Michael Yonan

Michael Yonan is a scholar of early modern European art, with special interest in the arts of eighteenth-century Germany, Scandinavia, and Austria. He is also interested broadly in the decorative arts, rococo design, material culture theory, and art historical methodology and historiography. He has received fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Kress Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala. For Bloomsbury Academic Visual Arts he edits the book series The Material Culture of Art and Design.

ORCID

0000-0001-7796-3356

Lectures

• Arts of the Rococo
• Art in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1850
• Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
• Baroque to Modern Art

Seminars

• Ornament and Ornamentation
• Global Objects
• European Prints in the Collection of the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
• Visual Theory and Interpretive Methods

Publications

Books, as author

Messerschmidt’s Character Heads: Maddening Sculpture and the Writing of Art History. London: Routledge, 2018.

Empress Maria Theresa and the Politics of Habsburg Imperial Art. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011.

Books, as editor

Art and Artifice in Visual Culture: Eighteenth Century to the Present. Co-edited with Sonia Coman and Vasile-Ovidiu Prejmerean (London: Routledge, 2025)

Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds: Global and Local Geographies of Art. Co-edited with Stacey Sloboda. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.

The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain. Co-editor with Alden Cavanaugh. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2010.

Journal Articles

“Portrait Exchange Between Stockholm and Vienna and the Formation of Gustav III’s Round Salon at Gripsholm Castle.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 92, No. 3 (2023): 177–193.

“The Judgment of Porcelain: Matter, Commerce, and the Figural Ideal.” The French Porcelain Society Journal 9 (2022), 23–45.

“The Materiality of Porcelain and the Interpretation of Ceramic Art.” Journal of the Walters Art Museum 75 (2021).

“Technical Art History and the Art Historical Thing.” Materia: Journal of Technical Art History, 1:1 (Spring 2021): 60–66.

“Martin van Meytens’s Portrait of Johann Michael von Grosser (c. 1700–1784): The Business of Nobility.” Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm 26:1 (2019 [2020]): 91-98.

“Materiality as Periphery.” Visual Resources 35, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2019): 200–216.

“Cats: The Soft Underbelly of the Enlightenment.” Co-authored with Amy Freund. Journal18 Issue 7 Animals (Spring 2019) (http://www.journal18.org/3778).

“Mary Sheriff and ASECS.” Co-authored with Jennifer Germann. Eighteenth-Century Studies 52.2 (Winter 2019): 151–154.

“Material Fictions: A Dialogue as Introduction.” Co-authored with Eugenia Zuroski. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31.1 (Fall 2018): 1–18.

“Materializing Empire in an Eighteenth-Century Lace Gown.” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 14.3 (2016): 2–18.

“Material Transformations: Thinking about Objects and Spaces at the Wieskirche.” Journal of Art Historiography 9 (9/MY1) (December 2013): 1–13.

“The Wieskirche: Movement, Perception, and Salvation in the Bavarian Rococo.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41 (2012): 1–25.

“Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 18.2 (Fall–Winter 2011): 232–248.

“Portable Dynasties: Imperial Gift-Giving at the Court of Vienna in the Eighteenth Century.” The Court Historian 14.2 (December 2009): 177–188.

“Ornament’s Invitation: The Rococo of Vienna’s Gardekirche.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 50.4 (Winter 2009): 285–308.

“The Man Behind the Mask? Looking at Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 42.3 (Spring 2009): 431–451.

“Pompeo Batoni Between Rome and Vienna.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 26.2 (Winter 2007): 32–37.

“Veneers of Authority: Chinese Lacquers in Maria Theresa’s Vienna.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37.4 (Summer 2004): 652–672.

“Modesty and Monarchy: Rethinking Empress Maria Theresa at Schönbrunn.” Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 25–47.

Book Chapters

“Feline Creativity on the Eve of Modernity.” Co-authored with Amy Freund. In Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories, ed. Daniel Harkett and Katie Hornstein. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2025), 169–191.

“Rococo Aesthetics and the Problem of Trompe l’Oeil.” In Art and Artifice in Visual Culture: Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Sonia Coman, Vasile-Ovidiu Prejmerean, and Michael Yonan (London: Routledge, 2025), 32–49.

“Gender and Sexuality: The Desire of Decor.” In Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment: A Cultural History, ed. Stacey Sloboda (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2024), 150–172.

“Från material till materialisering: Att beskriva materialiteten hos en Sèvrestekanna från 1700-talet.” In Materialitet, ed. Elin Manker and Mårten Snickare. Teoretiska tillämpningar i konstvetenskap 4. (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2023), 21–43.

