Wayne Franits

Distinguished Professor
Art History
Art and Music Histories
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
308 B Bowne Hall
315.443.5038
Research and Teaching Interests
Wayne Franits is a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art. His extensive publications have explored a variety of topics within the field, ranging from genre painting and portraiture to the work of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio. Franits's courses, particularly those on the M.A. level, tend to be tied to his research interests. In recent years, Franits has published books on the early seventeenth-century Dutch painters, Johannes Vermeer (2015) and Godefridus Schalcken (2018) as well as The Ashgate Research Companion to Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century (2016). He is currently pursuing research on late seventeenth-century art collections in English country houses, on concepts of honor and shame in Dutch art, and is planning a second book on Godefridus Schalcken.
Education
Ph. D. Art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1987
M. A. Art History, Queens College, City University of New York, 1981
B. A. Art History, State University of New York @ Stonybrook, 1978
Courses
Undergraduate
- Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1400-1700
- Baroque Art in Northern Europe
- Baroque Art in Southern Europe
- Art in Eighteenth-Century Europe
- Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting
Graduate
- Problems of Meaning and Interpretation in Northern European Art, 1400-1700
- Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1400-1700
- Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting
- Vermeer and Dutch Genre Painting
- Rembrandt and His Workshop
- Caravaggio and Caravaggism in Europe
- Art & Patronage in England, 1558-1702
Books
Recent Essays

"Rembrandt and the Convention of the Scholar in Dutch Genre Painting," [co-author with Laura Thiel-Convery] in exhib. cat. Rembrandt: Portrait of a Man, Prague, National Gallery of Prague, 2020, pp. 33-45.

"A Bravo Examining Cheese: A 'New' Painting by Gerrit van Honthorst." In: Connoisseurship: Essays in Honour of Fred G. Meijer, Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2020, pp. 135-39.

Wayne Franits "'Keine Mühe der Welt gleicht dem Studium': Rembrandt und die Bildkonvention des Gelehrten in der niederländischen Genremalerei," in exhib. cat. Inside Rembrandt 1606-1669, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 2019-20, pp. 29-41 (co-authored with Laura E. Thiel-Convery).

"Vie domestique et représentation de l'intimité en peinture." in: Dictionnaire des Pays-Bas au Siècle d'or, ed. Catherine Secretan and Willem Frijhoff. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2018, pp. 738-40.

"Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting," in: The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age, ed. H. Helmers and Gert Janssen, Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 268-88.
Recent Awards, Honors, Grants
2017 Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (London), subvention to underwrite the production costs of publication for Godefridus Schalcken; A Dutch Painter in Late Seventeenth-Century London, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press.
2014 American Philosophical Society, for research on the London period of the late seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Godefridus Schalcken.
News articles
(Jan. 14, 2020)
Professor Wayne Franits, Professor Joan Bryant and Julia Jessen G'20 curate exhibitions.
(Feb. 1, 2017)
Syracuse University recognizes professor Franits for his tremendous scholarly contributions and intellectual leadership
(Jan. 9, 2017)
Wayne Franits shared his expertise in 17th-century Dutch art this past December
(Oct. 27, 2015)
Wayne Franits lends drawing, expertise on Dutch painter Godefridus Schalcken
(April 15, 2015)
Professor Wayne Franits provides fresh insight into 17th-century Dutch master
(April 13, 2010)
Award supports two months of writing, research