Carola Hicks

Carola Hicks (7 November 1941 – 23 June 2010) was a British art historian.

She was born Carola Brown in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, and educated at the Lady Eleanor Holles School and the University of Edinburgh, where she took a first in archaeology in 1964. Carola returned to Edinburgh and gained her PhD, in 1967, on "Origins of the animal style in English Romanesque art".[1] Hicks worked at the British Museum researching the Sutton Hoo ship burial, before becoming a research fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and then curator of the Stained Glass Museum at Ely Cathedral. She became a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she taught until her early death.[2]

Angela Thirlwell describes Hicks as a "glamorous academic and a serious populariser of art", who "swept the dust off old masterpieces, explained their cultural contexts and infused them with life for a new public".[2]

Hicks wrote and edited several books:

  • England in the Eleventh Century (editor, 1992), from the "Harlaxton Medieval Studies" series (vol. II)
  • Animals in Early Medieval Art (1993)
  • Cambridgeshire Churches (editor, 1997)
  • Discovering Stained Glass (2005), by John Harries and revised by Carola Hicks, from the Shire series
  • Improper Pursuits: The Scandalous Life of Lady Di Beauclerk (2001), about Lady Diana Beauclerk
  • The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (2006), in which she suggested Edith of Wessex as the author of the Bayeux Tapestry[3]
  • The King's Glass: A Story of Tudor Power and Secret Art (2007), about the stained-glass windows of King's College Chapel
  • Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait (2011), about Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait
  1. ^ Brown, Carola (1968). Origins of the animal style in English Romanesque art (Thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/23751.
  2. ^ a b Thirlwell, Angela (27 July 2010). "Carola Hicks obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
  3. ^ "New Contender for The Bayeux Tapestry?". BBC Radio 4. 22 May 2006. Retrieved 25 October 2015.