David Freedberg

David Freedberg is Professor of Art History at Columbia University, and Director of its Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. He is best known for his work on psychological responses to images. His initial publications were on the problems of iconoclasm and censorship, but inThe Power of Images he moved on to discuss a whole range of the ways in which images evoke emotional, behavioral and social responses.

In addition, he is known for his research on more traditional art historical areas such as Dutch, Flemish and French painting, as well as his study of the relations between art and science in the seventeenth century exemplified by his book on early natural history around Galileo, The Eye of the Lynx.

He has long written about Warburg, and for the last fifteen years has been working on integrating the possibilities offered by the cognitive neurosciences for the understanding of art and the role of images in society more generally. He is now turning back to develop some of his earliest interests – the paleolithic art of Southern Africa and the rock arts of the aboriginal cultures of North America.