Full Name: Scribner, Charles, III
Gender: male
Date Born: 1951
Place Born: Washington, DC, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Baroque
Overview
Art historian of the baroque era and book publisher. Scribner was born to the book publishing magnate Charles Scribner II (1921-1995) and Joan Sunderland (Scribner), a figure skater. He received all his degrees from Princeton University, including an A.B., (1973) and M.F.A. (1975). While researching a college paper on Rubens, he became acquainted with the tapestry cycle “The Triumph of the Eucarist,” in the book by Émile Mâle, L’Art religieux après le Concile de Trente. He pursued this as his dissertation topic, written under John Rupert Martin, granted in 1977. Scribner had joined his family’s publishing firm in 1975 and worked in various capacities. He married Ritchie Harrison Markoe, an art museum educator and artist, in 1979. He was a lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton in 1983. In 1989 his book on Rubens appeared, part of Abrams’ Masters of Art series. In the same series he published a volume on Bernini. Scribner remained at his family firm through three changes in ownership (Macmillan, Maxwell, and Viacom). There he oversaw the publication of the publishing house’s literary classics. He remained at the publishing firm until 2004.
He was a commentator for television documentaries on Edith Wharton (BBC/PBS), Fitzgerald and Hemingway (A&E Biography).
Selected Bibliography
- [Complete bibliography:] Charles Scribner. https://charlesscribner.com/
- [dissertation:] The Triumph of the Eucharist: Tapestries Designed by Rubens. Princeton University, 1977, revised ed., Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982;
- “Sacred Architecture: Rubens’s Eucharist Tapestries.” Art Bulletin 57 (December 1975): 519-528;
- “In alia effigie: Caravaggio’s London Supper at Emmaus.” Art Bulletin 59 (September 1977): 375-382.
- Rubens. New York: Abrams, 1989;
- Gianlorenzo Bernini. New York: Abrams, 1991;
- Sacred Muse: A Preface to Christian Art & Music. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023;
- Scribners: Five Generations in Publishing. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, New York & London, 2023.
- Artists & Authors: A Life in Good Company. Globe Pequot, Essex CT,: Lyons Press 2026
Sources
- Scribner, Charles, III. The Triumph of the Eucharist: Tapestries Designed by Rubens. Princeton University, 1977, p. xiii.
- Charles Scribner. https://charlesscribner.com/