Michael Hirst, who spent his entire professional career at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London (1961-97), was one of the leading historians of Italian renaissance art of his time. The author of numerous ground-breaking articles and three major books – Sebastiano del Piombo (1981), Michelangelo and his Drawings (1988), and Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame 1475–1534 (2011) – he was also responsible for two important exhibitions, Michelangelo Draftsman at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Louvre (1988-89), and The Young Michelangelo at the National Gallery (1994-95). His scholarship combined deep historical understanding with extraordinary visual acuity.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 23