen asserted that Bailey’s book “will now be the standard source on the subject” of early Jesuit art.

In The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540-1773, Bailey and coeditor John W. O’Malley assemble “the first comprehensive survey of the worldwide artistic enterprise of the early Society of Jesus,” remarked James Martin in America. The contributors cover a wide variety of topics, including Jesuit architecture, theater, and music; Jesuit influence on Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting; Jesuit artistic and architectural heritage in Latin America; and Jesuit influences on art in Asia and North America. “By any measure,” Martin stated, “this new volume is brilliantly conceived, consistently fascinating and absolutely gorgeous to look at.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

America, December 5, 2005, James Martin, “Jesuit Arts: A New Book on Art and the Society of Jesus,” review of The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540-1773, p. 16.

Canadian Journal of History, April, 2005, Ian Verstegen, review of Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610, p. 90.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540-1773.

Renaissance Quarterly, spring, 2002, Claire Farago, review of Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773, p. 319.

ONLINE

Boston College Department of Theology Web site, http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/theology/ (December 22, 2007), biography of Gauvin Alexander Bailey.*