Barbara Baert

Baert was born in Turnhout, Antwerp, in Belgium in 1967.^{[citation needed]} She studied at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), obtaining a doctoral degree in 1997 with her research on the True Cross that was later published in Englishin 2004 under the title A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image.^{[citation needed]}

Baert is affiliated as a research fellow with the Illuminare – Center for Medieval and Renaissance Art at KU Leuven),^[1] where she also teaches in the fields of iconology, art theory and analysis, and medieval art.^[2][3] In 2006, she founded the Iconology Research Group, an international and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation of images^[4] promoting collaboration among three visual research traditions that pursue similar goals but often follow separate—usually national—trajectories: visual anthropology, Bildwissenschaft (approximately, image-science), and iconology.

Baert is also editor-in-chief of three peer-reviewed journals: Studies in Iconology (Peeters Publishers), Art and Religion (also Peeters Publishers), and Iconologies (ASP Editions).

She has directed several international research programmes, including:

• Mary Magdalene and the Touching of Jesus, an intra- and interdisciplinary investigation of the interpretation of John 20:17, sponsored by the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders, Belgium (2004–2008)^[5]
• The Woman with the Hemorrhage (Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:24-34; Luke 8:42b-48), an iconological study of the interpretation of the Haemorrhoissa in medieval art (4th-15th century), funded by the KU Leuven (2008–2012)
• Caput Ioanis in Disco (Latin for Head of John on a Platter). Object-medium-function, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Scientific Research Fund), KU Leuven en Universität Wien (University of Vienna) (2012–2016)
• Ornamenta sacra (Latin for Sacred Ornaments). Iconology of liturgical objects (2017–2021) (Belspo-Brain-be, UC Louvain and the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage
• Kairós, or the Right Moment. Nachleben (German for Afterlife) and iconology (2017–2022) (KU Leuven)

Baert is also a member of the editorial board of Brepols–Series IKON Studies and La rivista di engramma (The Engram Magazine) (open access).

Baert was honoured twice by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten): in 1993 for her outstanding thesis in art history entitled Het Boec van den Houte (The Book of the Wood) and in 2006 for her outstanding scientific career before the age of 40.^{[citation needed]} In 2016, she was honoured with the Pioneer's Award of the KU Leuven^[6] as well as the Francqui Prize by the Francqui Foundation (Francqui-Stichting) for her pioneering work in iconology and medieval visual culture,^[7][8] awarded annually to a scientist associated with a Belgian academic institution and also under the age of 50 at the start of the year of winning the prize.^{[clarification needed]}

Since January 2014, she has been a life member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.^{[citation needed]} She is also a member of the Academia Europaea, a pan-European academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. Between April and September 2015, she held a fellowship at the International Research Institute for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy (Internationale Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie) in Weimar, Germany.^[9]

In 2017, Baert received the honour of Commander of the Order of Léopold, Belgium's oldest and highest order.^[10] In 2019, she became a member in residence of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University^[11] and in 2020, a fellow at the Berlin Center for Advanced Studies BildEvidenz.^{[citation needed]} In 2021 she gave the James Loeb Lecture at the Central Institute for Art History (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte) in Munich, Germany, on 'How Kairos transformed into Occasio (Grisaille [a painting technique], School of Mantegna, 1495–1510)', about the Kairos/Occasio motif. With her paper on the same motif, she offered the first complete status quaestionis (state of investigation) on the meanings attributed to grisaille from the first hypothesis of Aby Warburg (1866–1929) to the present.^{[citation needed]}

In 2023, Baert became a professor^[12] at the Warburg House, Hamburg (Warburg Haus), a German art and history forum.^[13] In 2024, she was asked to give a lecture as part of the Dahlem Humanities Center Lectures programme at the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin),^[14] and the same year was made a visiting professor at the André Chastel Center – University of the Sorbonne (Centre André Chastel – Université de Sorbonne) in Paris at the invitation of Stéphane Toussaint.^[15]