Meet the Fellows

Caitlin Petty is a PhD Candidate in the Art History and Archaeology Department at Washington University in St. Louis where she focuses on the intersection of art, medicine, and religion in early modern Italy under Dr. William E. Wallace. She completed her MA in Italian Renaissance Art through Syracuse University’s Florence Program in 2020. As a Samuel H. Kress Fellow, Caitlin’s research will center on Lodovico Cigoli’s red wax statuette (c. 1600) of a flayed figure, which was used as an anatomical teaching tool at the Florentine Accademia del Disegno and later reproduced in bronze by collectors such as the Medici.

Kathryn Griffith is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of Southern California, specializing in early modern Italy. Her dissertation project examines the movements and metamorphoses of gold in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, both as a material central to the monetary economy and a medium employed by a range of artisan professions. She focuses on how processes of material transformation shaped ideas about wealth and value. During her fellowship at MAP, Kathryn will be working with the inventories and account books of the Medici Guardaroba, which document the acquisition and distribution of raw materials to court artisans as well as the completion of finished objects. In particular, her research will focus on gold-wrapped threads, which were essential to Florence’s silk industry and court consumption of gold. In addition to her academic work, Kathryn has held curatorial and research internships at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Clark Art Institute, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Prior to USC, Kathryn earned an M.A. in the History of Art from Williams College and the Clark Art Institute and her B.A. from Wellesley College.

Clara Nicolay is a PhD candidate in Art History at University Graz. Her dissertation explores how artists’ involvement in theatrical practices shaped their visual and literary output. During her research residency at the MAP, she focuses on Lorenzo Lippi, examining his drawings and theatrical activities to better understand the embodied and performative dimensions of early modern artistic identity. Combining archival research with visual analysis, her project highlights the role of artistic collaboration and institutional networks in seventeenth-century Florence. Clara has presented her work at international conferences. She has taught courses on academic writing and museum communication at Goethe University Frankfurt and has gained professional experience at institutions such as the KHI, the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and Sotheby’s Germany. Since October 2025, she has been working as a university assistant at the Department of Arts and Musicology at KFU Graz.

Francesca Toso is a PhD candidate in History, Criticism and Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Padua. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Art History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and subsequently completed the Postgraduate School of Specialization at the University of Padua. Following her broader research interests in the history and collecting of old master prints, her doctoral project focuses on the Italian engraver Enea Vico (1523 – 1567), with the aim of exploring his biographical trajectory and preparing a catalogue of his prints. During the fellowship, Francesca will investigate Vico’s stay in Florence, his direct relationship with Cosimo I de’ Medici, and the collaboration with some of the artists in the city – such as Francesco Salviati and Baccio Bandinelli – as well as the cultural and artistic context in which the engraver was actively involved.

Lorenzo Giglio is a PhD candidate in Medieval Literature at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale in Naples. His dissertation focuses on Boccaccio’s Corbaccio, one of the most influential works in the medieval tradition of misogynistic and satirical literature. Alongside his doctoral research, he has long investigated the transmission and reception of medieval literature in the early Renaissance, with a particular interest in the history of collecting and the circulation of texts in both manuscript and print. In addition to various articles on the manuscript tradition of medieval poetry in the Renaissance, he has published a new annotated edition of Dante’s Vita Nuova and Rime (Salerno Editrice, 2022). At MAP, his research explores the ideological and literary implications of the relationships between printers, intellectuals, and Medicean power. His project centers on the enigmatic figure of Lorenzo Bartolini (1494–1533), a correspondent of Erasmus and owner of the Raccolta Bartoliniana (Accademia della Crusca, ms. 53), a significant anthology of medieval Italian poetry. Through this lens, he aims to shed light on Bartolini’s role within the wider European humanist network during the Reformation era, with particular attention to his influence on the editorial strategies of the Giunti publishers.

