About the Author

Dr. John Skillen is the director of the Studio for Art, Faith & History. He recently retired from Gordon College (Wenham, MA) after a long tenure as professor.

Skillen's book, Putting Art (Back) in its Place (Hendrickson, 2016) gives an account of the community-and-site-specific places in which art functioned in medieval-Renaissance Italy, and suggests the value of putting the work of art back in the places where communities perform their work. As Nicholas Wolterstorff remarks,

For those whose acquaintance with Italian Renaissance painting comes from a college art appreciation course or from being a member of a group touring the sights in Italy, Skillen's Putting Art (Back) in Its Place will come as a stunning eye-opener. Renaissance paintings are typically abstracted from their contexts and treated as episodes in stylistic history. Skillen puts them back in their architectural, liturgical, and narrative contexts, and illuminates the social practices whereby the public at the time would have engaged them and whereby the public would, in turn, have been formed by them. The discussion is wide-ranging, deeply informed and insightful. Many times over I had the sense of scales falling from my eyes: "So that's what's going on in that chapel!" "So that's what's going on in that painting."

Dr. Skillen received his Ph.D. (1982) from Duke University, concentrating in medieval and Renaissance literature. Skillen joined the English department of Gordon College in 1983 as the specialist in medieval, Renaissance and 17th Century literature. After leading a number of Summer Seminars in Italy, Dr. Skillen collaborated with his colleagues in the Art department to create the arts-oriented program in Orvieto, Italy, now entering its 22nd year. Dr. Skillen directed the Gordon IN Orvieto program from 1998 to 2008. The program has hosted 800 students from over 25 institutions, and was featured in a volume of Best Practices in Christian study abroad programs entitled Transformations on the Edge of the World (Abilene Christian University Press, 2010).

Professor Skillen’s essays on the arts and tradition have appeared in IMAGE journal (including his profile of theater artist Karin Coonrod), the journal of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA), the FORMA journal of the CiRCE Institute, the web-based ArtWay, and Cardus’s Comment journal. He has contributed entries to the Visual Commentary on Scripture and the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (forthcoming), and brief essays for the blogs of the American Bible Society and CIVA and the Classical Academic Press.

His recent book Making School Beautiful (Classical Academic Press, 2020) serves the classical schooling movement by demonstrating that the classical liberal arts of language and thought, and of the mathematical arts, provide still-timely principles of architectural design, from classroom to campus.

Professor Skillen lives in Newburyport, MA with his wife Susan, an ordained Anglican priest and spiritual director who regularly leads retreats in Orvieto focused on the continued relevance for contemporary believers of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, Francis and Claire, and Catherine of Siena—all from the region around Orvieto— including Thomas Aquinas, who lived in Orvieto during the 1260’s. The Skillens have four daughters and a growing number of grandchildren. Dr. Skillen can be reached by email at john.skillen@gordon.edu