Stefania Vai

Stefania Vai is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, supervised by Professor Jill Burke and Professor Stephen Bowd. She passed her viva in July 2025 with a dissertation entitled Lavinia Fontana: The First Public Woman Painter in Seventeenth-Century Rome. During her PhD programme, she taught History of Art undergraduate courses at the University of Edinburgh. In 2019‒20 she was awarded the scholarship SAS Cassal Bursary French and Francophone Studies at the Warburg Institute of London, where she received a Master’s degree in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture, graduating with distinction with a dissertation entitled The Gallery of Geographic Maps at the Colonna Palace in Rome: A Scientific, Political and Personal Statement, supervised by Opher Mansour. In 2021, her MA dissertation was awarded the first Paolo Caputo prize granted by Archeoclub d’Italia. She previously earned a postgraduate degree in History of Art at the Sapienza Università di Roma, graduating with distinction under the supervision of Professor Alessandro Zuccari with a dissertation entitled Gli Astalli. Storia e committenza artistica di una famiglia romana tra ’500 e ’600. Her research project at MAP aims to improve the understanding of the patronal network of the Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana (1552‒1614) in Florence, by investigating the artist’s socio-cultural interaction with members of the Florentine nobility and scholars surrounding the Medici court. Her study also intends to deepen the understanding of Fontana’s perception among the Medici by examining the early collectable potential of the painter’s works.