Who's Who in
Documentary Sources for the Arts and Humanities?

ALESSIO GIOVANNI MARIA ASSONITIS, Research Fellow, (NEH Fellow: 2004-2007) completed a PhD at Columbia University in 2003 with a dissertation on "Art and Savonarolism in Florence and Rome." He then served as Clowes Fellow at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. As a Project Fellow, he will be investigating, "Fra Girolamo Savonarola and the Medici: 1527-1692," a largely ignored topic that is crucial to our understanding of art, culture, politics and ideology in granducal Tuscany.

MAURIZIO ARFAIOLI Research Fellow (Project Fellow, 2005-2008), completed a PhD at the University of Warwick (U.K.) in 2002 with a dissertation on Italian Renaissance military history. This research formed the basis of his recent book, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy During the Italian Wars (1526-1528), published by the Pisa University Press in 2005. During the 2003-2004 academic year, Dr. Arfaioli was Fellow of Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), with a research project on the Italian troops in Spanish service in the Low Countries during the Eighty Years' War. As a MAP fellow, Dr. Arfaioli is completing a full-length study of the life and career of Giovan Luigi "Chiappino" Vitelli (1520-1575), one of the most famous military leaders of the sixteenth century, becoming Captain General of the Infantry of Cosimo I de' Medici and general in the Spanish Army of Flanders.

SHEILA BARKER (2005-2008) Research Fellow (Samuel H. Kress Curatorial Fellow, 2005-2008) completed a PhD in Art History at Columbia University in 2002, with a dissertation entitled, Art in a Time of Danger: Urban VIII's Rome and the Plague of 1629-34. She undertook a new but related research project with "Poussin, Plague and Early Modern Medicine," published in the Art Bulletin and awarded the College Art Association's 2005 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize. At the Medici Archive Project, Dr. Barker is pursuing the humanistic implications of seventeenth-century medicine with the study, "New Medicine" and the Culture of Health at the Medici Court, 1609-1670. Reflecting her ongoing art-historical research and publication, Dr. Barker will be a Kress Curatorial Fellow during her first year with MAP (2005-2006).

FRANCESCA FUNIS Research Fellow (DeRoy Testamentary Foundation Fellow, 2005-2008) qualified as an architect at the University of Florence in 1999. She then went on to earn a PhD in the History of Architecture in 2003, with a dissertation on The Vasari Corridor: Form and Construction. During the 2004-2005 academic year, Dr. Funis participated in a collaborative research project organized by the University of Udine, focusing on Foreign Communities and Urban Development in Livorno During the Grand-Ducal Period. Dr. Funis comes to MAP as a DeRoy Testamentary Foundation Fellow and will continue her work on the architectural policies of the Medici Grand Dukes.

SUSANNE KUBERSKY-PIREDDA, Research Fellow (2001 - 2004) & Getty Collaborator (2004-2006) completed her PhD at the University of Cologne in 2001 with a thesis on "The Prices of Panel Paintings and the Economic Situation of Florentine Painters between 1350 and 1550." She has collaborated in various research initiatives at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, including databases for the history of Italian renaissance and nineteenth century art. Dr. Kubersky-Piredda's chief interest is in the economic history of art and as a Kress Curatorial Fellow at the Medici Archive Project she is studying the material culture of the Medici Court, with particular attention to the prices of household furnishings and luxury goods purchased by Cosimo I.

SALVADOR SALORT PONS, MAP Research Fellow (2002 - 2003) & Getty Collaborator (2004-2006)(received a Ph.D. at the University of Bologna in 2001 where he was a member of the Royal College of Spain. He previously held research positions at the Spanish Academy in Rome (1998-2000) and the Complutense University in Madrid (1995-97). Dr. Salort's publications, including a recent book on Velázquez and Italy (2002), have focused mainly on artistic relations between Spain and Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centures; he will continue to investigate these issues as a Fellow of the Medici Archive Project. In addition to historical and archival research, Dr. Salort has been active in museological endeavors in Italy and Spain, curating exhibitions and cataloguing collections.

JOANNE RILEY, Technology Coordinator, earned an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University in 1980, and an M.S. in Educational Technology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1992. As Technology Coordinator for the Medici Archive Project she focuses on integrating the principles of information technology with the scholarly goals of the Project. This includes overseeing the design and construction of the Documentary Sources for the Arts and Humanities database (documents.medici.org) and maintaining the Project website.