Alessio Assonitis

Alessio Assonitis (Rome, 1970) received his doctoral degree in Renaissance art history from Columbia University in 2003. He has taught at Columbia University, Barnard College, Herron School of Art, and the Christian Theological Seminary. In 2003-4, he served as Allen Whitehill Clowes Curatorial Fellow at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  He arrived at the Medici Archive Project in the fall 2004, with a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He became MAP Research Director in 2009 and Director in 2011. His position is endowed by the Florence J. Gould Foundation. His research interests include Quattrocento and Cinquecento painting in Rome and Tuscany, antiquarian studies, history of Mendicant pauperism, and early modern travel history. He currently serves as editor-in-chief of the historical journal Memorie Domenicane. His monograph on the painter Fra Bartolomeo della Porta and his workshop at the convent of San Marco is due out in 2012. Along with Brian Sandberg, he is editing a collection of essays on the Medici Granducal Archive (The Medici and their Archive: Power and Representation in Early Modern Tuscany, Rome: Viella Editore, 2012).

Selected Publications:

"Episodi di eredità cateriniana nel movimento piagnone a Roma nel primo Cinquecento”, in Virgo digna coelo. Caterina e la sua eredità, Roma: Pontificio comitato delle scienze storiche, 2013 (forthcoming)

"Pontormo, pittore leonino: gli affreschi per il portico della Santissima Annunziata (1513) e per la Cappella dei Papi nel convento di Santa Maria Novella (1515)”, in Lo splendore di un papa. Leone X de' Medici e Firenze, eds. Nicoletta Baldini and Monica Bietti, Livorno: Sillabe, 2013: 230-240

“Savonarola and the Aesthetics of Roman Pollution,” in Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease, and Hygiene in Rome from Antiquity to Modernity, eds. Mark Bradley and Kenneth Stow, Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012: 139-152

"Fra Bartolomeo della Porta: Patronage and Clientelism at San Marco in the Early Cinquecento", Memorie Domenicane, 42 (2011): 409-423

Bastiano Mainardi: Painter of Altarpieces in Renaissance Tuscany, Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011
 
“Consecrated Spaces, Sacred Journeys,” in In Extremis: Landscape into Architecture, ed. Erieta Attali, New York: Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University Press, 2011: 46-48

“The Birth of Maria de' Medici (26 April 1575): Hearsay, Correspondence, and Historiographical Errors,” in Time and Space on the Way to Modernity: The Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley, London: Ashgate, 2010: 104-119

“Fra Zanobi Acciaiuoli’s Oratio in laudem urbis Romae (1518): Antiquarianism and Savonarolism at the Time of Raphael,” in Watching Art: Writings in Honor of James Beck / Studi in onore di James H. Beck, Lynn Catterson and Mark Zucker, eds., Rome: Ediart Editrice, 2006: 55-63

“Art and Savonarolan Reform at San Silvestro a Monte Cavallo in Rome: 1507-1540”, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, LXXIII (2003): 205-288
 

Selected Conferences & Lectures:

“Circa four million letters...: Researching People, News, and Language in the Medici Archive Project's Digital Platform (BIA)”, Corpus Linguistics and Historical Corpora, Università degli studi di Firenze, 9 April 2013.

“Searching for Cosimo's Books: Research Trajectories in the Medici Granducal Archive”, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY, 5 March 2013.

“Book History and the Medici Archives”, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, 26 February 2013.

“Medici in the Archive: the Digital Future of the Florentine Past” (Keynote lecture for the Master Class series), IN THE archive, University College Cork, Graduate School, College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, 6-7 December 2012.

"The Medici Court: Marvels, Oddities and Natural Science”, Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, Houston, TX, 7 November 2012.

"Renaissance Archives in the Age of the Digital Humanities”, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, 29 October 2012.

"Research Strategies and the Digital Platform of the Medici Granducal Archive (1537-1743)”, Plenary session of the Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Cincinnati, OH, 25 October 2012.

"Florentine Patrons and Artists on the Qurinal in the Cinquecento”, in a panel entitled: “Per veder che differenza fusse fra gli artefici di Roma e quegli di Fiorenza...” New Archival Findings on Florentine Artists in Rome in the Cinquecento, Renaissance Society of America, Wahisngton, D.C., 24 April 2012.

"Fra Bartolomeo della Porta: fra tradizione mendicante e innovazione artistica”, Associazione Amici dei Musei di Fiesole, Convento della Maddalena in Pian di Mugnone, Fiesole, 26 February 2012.

"Il culto di Santa Caterina da Siena negli ambiti savonaroliani in San Silvestro al Quirinale”, Caterina e la sua eredità, Convento di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Roma, 27-29 October 2011.

“The Future of the Medici”, Digital Cultures, University College Cork, 28-29 September 2011.

“Research Strategies and the Construction of an Early Modern On-Line Documentary Platform”, with Lorenzo Allori and Manfredi Piccolomini, ThatCamp 2010 Florence, European University Institute, Fiesole, 23 March 2011.

“Anti-Renaissance and Material Culture at the Time of the Medici Grand Dukes”,  Renaissance Now!, University College Cork, 10 December 2010.

“Artistic Production and Mendicant Tenets in the Church and Convent of San Marco in Florence”, York University (Canada), Convento di San Marco, Firenze, 31 June 2010.

“Bronzino at the Court of Cosimo I de’ Medici: The Painter, the Secretary, the Duke and his Archive”, Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 16 April 2010.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Vmz_8P1kE)

“Fra Bartolomeo della Porta, Piagnone Patronage, and Savonarolan Simplicitas”, in panel entitled: After Savonarola: Problems in Florentine Painting, Renaissance Society of America, Venice, 10 April 2010.

“At the Time of Galileo: Art, Music, and Science in Early Modern Florence: circa 1600”, The Legacy of Galileo, The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA, 20 June 2009.

“Cosimo I and Rome: 1537-1542”, in panel entitled: Cosimo I de' Medici and the Creation of the Florentine State, Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, 3-5 April 2008.

“Giving Birth to Maria de’ Medici (26 April 1575): Archival Documents and Historiographical Inaccuracies”, Places of News: The Creation of International News Networks in Early Modern Times, Jacobs University Bremen, 6-8 December 2007.

“Documenti storico artistici nel Mediceo del Principato: Metodologia e Fonti”, Committenza e collezionismo artistico in Antico Regime: Metodologie di ricerca documentaria a confronto, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, 9 November 2007.

“James Beck and Old Masters’ Connoisseurship in the Twenty-First Century”, Connoisseurship in Crisis, The British Institute of Florence, 12 June 2007.

“The Miasma of Rome: Fra Girolamo Savonarola on the City of Popes and the Urbs Antiqua”, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease, And Hygiene in Rome From Antiquity To Modernity, British School at Rome, 21-22 June 2007.

“Ciphered and Coded Letters to Cosimo I de' Medici (1537-1574)”, Salander O’Reilly Galleries, New York, 18 May 2006.

“L’ombra del Frate agli inizi del Ducato: Savonarola e Cosimo I”, Il genio fiorentino: storia, cultura e tecnologia nell’archivio dei Medici, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence, 10 May 2006.