Charles G. Dempsey *63

Charles died Feb. 22, 2022, of a heart attack in Washington, D.C.

Born March 11, 1937, in Providence, R.I., Charles graduated from Swarthmore and earned a Ph.D. in art and archaeology from Princeton. 

Considered a towering figure of the post-Panofsky generation in the history of art, Charles taught at Bryn Mawr and Johns Hopkins, from which he retired. The subjects of his scholarship included Botticelli and pagan mythology, Donatello and archaic demons refashioned as “putti,” Carracci and the education of artists, the realism of Caravaggio, the poetics of  Poussin, the cosmology of  Bosch, as well as the reevaluation of the Baroque art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Charles opened minds and eyes to ways of thinking about the history of art as a dialogue with the entire culture of art as human expression. 

He helped establish Johns Hopkins’s Center for Italian Studies at the Villa Spelman in Florence, and was a fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, and the American Academy in Rome. 

Charles is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Cropper; his daughters from a previous marriage, Martha and Kate; and siblings Julia and Richard. His son, Adam, predeceased him.

Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.