Born in
New York City, Branner was the son of the noted cartoonist
Martin Branner and Edith Fabbrini. Branner was drafted into the
United States Army in 1945, serving in the later stages of the
European theatre of World War II. He graduated from
Yale University, where he received both a
Bachelor of Arts in
Classics in 1948 and a
Doctor of Philosophy in
Art History in 1953. He was a doctoral student of
Sumner McKnight Crosby, and was also influenced by
Jurgis Baltrušaitis,
Jean Bony, and
Louis Grodecki, all students of
Henri Focillon. While a student, Branner worked in
France at the
École Nationale des Chartes and led excavations of the
Bourges Cathedral between 1950 and 1952, the subject of his doctoral dissertation and an eventual book on the topic that won him the
Alice Davis Hitchcock Award in 1963. Throughout his career, 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. Branner also studied such artists as
Jean de Chelles, buildings such as the
Le Mans Cathedral and the
Sainte-Chapelle, and manuscripts such as
Fécamp Bible and the
Psalter of Saint Louis. In 1952, Branner was hired to be part of the Yale faculty. He continued on to teach at the
University of Kansas from 1954 to 1957, where he was Assistant Professor of Art History. He then moved on to
Columbia University to become Associate Professor, winning a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962, and reached the rank of full Professor in four years after that. After a year as department chair in 1968-1969, Branner transferred to
Johns Hopkins University. He returned to Columbia shortly thereafter in 1971. From 1964 to 1966, Branner also served as president of the
Society of Architectural Historians. His legacy at Columbia is remembered through the Robert Branner Forum for Medieval Art, a student-run symposium. Papers from the career of Branner are kept in the
Columbia University Libraries. ==See also==