Elinor Richter earned her PhD, MPhil and MA from Columbia University. She has taught full-time at Hunter College since 2001 and is currently the Associate Chair of Art History. She is also on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
As a Professor of Renaissance Art, she has focused primarily on Italian Art of the 15th and 16th centuries. Her concentration has been on the field of Italian sculpture, not only in Florence, the epicenter of the new Humanism, but also at other Tuscan centers such as Siena and Orvieto. Recently she has devoted much of her energies to the study of patronage, primarily that of the guilds and the Medici family; in the case of the latter from their earliest beginnings through the formation of the great ducal collection. Richter has always been interested in seeking out connections to the literature, politics and history of the Renaissance era. A secondary field of interest is the art of the 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly in Spain and in England.
Richter’s courses at Hunter include surveys of Renaissance Art, both early and late, as well as seminars on Italian sculpture, the Medici, Goya, England in the Age of Hogarth and Research Methods. In 1997, she was the first adjunct to receive the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at Hunter College.
Her articles have appeared in artibus et historiae, Source, and the Grove Dictionary of Art. She has written a book on La Scultura di Antonio Federighi (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2002) and is currently preparing a monographic study on the fortuna critica of Raphael’s Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. She is a frequent lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Students League, and the Smithsonian Institute. Richter has also written on contemporary artists. She is also a contributor to reviews on H-NET ITALY.