Stefano Mulas earned his Ph.D. in History of Science at the University of Bologna in 2025. His doctoral thesis focused on the analysis of the spread and reception of Paracelsian medicine in Medici Florence during the 16th and 17th centuries. His research aimed to understand the reasons for the interest in medicine, alchemy and chemistry at the Medici court, with particular attention to the institution and history of the grand ducal workshop, the Fonderia. With the MAP fellowship he will further explore some of the research questions raised during his doctoral project. Specifically, he will examine the history of the Fonderia at the end of the 17th century and its connections with the Accademia del Cimento through the figure of Francesco Redi (1626–1697), who was appointed as superintendent of the Fonderia in 1666. Through this fellowship he will investigate not only the relationship between different forms of practical and theoretical medical thought, but also the role of medicine and pharmacy in grand ducal politics.

Alexander Luca Coscarella is a PhD student in “Histories, Cultures and Politics of the Global” (40th cycle) at the University of Bologna, under the supervision of Professor Cristiana Facchini. His current research project is titled “The coffee chain and interconfessional mingling in the Mediterranean: the case of Livorno and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the Italian Early Modern Context”. The project focuses on the spaces, practices and relations that developed around coffee in Italian port cities between the late 17th and early 16th centuries. Specifically, this research uses Livorno and Venice as case studies to assess the impact of coffee on the cities’ social and interconfessional relations. During his residence at MAP, Alexander will consult Tuscan archival documents to study accounts of the strategies that the Jewish, “Turkish” and Oriental Christian communities in Livorno adopted in their consumption and appropriation of coffee. This entails analysing the nuanced perceptions of this drink, how it influenced patterns of confessional sociability and its commercialisation at the hands of these communities. In addition to this research, Alexander’s academic interests include Mediterranean slavery, Early Modern Ottoman history, the social history of food and Early Modern travel literature.

Alicia Sempere Marín is a pre-doctoral fellow in the Department of History of Art at the Universidad de Murcia, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science. She has been a visiting scholar at University College London, Università di Parma, and Universidad de Valladolid. Her research has been recognized by the Spanish Committee of History of Art (CEHA) and the Royal Studies Journal. Her work focuses on the women of the House of Austria and the production and circulation of sumptuary goods in Early Modern Europe, with particular attention to gift-giving. During her stay at MAP, she will pursue this line of research by examining the role of Medici women as agents in papal diplomacy through the gifting of the Golden Rose.

João Gabriel Covolan Silva is a PhD candidate in History at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He holds an MA in History from the University of Turin and a BA from the University of São Paulo. During his doctoral studies, he was a Visiting PhD student at King’s College London and a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. His research focuses on the commercial networks between the Portuguese Atlantic and the Mediterranean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly the role of Portuguese New Christians in Italy and the influence of Tuscan merchant-bankers and their agents in Portugal and its Atlantic territories. As a Beatrice Solomon Fellow, João will work with documentation from the Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragona and Antinori collections to examine the association between this Portuguese family of Jewish origin and the Tuscan nobility, as well as with account books of Florentine apothecaries to investigate the retail distribution of colonial goods such as sugar and spices.

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.

Anton Serdeczny, doctor of History of the EPHE (2014, Sorbonne Paris, codirected by Ludwik Stomma), has taught modern history in Marne-la-Vallée, Neuchâtel, Moscow, and Aix-Marseille, and has been a visiting researcher at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, at the European University Institute in Florence and at the University of Erfurt. His work focuses on the interactions between religion, culture and science, particularly on the links between oro-ritual culture, especially carnival, and early modern medicine. He is the author of Du tabac pour le mort. Une histoire de la réanimation, published by Champ Vallon (2018), a book that examines the atypical development of medical reanimation in the early modern period, as an involuntary scholarly re-elaboration of carnivalesque rites and representations of resurrection. His current research addresses the role of the European oral and ritual cultural substratum in elites, and more specifically in the systems of representations related to intersex in the modern period. He is also organizing an experimental, collaborative, academic cell with Algerian academics to study the circulation of oral tales and motifs on either side of the Mediterranean.

