The Metapictorial: East and West

Saturday 26 October 2013
A one-day conference organised by the Department of History of Art in collaboration with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, The Humanities Research Centre and the Early Modern Forum, University of Warwick

You can now watch online the metapictorial conference at the following link:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/emforum/events/metapictorial/

Research Interests

At the core of Lorenzo's research has always been the image. More interested in how to succeed in explaining the historically complex meanings of the artwork than in pursuing academic labels, Lorenzo strongly believes that it is the artwork that dictates the methodology to follow and not the methodology that indicates how to see and interpret the artwork. Driven by the continuous challenge represented by hermeneutical experimentation, Lorenzo has been applying the most different approaches to his subjects of research (from structuralism to social history, from iconography to connoisseurship), not hesitating to innovate when appropriate, and constantly focusing on the images' inter-textuality. Indeed, he is convinced that only the combination and adaptation of the many methods developed in modern and contemporary art history can lead to a fairly impartial and dispassionate reading of the historical image. Trained in Greek and Latin philology, in ancient philosophy and in early modern paleography, Lorenzo has always been particularly keen on the reconstruction, interpretation and dissemination of art historical sources, especially Italian and French treatises of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century. First specialized in the art and architecture of the French classicism, Lorenzo has been increasingly working not only on Italian painting of the Renaissance and Baroque, but also on Flemish, Dutch and Spanish early modern art. He has extensively published on a wide range of topics and artists, from Antonello da Messina to Titian, from Rubens to Rembrandt and Velázquez, from Cima da Conegliano to Poussin. Moreover, he can be considered an international specialist on Caravaggio. His main research interests can be summarised as follows:

1) early modern religious art, its functions and interconnections with secular images;

2) Renaissance and Baroque pictorial narrative, and more specifically the concept of the istoria;

3) Renaissance and Baroque art theory, especially in relation to the invention, execution and reception of the artwork;

4) influences and cross-fertilizations between the arts produced in the different artistic centres of early modern Europe.

Lorenzo welcomes applications from students interested in the above topics and invites them to contact him at any time.