Full Name: Bissell, R. Ward
Other Names:
- Raymond Ward Bissell
Gender: male
Date Born: 1936
Place Born: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): feminism, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, painting (visual works), and Renaissance
Overview
Gentileschi (family) scholar; University of Michigan Italianist art historian. Bissell was the son of Raymond A. Bissell (1909-1992) a heating & air dealer, and Elizabeth I Weston (Bissell) (1906-1993). He received his Ph.D. in 1968, writing his dissertation on Orazio Gentileschi under Harold E. Wethey. He wrote a book on Orazio in 1981. Gentileschi’s daughter, Aremisia, was at the same time rising in interest due to women’s studies courses. Bissell published the catalogue raisonné on the work of Artemisia in 1998. He retired from the University in 2006. His students include Law B. Watkins.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] The Baroque Painter Orzio Gentileschi: His Career in Italy. 2 vols. University of Michigan, 1966; “Artemisia Gentileschi: a New Documented Chronology.” Art Bulletin 50 (June 1968): 153-68; Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting. University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981; Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998; and Dwight Miller, Dwight, and Derstine, Andria. Masters of Italian Baroque Painting. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2005.
Sources
University of Michigan, Administratively Approved Appointments, December 2006. http://www.regents.umich.edu/meetings/12-06/12-06-Regular-Instruct-V-2.pdf; “Raymond A. Bissell, Businessman.” Baltimore Sun September 8, 1992, p. 4B.