Assunta Vitale is currently a research fellow at the Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici of the Università per Stranieri di Siena within the project The Medici Avvisi: The News that made us Modern (17th Century). She earned her undergraduate degree in Lettere Moderne at the Università degli studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’ and her postgraduate degree in Filologia Moderna at the Università per Stranieri di Siena. In 2022 she received her PhD in Linguistica Storia, Linguistica Educativa, Italianistica: l’italiano, le altre lingue e culture at the Università per Stranieri di Siena with a dissertation on Giovan Battista Basile’s Lo cunto de li cunti. Her interests revolve around baroque literature and the Tuscan Accademies of the seventeenth century. Since 2018, she is a member of the research group Accademie Toscane del Seicento co-ordinated by CISS – Centro Internazionale di Studi sul Seicento. Her most recent publications are: La molteplicità: una categoria barocca per Lo cunto de li cunti (Pacini, 2022); “Bambole e statue semoventi ne Lo Cunto de li Cunti”, in Letteratura e Scienze. Atti delle sessioni parallele del XXIII Congresso dell’ADI, (Adi editore, 2021); “‘Levare il governo del regno d’Amore dalle mani de’ cavalieri e porlo nelle dame’. L’Accademia delle Assicurate di Siena (1654-1714 ca.)” in Le accademie toscane del Seicento fra arti, lettere e reti epistolari (Edizioni Università per Stranieri di Siena, 2020).

Bruce Edelstein has been named the first Distinguished Arts Professor in NYU’s global network, after having served for over two decades as Coordinator for Graduate Programs and Advanced Research at NYU Florence. His research focuses primarily on sixteenth-century Medici court patronage, on art and architecture in viceregal Naples, and relations between Italy and Habsburg Spain. His books include Eleonora di Toledo and the Creation of the Boboli Gardens (Sillabe, 2022), and the exhibition catalogs, Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting (Uffizi Galleries ad Getty Museum, 2018) and Eleonora di Toledo e l’invenzione della corte dei Medici a Firenze (Uffizi Galleries, 2023). He is delighted to be returning to the Medici Archive Project as a Visting Senior Research Fellow, after having been the first researcher appointed at the inception of the project in 1997. During the academic year 2025-26, he will be working on research regarding the patronage, collecting and display of portraits by the Medici and their contemporaries in Grand Ducal Florence.

Giulia Lovison holds a PhD in History cum laude from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (2024). She is a subject expert in “History of Christianity and the Churches” at the University of Florence. She is a member of the international research project “The Tribunal of the Inquisition of Santa Croce in Florence: Places, Protagonists, Organization.” She previously took part in “ENBELREL – Environment and Beliefs in Law and Religions” (University of Florence; University of Birmingham; University of Cologne). In 2025 she was awarded the Premio Gaetano Cozzi per saggi di storia del gioco (Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche) and her forthcoming monograph, La legge e il rogo. Fra’ Modesto Scrofeo e la caccia alle streghe di Sondrio (1523), will be published by Carocci. During her fellowship at MAP, she will explore a wide range of archival materials to reconstruct the practical operations of the Inquisition in Florence during the Medicean period. Her research focuses in particular on the transitional phase that followed the establishment of the Congregation of the Holy Office in 1542.

Marianna Mancini earned her PhD in History of Architecture from the Department of History, Representation, and Restoration of Architecture of Sapienza Università di Roma in February 2025. Her dissertation examined the palace of the Torres family in Rome and the interplay between patrons, architects, and masons in sixteenth-century Roman building culture. In 2025, she collaborated with a PRIN 2022 research group on the project CHROME – Churches of Rome: Atlas of the Chapels of the Capitoline Nobility (1347–1600). She was awarded the Weinberg Fellowship in Architectural History and Preservation at the Italian Academy, Columbia University (fall semester 2025). Her time at MAP will allow her to analyze the extensive and ambitious plan to renovate Medici real estate in Rome, which was commissioned by Cosimo II de’ Medici and entrusted to Ludovico Cardi, known as il Cigoli. The study intends to examine the purpose of Cigoli’s unrealized architectural projects, evaluate their feasibility, and determine their potential impact on Rome’s urban fabric, offering a new perspective on the Grand Duke’s cultural policies and ambitions as an architectural patron.