Supervised by Guido Rebecchini
Funded by The Courtauld Scholarship, The Beinecke Scholarship, and the Linda Nochlin ’51 Memorial Scholarship (Vassar College)
The Pazzi Ascendancy: Identity, Patronage, and Network of a Florentine Family, c. 1430–1520
Because of their infamy in the political history of fifteenth-century Florence due to their eponymous Conspiracy of 1478, the Pazzi are seldom considered in the context of artistic patronage. This dissertation considers the Pazzi family’s patronage through their social network as well as the visual manifestation of their social and political identity both before and after the Conspiracy. Most of the family’s artistic commissions have either been lost or intentionally disassociated from their patrons due to the damnatio memoriae perpetuated against them after the Conspiracy. Therefore, I rely on archival sources to reconstruct both the Pazzi’s patrimony and the socio-political context in which they commissioned it. In addition to surviving monumental works of architecture such as the family’s palace and chapel, I consider other forms of material culture, such as domestic furnishings, decorations, devotional objects, manuscripts, and ceremonies. I also consider the afterlives of these commissions in the wake of the Conspiracy and the family’s attempts to reacquire the objects they had lost and to recreate a visual and political identity that both continued and expanded the modes of self-fashioning that had been halted in 1478. Whereas the Pazzi sought to emulate Medici patronage in order to ingratiate themselves to the ascendant family between the 1430s and the 1460s, the later members of the family sought to portray themselves as alter Medici, of equal, if not higher, status than the ruling family.
I am also a Junior Research Fellow and the Social Media Manager at the Medici Archive Project in Florence, Italy.
Education
PhD, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2023-present)
MA, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2022-2023)
Continuity and Innovation: Reframing the Italian Renaissance from Masaccio to Michelangelo; Revolutions, Translations, Imitations: Arts in Rome, 1520-1550
Dissertation: “A Collection of Illuminated Manuscripts for Pope Leo X Between Florence and Rome”
Honours and Awards: Director’s Prize for Outstanding Dissertation
BA, Art History and Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Vassar College (2018-2022)
Dissertation: “Power, Patronage, and Politics: The Pazzi”
Honours and Awards: Frances Daly Fergusson Prize for Outstanding Accomplishments in Art History; Phi Beta Kappa
Publications
“Vassar’s Cornaro Window: A Brief History and Iconographic Reading.” Vassar Campus History. Vassar College, May 2022.
“Tu vuo’ fa’ l’italiano: One Hundred Years of Italian at Vassar.” Podcast. Vassar College Italian Department, May 2022.
“Il Treno di Dante: A Pilgrimage to Ravenna.” Published in online catalogue for Celebrating Dante at Vassar, Autumn 2021.
“The Hunt of Iul(ian)us: Poliziano’s Stanze and Virgil’s Aeneid.” Vassar Critical Journal 4, no. 2 (2021): 80–88.
“Chivalry and Performance in Medicean Jousts of the Fifteenth Century.” Dies Legibiles 1 (May 2021): 96–108.
Conference Presentations
“A Slice of the Sistine Chapel at Vassar: Leo X’s Liturgical Manuscripts.”
“Using the Vassar Collection: Former Vassar Students in their Professions,: Research Group for Manuscript Evidence’s Spring Symposium: Between Past and Future: Building Bridges Between Special Collections and Teaching for the Liberal Arts. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA. 19-21 April 2024.
“A New Reconstruction of Leo X’s Liturgical Manuscripts”
“New Perspective in Italian Art,” Renaissance Society of America. Chicago, IL, USA. 21-23 March 2024.
“The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Leo X’s Mitre at the Cathedral of Florence.”
“Gift Giving in the Archives,” MAP Forum. Online. 19 December 2023.
“The Hunt of Iul(ian)us: Poliziano’s Stanze and Virgil’s Aeneid.“
“Secularism and Secular Power,” 15th Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Moravian University, Bethlehem, PA, USA. 4 December 2021
“Citrus Cultivation in Early Medici Gardens.”
“Scent and Fragrance in the Renaissance: Breakout Option C,” 41st Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum: Scent and Fragrance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Keene State College, NH, USA. 16-17 April 2021.
Research Interests
- Visual and material culture in 15th- and early 16th-century Italy
- Patronage
- Self-fashioning and identity making
- Art and politics
- Ephemera, ceremonies, and processions
- Archival research