John Shearman

John Kinder Gowran Shearman (pronounced "Sherman"; 24 June 1931 – 11 August 2003) was an English art historian who also taught in America. He was a specialist in Italian Renaissance painting, regarded by many as "the outstanding figure" of his generation in this area, who published several influential works, but whose expected major books on Quattrocento painting, for the Penguin/Yale History of Art series (already commissioned in 1984, and still a gap in the series in 2011), and on Raphael, never appeared.

He was born the son of an army officer (and amateur painter) in Aldershot, Hampshire, educated in Surrey at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, and Felsted School in Essex, and entered the Courtauld Institute in London in 1951, where he was appointed a lecturer as soon as he graduated with a BA in 1955 – followed by a PhD in 1957. He had a research fellowship at Princeton University from 1964, was Reader at the Courtauld from 1967, and Deputy Director 1974–79 before returning to Princeton, where he was chairman of the art history department from 1979 to 1985. He had hoped for the Directorship of the Courtauld at the retirement of Anthony Blunt in 1974 but was not successful; the medievalist Peter Lasko, who had administrative experience, got the appointment instead. From 1987 until his retirement in 2002 he was a professor at Harvard University.

In the absence of the works on Raphael and Quattrocento painting, the most widely influential work of his large output was his book, still in print, on the controversial concept of Mannerism. He was involved with the Italian and Vatican authorities on issues including the damage after the 1966 Flood of the River Arno in Florence and the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, which he supported.

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