On August 8th, 2024, former History of Art professor Richard Brilliant died at the age of 94. One of the most outstanding Roman art historians in North America, he spent six years with the Penn department, rising from Associate Professor to Full Professor and Department Chair between 1963 and 1969. He also received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching during his tenure at Penn. In 1970 he moved to Columbia University and retired from full-time teaching there in 2004. He did much to further the study of Greek and Roman art as a vital intellectual component in our department and outside it. (And all through the 1990s, anyone teaching Classical art with slides was indebted to the superb teaching collection he had built up!) A signal mark of the imprint that Richard Brilliant left on the study of the arts of the Roman world was his mentoring of graduate students. They went on to fill positions all over the US, including at Penn: Elizabeth Bartman was Assistant Professor here, and Professor C. Brian Rose of Classical Studies, a member of the ArtH Graduate Group, wrote his dissertation for Richard Brilliant also.
Dr. Brilliant graduated from Yale College in 1951 with a bachelor of arts degree in Classical Civilization. He earned a Legum Baccalaureus (LLB) degree from Harvard Law School in 1954. Returning to Yale, he pursued graduate studies in archaeology and art history, earning an MA in 1956 and a PhD in 1960. Among his numerous awards, he received in 1967 a Guggenheim Fellowship for his project on Roman imperial sculpture and coinage, and a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (1960-1962), where he remained a frequent visitor.
He is survived by his wife, Eleanor; his four children, Stephanie (Stephen), Livia (Tom), Franca (Seth), and Myron (Nady); twelve grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
The family requests that donations be made to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his memory.