Alexander J. Noelle

Alexander J. Noelle joined the Cleveland Museum of Art in October 2022. Previously, he was the Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at the Frick Collection in New York City where he cocurated the first major exhibition on Renaissance sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni and coauthored and coedited the accompanying publication. Noelle has held curatorial and research positions at the Medici Archive Project in Florence as well as in both the Department of Prints and Drawings and the Department of Paintings at the Courtauld Gallery in London. He also served as the publications and interpretative manager at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and assistant curator at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut.

Noelle’s research and publications focus on Italian paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from the 15th and 16th centuries, with a particular interest in portraiture and technical art history. In addition to his contributions to Bertoldo di Giovanni: The Renaissance of Sculpture in Medici Florence (2019) as principal author, Noelle has published numerous essays, scholarly entries, and articles on Parmigianino’s studies for Santa Maria della Steccata, the facture of Botticelli’s series of portraits of Giuliano de’ Medici, and Scipione Pulzone’s oil-on-copper likenesses of Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, among other projects. He has also lectured and taught widely on a variety of topics ranging from early Renaissance altarpieces to 19th-century forgeries and contemporary drawings.

Noelle holds a PhD and MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled “The Life, Death, and Afterlife of Giuliano de’ Medici in Art and Literature.” He earned a BA in history of art and Italian from Vassar College.

Contact the Curator at: EuropeanPainting@clevelandart.org