Suzanne Scanlan

Suzanne Scanlan’s research centers on women as artists, patrons and collectors from the Renaissance through the Modern period. In 2010 Scanlan joined the faculty at RISD, where she teaches a broad range of courses, including History of Drawing, Iconoclasm, The Renaissance Embodied and Baroque Rome. She has developed collaborative courses with studio faculty, most recently a travel seminar exploring the role of the artist on the Grand Tour.

Scanlan is the author of Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi, 1400–1500: Religious Women and Art in Fifteenth-Century Rome (Amsterdam University Press, 2018). In spring 2017, her co-authored article Death Did Not Become Her: Unconventional Women and the Problem of Female Commemoration in Early Modern Rome won the prize for Best Article from Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Scanlan’s most recent book, Esther Pressoir: A Modern Woman’s Painter (Lund Humphries, 2024), traces the travels, diverse relationships and prolific career of the American Modern artist—and RISD alum—Esther Estelle Pressoir.