Judith Anne Testa

Judith Testa was born and grew up in the New York City area, moved to the Midwest to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago, and never returned to New York, except in spirit. She spent her professional career at Northern Illinois University, where she taught history of art and received numerous awards for excellence in teaching. During that time she developed an absorbing interest in Italy-- Rome in particular-- and in 1998 she published a book about art and architecture in the Eternal City, called "Rome Is Love Spelled Backward" (Roma Amor). After a career devoted to teaching, talking and writing about art, during retirement she returned to a childhood love: baseball. The result was the publication of a biography of a star pitcher from the 1950s, a sinister, almost satanic-looking pitcher named Sal "The Barber" Maglie. The book, titled "Sal Maglie. Baseball's Demon Barber," was published in 2007 and won an award from the Society of Midland Authors as the best biography of 2007. Her most recent book, published in 2012, is "An Art Lover's Guide to Florence." In this work she covers in detail the most famous and beloved works of art in Florence, among them Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," Michelangelo's "David," and the city's cathedral, with its stupendous dome. Instead of a paragraph or two about hundreds of works of art, this book covers only a couple of dozen works, and devotes a chapter to each. The author discusses the political background behind many religious works, and also explores the sexual meanings to be found in certain works of art. Judith Testa lives in St. Charles, Illinois, and continues to write about Italy for the Chicago area Italian American monthly magazine "Fra Noi."