Sarah Wilkins

At Johns Hopkins, Sarah Wilkins is a lecturer in the Master of Liberal Arts program. A specialist in Late Medieval and Renaissance art history, Wilkins’ scholarship focuses on patronage, the cult of the saints, and representations of women in Late Medieval Italy.

Wilkins has received numerous awards for her work, including an RSA-Samuel H. Kress Research Fellowship in Renaissance Art (2020), a Fulbright fellowship and a Mellon dissertation finishing grant. She has presented papers at many conferences, most recently at the Renaissance Society of America (2025). She is also an organizer of the biennial Ladis Memorial Trecento Conference, which will be held in October 2025 in Athens, Georgia.

She has two forthcoming articles, the first, “Late Medieval Vita Panels and Mary Magdalen as a Gendered Model of Penitence,” will be published later in 2025 in Women and Gender in Trecento Art & Architecture: Images, Ideals, Realities, edited by Judith Steinhoff. The second article, “Mary Magdalen in the ‘Wilderness’ of Provence,” will be published in Environmental Narratives and the Eremitic Turn, a special issue of Different Visions, edited by Denva Gallant and Amelie Hope-Jones (2025). She is currently working on her book exploring the usage of the chapel in the Bargello of Florence over time, titled Creation, Transformation, Loss, and Rediscovery: The Magdalen Chapel in the Palazzo del Podestà, Florence, 1320-1840.

Wilkins is series editor of the Trecento Forum book series, published by Brepols, and recently served as President of the Italian Art Society (2021-2023).

She received her PhD in Italian Late Medieval and Renaissance art history from Rutgers University, an MA in art history from Pratt Institute, and a BA in Anthropology (with minors in art history and religious studies) from Vanderbilt University.