Craig Harbison

{{Short description|American art historian}}

Craig S. Harbison (April 19, 1944 – May 17, 2018)[http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/obituary-craig-harbison-professor-emeritus Obituary: Craig Harbison, Professor Emeritus of Art History] was an American art historian specialising in 15th and 16th-century Flemish and Northern Renaissance painting. He was Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While attending Princeton University in the early 1970s, he studied iconographic analysis under Erwin Panofsky and Wolfgang Stechow. He had previously studied at Oberlin College, Ohio.

While Panofsky was a large influence early in Harbison's career, and he described himself as once being "sort of a rebellious Panofsky-ite",Buchholz, Sarah R. "[http://www.umass.edu/chronicle/archives/00/04-14/harbison28.html A Picture Worth Many Thousand Words]". Chronicle, University of Massachusetts, 14 April 2000. Retrieved 15 December 2012. he moved away from pure study of iconography toward placing the paintings in the context of the social history of their time."[http://www.umass.edu/arthist/harbison.htm Craig Harbison] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130605061635/http://www.umass.edu/arthist/harbison.htm |date=2013-06-05 }}". University of Massachusetts. Retrieved 15 December 2012. He said, "Social history was becoming increasingly important. Panofsky had never really talked about what kind of people these were. I went after the people in all of these van Eyck paintings, researched about patrons."

Harbison published a number of books on the Northern Renaissance and wrote extensively for such publications as Art Quarterly, The Art Bulletin, Renaissance Quarterly and Simiolus. He wrote extensively on Jan van Eyck, especially the painter's Arnolfini Portrait.