Rebecca Arnheim

Rebecca Arnheim is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Boston University under the supervision of Dr. Jodi Cranston. Her dissertation, entitled “Ephemera Made Permanent: Collection and Display of Portrait Drawings in Early Modern Italy,” will address highly finished autonomous portrait drawings made during the Italian Renaissance and examine the circumstances of their creation, commission, purchase, collection, and display. She completed her BA and MA studies summa cum laude in History of Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her curatorial diploma at Tel Aviv University. During her studies, she interned and worked at the Israel Museum, The Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a fellow at MAP, Rebecca will explore the presence and significance of portrait drawings in the Cinquecento Medici grand dukes’ – Cosimo I, Francesco I, and Ferdinando I – collection. In this context, she will also observe the impact of Michelangelo’s teste divine on the draftsmanship of Medicean court artists like Agnolo Bronzino through their presence at the grand-ducal collection. Within the Medicean court, Rebecca will study the portrait drawings in Giorgio Vasari’s Libro de’ disegni and how this collection and its arrangement changed when Niccolò Gaddi purchased it after Vasari’s death.