Douglas N. Dow

Dr. Dow’s research interests center on art and religious reform in sixteenth-century Italy, the production and consumption of art by non-elites, and the professional and social networks of Renaissance artists and patrons. His most recent book, Bernardino Poccetti and the Art of Religious Painting at the End of the Florentine Renaissance (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), addresses many of these themes. In addition to co-editing Visualizing the Past in Italian Renaissance Art (Brill, 2021), he also wrote Apostolic Iconography and Florentine Confraternities in the Age of Reform (Ashgate, 2014). His articles have appeared in the Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, Confraternitas, Source, and Space, Place, and Motion: Locating Confraternities in the Late Medieval and Early Modern City. His research has been supported by grants from the Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut, the Kress Foundation, the Renaissance Society of America, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the Mark Chapman Foundation, and Kansas State University. His interest in the intersection of digital technologies, popular culture, and the history of Renaissance art led to an article on the presence of anachronistic architectural monuments in the video game “Assassin’s Creed II” (in Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History ).

At Kansas State, Dr. Dow teaches introductory courses in the history of art as well as upper-level courses on Renaissance and Baroque Art. Since 2017 he has also taught a course each summer for the Kansas State University in Italy program. His performance in the classroom was recognized by the College of Arts and Sciences with a William L. Stamey Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2011, and by the University in 2020 with the Commerce Bank and W. T. Kemper Foundation Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 2015 he received the Alumni Award in Art History from the College of Arts and Architecture at Pennsylvania State University.