Justin Willson

Justin Willson joins the FAS as Assistant Professor of History of Art. His research spans the late Byzantine and early Slavic world, with a special focus on issues of interpretation and aesthetic value. His first book, The Moods of Early Russian Art (University of Chicago Press, 2026), blends archival work with visual analysis to argue for an increasingly romanticized approach to images in late medieval Muscovy. Other projects include a history of the icon painter from late antiquity to the early modern period and a study of print’s relation to the painted icon. The latter topic was the subject of his exhibition, “Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image” (2024–25), at the Icon Museum and Study Center, where he was formerly curator. He is editing a handbook of primary sources, The Visual Culture of Late Byzantium and the Early Modern Orthodox World (c.1330-c.1669); the project is volume four in the series Sources in Byzantine Art History, published by Cambridge University Press. He received his PhD from Princeton in 2021 and held the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Art History Leadership at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western University.