Institute Art History professor Francesca Marini will take part in the 36th Conference of the Association of Art Historians to be jointly hosted by the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow School of Art and held in Glasgow April 15-17, 2010. Prof. Marini will participate in the session entitled “The Artist at Work in Early Modern Italy (c. 1450–1700): Methods, Materials, Models, Mimesis” with a paper entitled “Artists’ modus operandi as connoisseurs: the Florentine case between the end of sixteenth and seventeenth century”. In focusing on the Florentine area her essay seeks to examine the theoretical roots of connoisseurship, as derived from the specific training promoted by the Accademia del Disegno. Through the examination of new source material on the circumstances of Florentine artists’ modus operandi as connoisseurs, she is able to broaden the reconstruction of seventeenth century views on authenticity, and to better evaluate their contribution to the development of Florentine collections, such as that amassed by the Medici.
Francesca Marini will be chair and main professor of an art history course at Università degli Studi di Firenze from January to June 2010. The course, entitled Storia dell’Arte II: dal Barocco all’arte contemporanea, is devoted to the analysis of the main Italian artistic currents of the last four centuries through its connections with the more general history of culture.