Dillian Rosalind Gordon OBE is a British art historian who worked as a curator at the National Gallery, London from 1978 to 2010, latterly as Curator of Italian Paintings before 1460. She lives in Oxford. She was appointed OBE in 2011 for services to Early Italian Painting. She has authored and co-authored many books, including several National Gallery catalogues. Education Dillian Gordon studied Modern and Medieval Languages at Girton College, Cambridge. She then attended the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where she completed her MA in 1972, with a dissertation on 'The gilded glass Madonna in the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge', followed by a PhD in 1979, 'Art in Umbria c.1250-c.1350', also at the Courtauld. Photographs taken by Gordon while a student are held in the Conway Library at the Courtauld, and are currently (2020) being digitised. Professional work Gordon worked at the National Gallery, London, as a curator of early Italian paintings from 1978 until 2010, latterly as Curator of Italian Paintings before 1460. Nicholas Penny, Director, states that Gordon was the first woman to work as a curator at the National Gallery. He mentions some important acquisitions that she was able to arrange, as well as her valued work on exhibitions, and praises her for her meticulous cataloguing of the collection's Early Italian art. She retired from the National Gallery in 2010, but continues to research and write about 13th and 14th century Italian painting. A highlight of Gordon's curatorial career came in 2000, when she was asked by Sotheby's to assess a painting of a Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels, discovered at Benacre Hall, Suffolk. This prompted a special visit to the Frick Collection in New York, where Gordon and others were able to compare the painting with a similar one acquired by them in 1950, the Flagellation, and the Madonna and Child was identified as coming from the same six-panel diptych, part of an altarpiece, by the 13th century Florentine artist, Cimabue. The panel, dated circa 1280, was subsequently acquired by the National Gallery. Dr Gordon returned to the Frick in 2006 to give a lecture on the subject, when the Madonna and Child was shown alongside the Flagellation in a special exhibition, Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting. Prior to this, in 2003, a further Cimabue panel had been discovered in France, entitled The Mocking of Christ, and Dr Gordon was again asked