Dr Barbara Furlotti and Prof Guido Rebecchini will discuss their recent experience of curating an exhibition on the relationship among the natural world, scientific interests, artistic production and courtly culture during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through an accurate selection of paintings, drawings, ancient and Renaissance sculptures, tapestries, scientific illustrations, but also fossils, Aztec masks, African oliphants, cups made out of nautilus shells and automata, the exhibition leads the visitor from the idea of nature as generative and primordial power to the experience of nature as a phenomenon reproducible through science, art and technology.
Inaugurated in September 2026, the exhibition is organised in the historic rooms of Palazzo Te on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of its foundation and establishes a dialogue with the exceptional decorative apparatus designed by Giulio Romano, especially with the Hall of the Giants.
Speakers:
Dr Barbara Furlotti is Associate Lecturer at The Courtauld. She has held post–doctoral fellowships at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, the Warburg Institute in London, the Humboldt Universität in Berlin, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. She has published extensively on the history of collecting, display practices and the art market. Her current book project focusses on antiquarian forgeries and restoration practices in Renaissance Italy. She has co–curated the exhibitions Giulio Romano: Art and Desire (Mantua, Palazzo Te, 2019–2020) and Giulio Romano: the Power of Things on Renaissance Design (Mantua, Palazzo Te, 2022-2023).
Prof. Guido Rebecchini is Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Art at the Courtauld. He studied at the Università di Roma “La Sapienza” and the Università degli Studi di Siena. In 2000, he was awarded his PhD at the Warburg Institute. He has held fellowships awarded by the British Academy, Villa I Tatti, CASVA, and the Getty Museum among others, and has published extensively on sixteenth-century Italian art, history and culture, especially on the arts in Mantua, Rome and Florence. He has co-curated exhibitions on Giulio Romano (2019-2020; 2021-2022) and Parmigianino (2022).
