Elizabeth Lev

Elizabeth Lev is an American-born art historian who has, as she calls it, "the good fortune to live and work in Rome." She teaches Renaissance and Baroque Art at Duquesne University’s Italian campus. She has taught and lectured in numerous venues in Ireland, Italy, the US and Australia, including an address at the United Nations in New York, and a TED talk representing the Vatican Museums. She works as Vatican Analyst for NBC and has been featured on The Today Show, Nightline and Sixty Minutes, among other programs. Her books include "The Tigress of Forlì: The Remarkable Story of Caterina Riario Sforza de’Medici" (2011), "Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches" (2013) with George Weigel, "A Body for Glory: Theology of the Body in the Papal Collections" (2014) with José Granados, and her newest book, "How Catholic Art Saved the Faith: The Triumph of Beauty and Truth in Counter-Reformation Art" (2018). Lev studied art history at the University of Chicago, and completed her graduate work at the University of Bologna.

• Elizabeth Lev's Homepage — Elizabeth Lev is an American-born art historian with the good fortune to live and work in Rome. Life in the “Eternal City” allows her the perfect environment to pursue her many passions. For on an average day, one can find Elizabeth working on her latest article or book, preparing for one of her worldwide speaking engagements, touring visitors through the treasures of Rome, or using her skills as a sommelier to find the perfect wine to pair with dinner.
• TED Talk: The unheard story of the Sistine Chapel — The Sistine Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings on earth — but there's a lot you probably don't know about it. In this tour-de-force talk, art historian Elizabeth Lev guides us across the famous building's ceiling and Michelangelo's vital depiction of traditional stories.
• ND Fall Conference 2016 Keynote: "The Gifts of the Magi: The Catholic Imagination and Birth of the Modern Museum" — Presentation given at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture's 17th Annual Fall Conference, "You Are Beauty: Exploring the Catholic Imagination." Elizabeth Lev is professor of art history at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, and is a Permanent Research Fellow of the NDCEC.
• Guido Reni: St. Matthew and the Angel — Painted between 1635 and 1640, located in the Pinacoteca Vaticana (Vatican Museum picture gallery).
• Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (with George Weigel) — In Roman Pilgrimage, bestselling theologian and papal biographer George Weigel, art historian Elizabeth Lev, and photographer Stephen Weigel lead readers through this unique religious and aesthetic journey with magnificent photographs and revealing commentaries on the pilgrimage’s liturgies, art, and architecture. Through reflections on each day’s readings about faith and doubt, heroism and weakness, self-examination and conversion, sin and grace, Rome’s familiar sites take on a new resonance. And along that same historical path, typically unexplored treasures-artifacts of ancient history and hidden artistic wonders-appear in their original luster, revealing new dimensions of one of the world’s most intriguing and multi-layered cities.
• How Catholic Art Saved the Faith — "How Catholic Art Saved the Faith" tells the story of the creation and successes of a vibrant, visual-arts SWAT team whose war cry could have been “art for Faith’s sake!” Over the years, it included Michelangelo, of course, and, among other great artists, the edgy Caravaggio, the graceful Guido Reni, the technically perfect Annibale Carracci, the colorful Barocci, the theatrical Bernini, and the passionate Artemisia Gentileschi. Each of these creative souls, despite their own interior struggles, was a key player in this magnificent, generations-long project: the affirmation through beauty of the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church.
• Theme Music: "I Dunno" by grapes — I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque