Gauvin Alexander Bailey
Professor and Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art
Department of Art History and Art Conservation
- Correspondent étranger, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Institut de France
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
- Winner of a 2016 Queen’s University Prize for Excellence in Research
- Winner of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
Research Interests
Late Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo Art & Architecture in France, Italy, Central Europe, and Iberia and their international diffusion in Latin America, Asia, and Africa; also the arts patronage of the Catholic Church and religious orders such as the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and SSHRC, Professor Bailey created a research website, with the help of his students. This site, Colonial Architecture Project, includes a searchable photographic database and historical timelines.
Biography
Gauvin Alexander Bailey has taught Renaissance, Baroque, Latin American, and Asian art at King’s College at the University of Aberdeen, Boston College, and Clark University, and has held guest professorships at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (as the 2017 Panofsky Professor), Georgetown University, Boston University, and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. He has curated and served as consultant on museum exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum, the Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, among others and has held fellowships with the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the British Academy. He has published nine books including, most recently, Architecture & Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church and Identity, 1604-1830 (2018), The Palace of Sans-Souci in Milot, Haiti (ca. 1806-13): the Untold Story of the Potsdam of the Rainforest (2017), and The Spiritual Rococo: Décor and Divinity from the Salons of Paris to the Missions of Patagonia (2014). He has just finished a tenth book entitled The Architecture of Empire: France in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, 1664-1954. He has also co-authored or co-edited seven other books and wrote over 80 articles and book chapters on topics ranging from Renaissance ivories carved in the Philippines to Italian Baroque paintings in a time of plague. Bailey maintains an active international lecture schedule and has made over 100 presentations at academic institutions and museums on six continents. He writes regular exhibition and book reviews for The Burlington Magazine and the Art Newspaper.
Courses Taught
- ARTH253 Baroque Art
- ARTH370 Architecture of the Baroque Period
- ARTH451 Caravaggio & Artemisia
- ARTH272 Latin American Art
- ARTH372 Art of Colonial Latin America
- ARTH472 Art & Global Encounter
- ARTH854 Studies in Baroque and Rococo
Selected Books
Recent Books
The Architecture of Empire: France in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, 1664-1962. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.
Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church, and Society, 1604-1830. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018.
The Palace of Sans-Souci in Milot, Haiti (ca. 1806-13): the Untold Story of the Potsdam of the Rainforest. Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte and Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2017.
The Spiritual Rococo: Décor and Divinity from the Salons of Paris to the Missions of Patagonia. Ashgate, 2014.
Baroque & Rococo. Phaidon Press, 2012. Published in Chinese as: 巴洛克与洛可可. Beijing: Fine Arts & Photography Publishing House, 2020.
The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru. University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Published in Spanish as El barroco andino híbrido: culturas convergentes en las iglesias del Sur Andino. Arequipa, Ediciones El Lector, 2018.
Art of Colonial Latin America. Phaidon Press, 2005. Published in Chinese as: 殖民地时期的拉丁美洲艺术. Changsha: Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2020.
Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610, University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773. University of Toronto Press, 1999.
The Jesuits & the Grand Mogul: Renaissance Art at the Imperial Court of India (1580-1630), Smithsonian Institution, 1998.
