Rona Goffen, a historian of medieval and Renaissance art, has died in Princeton, N.J. She was 60.
Ms. Goffen died Sept. 8 of ovarian cancer, said Lucy Fremont, a cousin.
Ms. Goffen’s method paid careful attention to the social and economic context surrounding artists. A professor at Rutgers University since 1988, she was born in 1944 in New York and graduated from Mt. Holyoke College in 1966. She received her doctorate from Columbia in 1974.
After teaching at Indiana and Princeton Universities, she spent a decade at Duke University, serving as head of the art history department for three years, before moving to Rutgers.
Her books included “Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian and the Franciscans” (1986); “Spirituality in Conflict: St. Francis and Giotto’s Bardi Chapel” (1988); “Titian’s Women” (1994); and “Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian” (2002).
At the time of her death, Ms. Goffen was working on a book about women in the Renaissance and about the Last Judgment as painted by artists from Giotto to Michelangelo.
