Research Projects
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

Three long-term research projects are in progress:

Early Modern Sources in Translation: Carlo Cesare Malvasia's Felsina pittrice

As part of a larger research project to publish important European art literature from the early modern period in translation, an annotated English translation of this history of Bolognese painting is in preparation under the direction of Dean Elizabeth Cropper. Felsina pittrice, by Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693), is one of the most important critical texts on Italian art. Indeed, it may be considered the 17th-century equivalent of Vasari's Lives, whose Florentine premises it challenges. Malvasia wrote in an unusually difficult Italian, and the Felsina, first published in 1678, has never been translated in full. It has not been published as an Italian edition in its entirety since 1841.

This English translation, undertaken by a team of scholars, will appear in a series of individual monographic volumes. Each volume will include transcriptions of Malvasia's manuscript notes now in the Archiginnasio in Bologna as well as a modern edition of the Italian text, making it valuable not only for teaching purposes, but also for all specialists in Bolognese painting. With the exception of material relating to the lives of the Carracci, which will be edited by Giovanna Perini of the Università degli Studi di Urbino, the texts and notes will be transcribed and edited by Lorenzo Pericolo of the University of Montreal.

Research by Elizabeth Cropper, assisted by Giancarla Periti and Jessica N. Richardson, has hitherto focused on the first of four parts of Malvasia's text and on providing basic tools for the translators, annotators, and editors of the subsequent volumes. Their annotated edition of the first part of the Felsina will include accompanying essays on Malvasia's treatment of the "primi lumi" of Bolognese painting from the 12th to the 15th century. An archive of relevant images is being compiled. Naoko Takahatake is completing her translation of Malvasia's important survey of Bolognese printmakers, and Anne Summerscale is working in a similar way on the translation and annotation of the life of Domenichino. Lorenzo Pericolo will complete the volume on Guido Reni. Additional translators are being identified, and have begun work.

Research Associates: Naoko Takahatake (to August 2008) and Jessica N. Richardson
Program Assistant: Mattie M. Schloetzer

Keywords in American Landscape Design, 1600–1850

Keywords in American Landscape Design, 1600–1850 is in production at its copublisher, Yale University Press, and will be available in spring 2010. This historical and visual reference work is the result of a project to compile a photographic corpus and historical textual database documenting landscape design in North America during the colonial and antebellum periods. Through texts and images, the book traces the changing meaning of landscape and garden terminology as it was adapted from Old World sources and transformed into an American landscape vocabulary. The goal is to map the evolution of a regional vocabulary of design and the transformation of features within the changing environmental and cultural traditions of America, as defined by the current boundaries of the United States. Under Associate Dean Therese O'Malley's direction, researchers compiled descriptions of and references to gardens and ornamental landscapes from a wide variety of sources, both published and manuscript, and a corpus of images comprising more than 1,800 reproductions. 1,000 of these illustrations and hundreds of citations are collected in the volume. Each of 100 keywords is accompanied by a short historical essay, a selection of images, and a chronologically arranged section of usage and citations. Three longer interpretive essays provide a broader historical and cultural context for terms, sites, and images. Several additional reference tools have resulted from this research, including an extensive bibliography, an analysis of the sales and distribution of books related to garden and landscape design, and a database of images that represents a comprehensive photographic archive of antebellum American garden and landscape design.

In addition to its support from Center funds, the project has received support from the Getty Grant Program and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Terra Foundation for the Arts has provided a subvention for the publication.

Research Associates: Anne Nellis (to August 2008) and Sara M. Taylor
Program Assistant: Jessica Ruse

The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635:
Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma

The aim of this research project, under the direction of Associate Dean Peter M. Lukehart, is to create the first institutional history of the foundation of the Accademia di San Luca. Drawing from original statutes, adunanze (records of the proceedings of meetings of the academy), ledger books kept by the treasurers, and court records, the project brings together a large number of new and previously unpublished documentary materials with relevant secondary sources. Conceived as two complementary tools, an online database of documentation and a printed volume of interpretive studies, the project sheds light on the foundation, operation, administration, and financial management of the fledgling academy from its origins in the late 16th century to its consolidation as teaching institution in the 1630s.

The first component of the project is a reference database, "The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma," will be searchable on the Web and will provide access to a systematic and complete transcription of every extant notarial record identified by the project team, as well as a digital image of the original document, the two viewable side by side. The project is in its second year of a three-year grant from the Getty Foundation that will support completion of the markup of the text following standards of the text encoding initiative, the transfer of documents onto a Web site, the beta testing of components of the reference database, and the response to inquiries and comments from scholars. Hiring of experts to assist with each of these components of the project is under way. At present, roughly half of the documents have been made available to the project's advisory committee. Launch of the publicly accessible Web site with the entire selection of documents is scheduled for late 2009.

The other component of the project is a printed volume of 11 scholarly essays based on a series of three Robert H. Smith Seminars held in 2004–2006, edited by Peter M. Lukehart. The book, The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Luca in Rome, c. 1590–1635, will be published in late 2009 as the second volume in the Center's Seminar Papers series, distributed by Yale University Press.

Research Associate: Jill Pederson
Project Art Historian: Susan Nalezyty
Program Assistant: Emma Millon
Text-encoding (TEI) Consultant: David Seaman