Thesis: ‘Translating, Fashioning, Meaning: The Patronage of Girolamo Basso (1435?-1507) and Domenico della Rovere (1442-1501) between Turin, Savona, Loreto and Rome’
Supervisor: Dr. Scott Nethersole
Funded by CHASE/AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership
My thesis examines the art commissioned by two cardinal patrons, Girolamo Basso (ca 1440-1507) and Domenico della Rovere (1442-1501), to ask questions about how ideas and culture were communicated across the Italian peninsula in the fifteenth century.
Residing in Rome for the majority of their life, Girolamo and Domenico commissioned artworks in municipalities and communities as diverse as Turin (the soon-to-be seat of Savoy ducal power), Loreto (a ‘villa’ under direct control of the commune of Recanati, whose Marian Santuario della Santa Casa was renowned throughout Europe), and Rome itself. Their commissions involved important artists and architects, such as Pinturicchio, Andrea Bregno, Luca Signorelli, Melozzo da Forlì, Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano, among others.
Shifting the focus from the analysis of the artistic commissions to that of the patrons and their networks, the thesis aims to cast new light on such artworks and their intellectual milieu. It seeks to define to what extent these were the result of the translation of cultural and stylistic models from Rome, as well as the encounter with local political, intellectual and artistic communities. Through the analysis of the patrons’ networks, and of the interaction between travelling masters, local artists and masons, the thesis asks questions about the meaning and translation of style, problematising scholarly notions of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’.
Education
- PhD Candidate, Courtauld Institute of Art (2018-present)
- MA History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art (2015-2016)
Special option: ‘From Dante to Michelangelo: rhetoric, representation and identity in Italian art and literature, c.1300-1550’ Supervisors: Dr. Scott Nethersole, Dr. Federica Pich
Dissertation title: Contracts, contexts and contents: Defendente Ferrari’s polyptych at Sant’Antonio di Ranverso - BA Classics and Comparative Literature, King’s College London (2011-2014)
Dissertation title: The reception of Lucan’s political ideology in the works of P.B Shelley and G. Leopardi
Research interests
- Early modern Italian painting, sculpture, and architecture
- Quattrocento and early Cinquecento Patronage networks in Europe
- Translation, (self-)fashioning, style
- Art of Coastal Areas (especially Liguria and Marche)
- Savoy, Piedmont and Turin in the Renaissance
- Rome, antiquity and their visual reinterpretation
Conferences, seminars and workshops
- The Itinerant Shrine. Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Santa Casa di Loreto, workshop, Museo Pontificio Santa Casa di Loreto, Loreto (co-convener); ‘The House on the Sea: Collective Identities, Adriatic Coastlines, and the Cult of the Holy House of Loreto in the Fifteenth Century’ (paper)
- The Itinerant Shrine and the Sacred Landscapes of Loreto, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut, Florence (talk)
- The Patron is Present: Domenico della Rovere’s (1442-1501) Commissions in Rome and Turin, in Courtauld Institute of Art Year Three PhD Symposium, The Courtauld, London (paper)
- The Itinerant Shrine. Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Santa Casa di Loreto, Clive’s Conference, The Courtauld Institute of Art, June-July 2022, convener
- ‘Secondary’ artists for ‘secondary’ patrons: Girolamo Basso della Rovere (ca 1440-1507), Bernardino de’ Cuppis and the Marian fresco cycles at Santa Maria del Popolo and Sant’Onofrio al Gianicolo (Rome), Université de Nantes, December 2019 (paper)
- Inside the exhibition: temporality, device and narrative, Swiss Institute, Rome, October 2020, convener
Teaching Experience
- The Courtauld Institute of Art, Short Course, Variations on a Theme: The Renaissance in Art and Music, Convener (with Tamsin Lewis)
- The Courtauld Institute of Art, BA Degree, BA1 Foundations, Autumn 2022-2023, Blocks 1-3 (Classical and Byzantine Art, Renaissance Art, Buddhist Art), Teaching Assistant
Fellowships
- Doctoral Fellow, Abteilung Gerhard Wolf, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (2022-2023)
- Doctoral Fellow, Abteilung Alessandro Nova, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (2020-2022)
Publications
- ‘Celebrating a Sistine “second coming”: Girolamo Basso della Rovere, Bernardino de Cuppis and the Marian fresco cycles at Santa Maria del Popolo and Sant’Onofrio al Gianicolo, Rome’, in M. Legeay and J. Jouan, eds., À l’ombre des maîtres: les artistes “secondaires” en peinture, sculpture et architecture, Rennes: Presse Universitaire de Rennes, forthcoming.
- G. Antoni, M. Chirumbolo, G. Petrone, C. Zuber, eds., Inside the exhibition: Temporalità, dispositivo, narrazione, Rome: Artemide, 2022. ISBN 9788875754235.
- ‘Il Rinascimento europeo di Antoine de Lonhy’ [exhibition review], Renaissance Studies, 36, 2022, pp. 642-650.
- ‘L’ora dello spettatore. Come le immagini ci usano’ [exhibition review], Immediations, 8, 2021, pp. 120-123.
- Four great works of nineteenth-century sculpture’, Stuart Lochhead Sculpture, London, 2021. ISBN 9781838471606