Patricia Fortini Brown (born 16 November 1936) is Professor Emerita of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

Venice and its empire, from the late middle ages through the early modern period, has been the primary site of her scholarly research, with a focus on how works of art and architecture can materialize and sum up significant aspects of the culture in which they were produced.

[1] She served as president of the Renaissance Society of America (2000-2002),[2] and was a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (2004-7).

She serves on an Advisory committee for “Mediterranean Palimpsests: Connecting the Art and Architectural Histories of Medieval and Early Modern Cities," a Getty-funded research project (with research trips with the MCities group to Nicosia, Cordoba, Granada, Rhodes, and Thessaloniki), 2018-20, and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Save Venice since 2004.

Selected papers from the two symposia were published in a Festschrift edited by Blake de Maria and Mary E. Frank, Reflections on Renaissance Venice: a celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown (Milan: 5 Continents Editions; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2013) (Winner of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Book Prize in 2015 from the Renaissance Society of America).