Alexander Nagel is a leading art historian, known for his innovative approach to European art from 1300 to 1700. His scholarship explores how art shapes our understanding of time and space, examining how material artifacts influence meanings and perceptions across different eras and locations.

Nagel’s entry into art history was driven by a desire to understand how visual art and artistic practices traverse temporal and geographical boundaries. His research focuses on how early modern European art depicted distant lands and peoples, and how this perspective influenced Renaissance art’s development, covering naturalism, perspective, and storytelling. Nagel’s scholarship also extends to contemporary art, where he provides historical context for modern developments and reflects on historical events with current significance, such as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire and the global impact of the first circumnavigation of the globe.

Nagel has been on the New York University faculty since 2007. His work has taken him to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence. He is the author of Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (2000), The Controversy of Renaissance Art (2011), and Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (2012), among others. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported his book Amerasia (2023), written with Elizabeth Horodowich, with a grant. Another coauthored book is Anachronic Renaissance, a collaboration with Christopher S. Wood (2003 Fellow). His editorial work includes leading I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance and contributing to volumes on art conservation and the Renaissance afterlife of Ravenna.