“Porcelain as Sculpture: Medium, Materiality, and the Categories of Eighteenth-Century Collecting.” In Sculpture Collections in Europe and the United States, 1500–1930: Variety and Ambiguity. Ed. Inge Reist and Malcolm Baker (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 174–193.

“Knowing the World through Rococo Ornamental Prints.” In Organic Supplements: Bodies and Things of the Natural World, 1580–1790, ed. Miriam Jacobson and Julie Park. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020), 177–198.

“Picturing Empress Maria Theresa in Eighteenth-Century Denmark, Sweden, and Russia.” In Die Repräsentation Maria Theresias. Herrschaft und Bildpolitik im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, ed. Werner Telesko, Sandra Hertel, and Stefanie Linsboth (Vienna: Böhlau, 2020), 415–424.

“Ornamentation.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque, ed. John D. Lyons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 409–426.

“The African Geographies of Angelo Soliman.” In Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds: Global and Local Geographies of Art, ed. Stacey Sloboda and Michael Yonan (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 209–225.

“Mapping Global Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds.” Co-authored with Stacey Sloboda. In Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds: Global and Local Geographies of Art, ed. Stacey Sloboda and Michael Yonan (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 1–18.

“Interdisciplinary Material Culture Studies and the Problem of Habsburg-Lorraine Representation.” In Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur, ca. 1618–1918/Representing the Habsburg-Lorraine Dynasty in Music, Visual Media and Architecture, ca. 1618–1918, ed. Werner Telesko (Vienna: Böhlau, 2017): 21–37.

“Die Hinterlassenschaft Maria Annas und das Konzept einer fürstlichen Porträtsammlung.” In Höfische Porträtkultur: Die Hinterlassenschaft Erzherzogin Maria Annas (1738–1789), ed. Eva Kernbauer and Aneta Zahradnik (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2016): 25–36.

“The Uncomfortable Frenchness of the German Rococo.” In Rococo Echo: Art, Theory, and Historiography from Cochin to Coppola, ed. Melissa Hyde and Katie Scott. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014), 33–51.

“Messerschmidt, the Hogarth of Sculpture.” In Seeing Satire in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Elizabeth C. Mansfield and Kelly Malone (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2013), 209–226.

“Kunsthistorisches Museum / Belvedere, Vienna: Dynasticism and the Function of Art.” In The First Modern Museums of Art: The Birth of an Institution in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Carole Paul (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2012), 167–189.

“Igneous Architecture: Porcelain, Natural Philosophy, and the Rococo cabinet chinois.” In The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain, ed. Alden Cavanaugh and Michael Yonan (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2010), 65–85.

Introduction, co-authored with Alden Cavanaugh. In The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain, ed. Alden Cavanaugh and Michael Yonan (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2010), 1–17.

“Conceptualizing the Kaiserinwitwe: Empress Maria Theresa and Her Portraits.” In Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison Levy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 109–125.

Museum Publications

“Brevens betydelse: Georg Desmarées, Johan Arckenholtz, 1753.” In Uppsala Universitets Konstsamling: Utvalda Verk, ed. Åsa Henningsson, Mikael Ahlund, Åsa Sundelin, and Cecilia Ödman (Uppsala: Uppsala University/Gustavianum, 2025), 80–81. Also published in English as “The Importance of Letters.”

“Die Pathologisierung Franz Xaver Messerschmidts und seiner Kunst.” In Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: Mehr als Charakterköpfe, ed. Stella Rollig, Katharina Lovecky, and Georg Lechner. Ex. cat., Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2025): 30–41.

“Facial Expressions and First Impressions.” In Face to Face: Thorvaldsen and Portraiture, ed. Jane Fejer and Kristine Bøggild Johannsen. Ex. cat., Ansigt til ansigt: Thorvaldsen og portrættet, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark (Copenhagen: Strandberg, 2020), 132–133.

“Dresden to Duchcov.” In Casanova: The Seduction of Europe, ed. Frederick Ilchman, Thomas Michie, C. D. Dickerson, and Esther Bell. Ex. cat., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth/Legion of Honor, San Francisco/Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston: MFA Publications, 2017), 220–235.

Ten catalogue entries in Carol C. Gillham and Carolyn H. Wood, European Drawings from the Collection of the Ackland Art Museum. (Chapel Hill: Ackland Art Museum/University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001).

Entries for drawings by Rosa Bonheur, 76–7; Lovis Corinth, 172–3; Käthe Kollwitz, 174–5; František Kupka, 104–5; Louis Lafitte, 106–7; Adolph Menzel, 176–7; Pierre Peyron, 118–19; François Quesnel, 122–3; and Egon Schiele, 180–3.