Timothy Verdon

In 2016, he was keynote speaker at the United Nations World Tourism Organization Conference on Religious Tourism, Utrecht.

These texts, which Interweave iconographical analysis, theology and liturgical information, set a new benchmark for the interdisciplinary study of religion and culture, especially in the Renaissance, as do Verdon's four volumes on the scriptural sources of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, commissioned by Antonio Paolucci, then Director of the Vatican Museums, and published by the Vatican Museum Press. Verdon's volume on Beato Angelico, published in Italian by 24 Ore Cultura in 2015 and in English by Brepols in 2021 (Fra Angelico), similarly opens new methodological perspectives.

Verdon is a Canon of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence's Cathedral Church. He is Director of the Office of Sacred Art of the Archdiocese of Florence and of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Cathedral Museum), whose new installation he designed in 2012–15 with the architects Adolfo Natalini, Marco Magni, and Piero Guicciardini.

From 2010 to 2015, he has curated museum art exhibitions in Florence, Seoul, New York, Washington D.C., and Turin. He regularly contributes to the cultural page of the Osservatore Romano.

A member of the Florence Cathedral Foundation board of directors in 1997, when the Foundation or 'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore' bought a former theatre adjacent to its museum in view of enlarging the latter, Verdon was asked to define the new structure's museological project, finally realized in 2012–2015. Since 2011, he has served as Museo dell'Opera del Duomo's director.

After teaching art history for American University programs in Florence, Verdon was ordained priest there in 1994, and in 1995 was invited by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Francesco Marchisano, Secretary of the Vatican Commission for the Conservation of the Church's Artistic and Historical Heritage, to serve as Consultor to the commission. In the same period, he authored a Pastoral Note on art and faith for the Tuscan Bishops' Conference: La vita si è fatta visible. L'arte e la comunicazione della fede.

Leaving monastic life, in 1985 Verdon, with John Henderson of Cambridge (later London University), organized a second two-part conference on religion and the arts, Christianity and the Renaissance, promoted by Florida State University together with the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa Tatti) and the Istituto di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence.

In 1976, Verdon entered a Benedictine priory, Mount Saviour Monastery, near Elmira, New York, later transferring to St. Anselm's Abbey, Washington, D.C., where he took courses in theology at the Catholic University of America. In 1980, with John Dally of Yale Divinity School, he organized a two-part conference for the 1500th anniversary of the birth of St. Benedict of Nursia, Monasticism and the Arts, promoted by the Yale Divinity School, the National Gallery of Art, Dumbarton Oaks and the Catholic University.

After a year in Venice (1964–65), Verdon studied in Art History at St. Peter's College, New Jersey, with Sabine Spiero Gova, a former Bauhaus member and lecturer at the Ecole du Louvre. Then, following a semester in Paris and a second year in Venice as a Fulbright grant holder, he obtained a Ph.D. at Yale University, writing his dissertation on Italian Renaissance sculptor Guido Mazzoni under the direction of Charles Seymour, Jr., former head of the Renaissance sculpture department of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Timothy Christopher Verdon (born 24 April 1946), is a Roman Catholic priest and Art Historian, specialized in Christian Sacred Art on which he has written numerous books and articles. He has organized international scholarly conferences and curated exhibitions in Italy and the USA. He was born in New Jersey, United States, and has lived in Italy for more than 50 years, now residing in Florence.