Sheila ffolliott, Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University, has been awarded the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award from the Renaissance Society of America (RSA). As described by the RSA, this award “honors a lifetime of uncompromising devotion to the highest standard of scholarship accompanied by exceptional achievement in Renaissance studies.” The award was presented to Professor ffolliott at the RSA’s annual meeting on Friday, March 21, 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Professor ffolliott taught at George Mason between 1978 and 2010. Her teaching covered a broad range of subjects, from “Early Renaissance Art in Italy” to “The English Country House and Garden” and seminars on “Patronage and Collecting in Europe, c. 1500–1750,” “Saints, Solders, Sovereigns, Spouses: Gender in the Renaissance and Baroque,” and “Women in the Renaissance.”
Professor ffolliott received her PhD in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania, and is now one of the most esteemed voices in the field of early Modern art of Italy. She has published broadly on art of the Italian Renaissance, and her work on women artists has been particularly influential for the field. Her essays, for example, address topics such as early modern women as artists, patrons, connoisseurs and collectors, portrayals of Catherine de Medici, Artemesia Gentileschi, portraiture, and the legacy and future of feminism in Art History. Her book in progress is entitled The Portrait at Court: Catherine de’ Medici as Subject, Collector, and Observer.
Professor ffolliott has already won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women in 2014, and a Book Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society has been named in her honor. Throughout her career she has been dedicated to her field, serving as President and Vice President of the Sixteenth Century Society (2013), President of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (1998), Vice Chair of the Medici Archive Project (2013 to the present), and Vice President for Program Coordination at the Italian Art Society (1993). She has also worked closely with museums. She guest-curated an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, entitled "Images of a Queen’s Power: The Artemisia Tapestries" in 2007 and served on the committee for the exhibition "Italian Women Artists: Renaissance to Baroque" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.
Even in retirement, Professor ffolliott has remained incredibly active, and her work has had international reach. She has collaborated with the El Prado Museum in Madrid on a project entitled “El Prado en Femenino,” an effort to make more public the significant roles of women in the formation of the Prado’s collection. The results of this project will be published in two volumes, and Professor ffolliott’s tireless work has enabled the museum to continue to shed light on women’s roles in its history. For many years, she also served on the board (and at one point as President) of the American Friends of the Attingham Trust, a British educational organization that focuses on English country houses and collections. This work has helped open rich sites and collections to a global network of scholars and curators. She continues to be an active traveler, spending time in Europe and journeying to places around the world, from Central and South America to the North Sea islands, Morocco, and Cape Horn.
April 11, 2025