Dr. Katherine Baker

Department Chair

Associate Professor of Art History

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Education

Education

• Ph.D., University of Virginia
• M.A.,  University of Virginia
• B.A.,  University of Wisconsin-Madison

Teaching Specialties

• Medieval and Early Modern Art
• Global Art History

Research Interests

• Late medieval and early modern Parisian art
• Ivory carving and the work of tabletier
• Archival documents, particularly estate inventories
• Games and toys made in 16th century Paris
• Printed Books of Hours

Links of Interests:

A Merchant of Ivory in 16th-Century Paris: The Estate Inventory of Chicart Bailly. Leiden: Brill, 2023
https://brill.com/display/title/64034?language=en 

“Parisian Painters and their Missing Oeuvres: Evidence from the Archives,” in Lost Artefacts from Medieval England and France: Representation, Reimagination, Recovery. York Medieval Press series. York: Boydell & Brewer, York Medieval Press, 2022
https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781914049057/lost-artefacts-from-medieval-england-and-france/

“Un jeu Gentil : la fabrication des damiers à Paris au XVIe siècle.” Documents d'histoire parisienne 23 (2021): 5-11. 
https://www.saprat.fr/documents-d-histoire-parisienne-20.htm

Baker, Katherine. “Chicart Bailly and the Specter of Death: Memento Mori in a Sixteenth-Century Estate Inventory.” In The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe, edited by Stephen Perkinson.

Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art (distributed by Yale University Press), 2017. 
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300225952/ivory-mirror

Baker, Katherine. “‘La Chambre aux dentz d’yvoire’: An Introduction to the Inventory of Chicart Bailly.” In Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context, edited by Catherine Yvard, 68-75. London: The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2017.
https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/courtauld-books-online/gothic-ivory-sculpture

Biography

Katherine Baker received her Ph.D. in art history at the University of Virginia in 2013. A research fellow at Institut national d'histoire de l'art, first through a Kress Institutional Fellowship and later as a chercheure accueilli, she completed a dissertation on collaborative making in Paris around 1500 while in residence. With a particular interest in what the archival record can tell us about lost artistic production, her current project examines the estate inventory of Chicart Bailly, a Parisian tabletier from the early 16th century. An examination of the document and complete transcription-translation can be found in her book, A Merchant of Ivory in 16th-Century Paris: The Estate Inventory of Chicart Bailly (2023).