Gabriella L. Johnson has returned home to the United States, having completed her 2024 Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Marian and Andrew Heiskell Predoctoral Rome Prize Fellowship in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies last month.
A PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, she is working to complete her dissertation in the Department of Art History after two years living and working in Italy. Before her arrival the Academy last September, Johnson completed a predoctoral research resident appointment at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples (September 2022–June 2023).
Johnson’s dissertation, Galatea’s Realm: The Art of Coral, Shells, and Marine Fossils in Early Modern Sicily, Naples, and the Maltese Islands, explores how people in the early modern period perceived and engaged with aquatic nature through coral, shells, and marine fossils. These materials were not merely commodities but symbols of nature’s transformative power, influencing natural philosophy, civic identities, devotional objects, and an association of water with the marvelous.
For our final Fellows in Focus interview from the 2024 fellowship cohort, the Academy asked Johnson to review her time in Rome.
Has your Rome Prize project changed since September, when you first arrived?
Time spent studying works of art, natural history collections, and early modern texts in person, including two original seventeenth-century manuscripts (!), reshaped my chapter on marine fossils in art and science. Onsite research in Rome enriched investigative threads I followed as a yearlong research resident at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples, where I studied the sea’s role in the creative imagination of the city. I constantly encountered the unexpected in Italy, stumbling upon framed narwhal tusks in churches, paintings of divine miracles at sea, and curious objects made from artistic materials collected from the sea. Studying these often-unpublished works of art alongside fish-centric folklore, music, and protogeological breakthroughs made clear the depth of the sea in southern Italian cultural expression.
How much did you use the Academy library? Where else did you conduct your research?
My favorite time to use the AAR Library was between the hour it closed and dinner. It offered the best of both worlds: banter with the kind and generous librarians and, after closing to the public, a semiprivate workspace with friends.
Most of my library time was spent outside the Academy at the Biblioteca Corsiniana (which houses the book collections of the Accademia dei Lincei, an academy dedicated to the study of nature founded in 1603), the Biblioteca Casanatense, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana. In each of these libraries, I consulted early modern texts and specialized secondary sources pertinent to my dissertation, which examines how the Mediterranean shaped artistic production in early modern southern Italy and Sicily.
But site visits and appointments in the storage rooms of museums to study grand paintings, coral statues undergoing restoration, and heavily illustrated seventeenth-century botanical and naturalist texts made up the most exciting part of my research. After jotting down observations and curiosities about each work of art, I followed these new paths of inquiry in the serenity of the AAR Library.
What was your most surprising discovery?
It turns out that scallops have a ring of eyes and spindly teeth, and swim by opening and closing their mouths. Jokes aside, every object I studied—ranging from engravings and fossil drawings to coral statues, taxidermied fish, and an actual seventeenth-century marine fossil collection—felt like a discovery.
You’ve spent nearly two years in Italy. What have you seen in Rome that made a strong impression on you?
On the Aventine Hill, an incredible multimedia chapel of the martyrdom of the Roman Saint Alessio is tucked to the left of the Basilica dei Santi Bonifacio ed Alessio’s main portal. The saint’s relic—the staircase he quietly died under—juts from the wall in a gilded metalwork frame, while hovering stucco angels create the immersive illusion that Alessio’s death and his soul’s ascension into heaven are happening before us. The eighteenth-century chapel and its decoration are reproduced in Roman guidebooks, but the visual impact of this late Baroque ensemble can only be felt in person. Friends at the Academy can attest to the effect this work had on me—I brought everyone to see it!
The Academy’s terrace is a close second to Sant’Alessio. With a room on the fourth floor, I often walked onto the terrace to take in the breathtaking view from the top of the Academy’s main building. It would be difficult to count how many books were read, chamomiles sipped, and aperitivi shared on the terrace, each set before a haunting, expansive view of Rome that jumps from the ancient ruins of the Palatine Hill and Forum to seventeenth-century cupolas like Francesco Borromini’s Sant’Ivo flaming with wisdom to the bell towers of pilgrimage sites like Santa Maria Maggiore. Sure, I had my list of museum collections and libraries to visit, but the real motivator to explore was this daily panorama.
How have your interactions with this year’s fellows and residents influenced your work or changed your perspective?
I am eternally grateful for every interdisciplinary fish anecdote or sea legend thrown my way by friends at the Academy. It was also fun to pass my photos of strange still-life paintings of fish, including two I studied in person at Palazzo Corsini and Palazzo Barberini, around the table at meals to work through ideas with friends. The guts hanging from the belly of a monkfish and the open mouth of a nightmarishly toothy lamprey were invaluable conversation starters.
How did your conceptions of the Academy change over the course of the fellowship?
It is amazing how a large, imposing palazzo quickly became so inviting and familiar.
What is coming up in the next few months, after your return from Rome?
My post-Rome activities can be summarized in a few words: writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, and focused research trips to Sicily, Naples, and Cambridge. Generous funding from the Graduate College at the University of Delaware will support one year of writing and travel to tie up loose ends in my dissertation. As I embark on these trips to Italy, how could I resist a visit to the Academy? As I told every taxi driver, “My house is just ahead, the gate on the left.”