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Robert Branner was an art historian specializing in Gothic architecture and manuscript illumination. He was born in New York, the son of cartoonist Martin Branner and Edith Fabbrini.
Branner was a student of Sumner McKnight Crosby and Jurgis Baltrušaitis at Yale and was closely associated with Jean Bony and Louis Grodecki, all students of Henri Focillon. Active as an excavator, he made important discoveries in the chronology and style of French cathedrals, incorporating cultural historical tools into the method of design analysis that had more traditionally dominated architectural history. Late in his life, he worked on the stylistic identification of different ateliers of manuscript painting during the era of Saint Louis.
Branner is remembered through the Robert Branner Forum, a student-run symposium at Columbia University, sponsoring lectures several times a year that are open to the public. The Forum originated as a series of visiting lectures organized by Branner’s graduate students immediately after his death during the academic year, as a way of continuing his courses. It has been supported by his family since that time.
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