Joseph leo koerner caspar david friedrich biography

Joseph Leo Koerner

Chair, Department of History of Art and Architecture

Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Joseph Leo Koerner teaches the history of art and architecture from the late Middle Ages through the present, focusing largely on the cultures of Northern Europe, especially Germany, Flanders, and Austria.

In addition to general surveys of art history—including surveys of Northern Renaissance and Baroque art, a history of Western art conducted in reverse chronology, and a gateway humanities course for incoming undergraduates—he has taught thematic courses on iconoclasm, the Christian altarpiece, landscape painting, European representations of the Ottoman Empire, the aesthetics of the ugly, self-portraiture, visual evidence, Romanticism,  monuments, Adam and Eve, the concept of the enemy, witchcraft images, and art in a state of siege.

He also teaches monographic courses on a wide ran