Barbara Furlotti completed her PhD at Queen Mary University of London in 2009 with a thesis on consumption and collecting practices at the court of Paolo Giordano I Orsini, published as A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions. Paolo Giordano I Orsini (1541-1585), Brepols 2012. In 2009-2010, she was awarded a post-doctoral residential fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the Getty research project ‘The Display of Art in Roman Palaces, 1550-1750’, exploring the subject of mobility of artistic and luxury works at aristocratic courts. In 2012-2015, she was a Marie Curie Fellow (Senior Researcher) of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung at the Warburg Institute with a project focusing on the market for antiquities in sixteenth-century Rome, which resulted in her book Antiquities in Motion. From Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections, The Getty Publications, 2019, which was shortlisted for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. In 2024, she was a Census x Warburg x Hertziana Fellow with a research project on antiquarian manipulations and forgeries in the Renaissance. She has researched and published extensively on topics related to the history of collecting, the display of art, the art market and antiquarianism. She has also co-curated the exhibitions Giulio Romano: Art and Desire (Mantua, Palazzo Te, October 2019-January 2020) on eroticism and Renaissance art, and Giulio Romano: the Art of Living (Mantua, Palazzo Te, October 2022-January 2024), on the design of fashionable Renaissance objects. She is currently working on a third exhibition on the intersection of art and nature at European courts in the early modern period (Mantua, Palazzo Te, October 2026-January 2027).
Teaching
- MA Italian Renaissance Continuity and Innovation (Autumn Term)
- BA3 – Painting in the North Italian Courts from Mantegna to Titian, c. 1460-1550
Research Interests
- Renaissance Italian Art
- History of Collecting
- Antiquarianism
- Art Market
- Mobility of Artworks
- Design History
Selected publications
Books
- Antiquities in Motion. From Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections (Los Angeles: The Getty Publications, 2019), shortlisted for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
- A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions. Paolo Giordano I Orsini (1541-1585), in the UCLA series ‘Cursor Mundi’ (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012)
Exhibition Catalogues
- Giulio Romano: la forza delle cose, ed. by Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini, with Antonio Geremicca (Venice: Marsilio, 2022)
- Giulio Romano: Art and Desire, ed. by Barbara Furlotti, Guido Rebecchini and Linda Wolk-Simon (Milan: Electa, 2019)
Articles
- ‘Professionisti o “ciabattini”? La sfuggente figura del restauratore di antichità a Roma nella seconda metà del Cinquecento’, in Scultori a Roma, ed. Grégoire Extermann, Tancredi Farina, Giovanna Ioele, Livia Nocchi (Rome: Viella 2024), pp. 279-96
- ‘‘Try it with the Tip of a Knife’: Looking out for Fake Antiquities in Early Modern Italy’, in Fakes and Forgeries in the Early Modern Period (special issue of the Journal of Art History, 2021), pp. 7-21
- ‘Tutte le strade portano a Venezia: commercio e collezionismo antiquario nei territori della Serenissima’, in Dietro le quinte del Rinascimento. Fare arte nel Veneto di terraferma (1550-1616), exh. cat. (Vicenza, Centro Palladio, December 2021-March 2022), ed. Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto, and Mattia Vinco (Venice, Marsilio, 2021), pp. 241-251
- ‘Living between Rome and Bracciano. Luxury Objects, Social Practices and Cultural Interests at the Orsini Court between the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries’, in Building Family Identity, ed. by Paolo Alei and Max Grossman (Peter Lang, 2019), pp. 385-413
- ‘Scipione Pulzone’s Beautiful Women: a Portrait of Lavinia della Rovere’, Rivista d’Arte, 6 (2016 [2018]), pp. 131-51
- ‘L’influence des mots, le pouvoir des images : acheter de l’art à distance en Italie aux XVI et XVII siècles‘, in Luisa Capodieci and Isabelle His, eds, La Noblesse et les arts, monographic issue of the journal Seizième Siècle, no. 12 (2016), pp. 127-43
- ‘The Performance of Displaying. Gesture, Behaviour and Art in Early Modern Italy’, Journal of the History of Collections, 27 (2015), no. 1, pp. 1-13
- ‘New Considerations on a Set of Portrait Drawings of the Orsini Family by Giovanni Campagna’, The Getty Research Journal, no. 5 (2103), pp. 15-28
- ‘From Paolo Giordano II Orsini to Cardinal Mazarin: The Journey from Rome to France of a Painting by Jacopo Bassano’, Studiolo, no. 10 (2013), pp. 74-79
Essays in Edited Volumes
- ‘Rare and unique in this world: Mantegna’s Triumph and the Gonzaga Colletion’ (with Guido Rebecchini), in Charles I: King and Collector, exhibition catalogue (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2018), pp. 54-59
- ‘Between Collection and Stock. The Ambiguous Role of Merchants and Artisans in the Sixteenth-Century Roman Antiquities Market’, in Christina Anderson, ed., Early Modern Merchants as Collectors (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 143-55
- ‘Constructing Antiquities as Luxury Goods in Early Modern Rome: a Preliminary Overview’, in Alain Bonnet and Natacha Coquery, eds, Le commerce du luxe – le luxe du commerce. Production, exposition et circulation des objects précieux du moyen âge à nos jours (Paris: Mare et Martin, 2015), pp. 95-103
- ‘The Display in Motion’, in Gail Feigenbaum, ed., Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550-1750 (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications, 2014), pp. 146-56
- ‘Unexpected Shifts. Thieves as Mobilizers of Art and Luxury Goods in Early Modern Italy’, in G. Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch, eds, The Challenge of the Object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts (Nuremberg: Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 2014), pp. 35-38
Selected Grants
- 2025, Delmas Foundation Fellowship. Title of project: A Flemish Erudite in Renaissance Venice: Nicolo’ Stoppio.
- 2024, Census x Warburg x Hertziana Fellowship. Title of project: True Lies. Restorations, Reproductions, and Fake Antiquities.
- 2012-2015, Marie Curie Fellowship of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung at The Warburg Institute, London. Title of project: Antiquities in Motion in Early Modern Rome: People, Objects and Practices.
- 2009-2010, The Getty Research Institute Residential Fellowship, Los Angeles. Title of project: Mobility and Display in Early Modern Italy: The Orsini Collection in Rome.
Other professional activity
- 2021-ongoing: Member of the Society of the History of Collecting and Secretary of the Research and Development Committee
- 2021-ongoing: Member of the TIAMSA (The International Art Studies Association)
- 2012-ongoing: Member of the Advisory Board for the Digital Isabella d’Este (IDEA) project, based at the University of California, Humanities Research Institute, Santa Cruz, and directed by Prof. Deanna Shemek
- 2008-ongoing: Member of the Renaissance Society of America