Lucy E. Barnes Baxter

Title

Lucy E. Barnes Baxter

Full Name

Baxter, Lucy E. Barnes (1837 – 1902)

Pseudonym

Leader Scot

Lifespan

1837 – 1902

Place of origin

Dorchester

Firenze

Language

English

Italian

Occupation

Art historian

Art critic

Short biography

She was born at Dorchester, the third daughter of William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, by his wife Julia Miles. She began writing at eighteen, and from the small profits of stories and magazine articles saved enough to visit Italy, a cherished ambition. There she met and in 1867 married Samuel Thomas Baxter (1810–1903), a member of a family long settled in Florence, which then became her home. For thirty-five years she was a well-known figure in the literary and artistic life of the city, and in 1882 was elected an honorary member of the Accademia delle Belle Arti. For thirteen years her residence was the Villa Bianca, outside Florence, in the direction of Vincigliata (near Fiesole) and Settignano. Among those with whom she was associated in literary research was John Temple Leader, a wealthy English resident at Florence, who owned the castle of Vincigliata. Her literary pseudonym of ‘Leader Scott’ combined the maiden surnames of her two grandmothers, Isabel Leader being her mother’s mother and Grace Scott the mother of her father.

Her principal publication was The Cathedral Builders (1899 and 1900), an important examination of the whole field of Romanesque architecture in relation to the Comacine masons.

Lucy Baxter - Wikipedia

Paul Waterhouse, ‘Baxter, Lucy’, n Dictionary of National Biography: Second supplement (London: Oxford University Press, 1901), vol. I, p. 113.