Barbara Lynn-Davis

My pleasure is using the beauty and meanings of Italian art, literature, and gardens as jumping off points for writing.

My passion for art and writing includes historical fiction. I am the author of a novel set in eighteenth-century Venice, Casanova’s Secret Wife (Kensington Publishing, 2017). The story is based on an actual account by Giacomo Casanova, the world's most infamous chronicler of seduction: but I tell it from the woman's point of view. I am currently at work on Searching for Raphael. The novel is based on the true story of a painting by the Renaissance artist that was stolen from the Czartoryski Collection in Poland by the Nazis, and never found.

At Wellesley, I have been able to unite these two intellectual threads—art, and writing—to bring out the best in students’ ideas. I am most proud that many of my students have won the college-wide Three Generations Prize for First-Year Writing.