Patricia H. Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELED.

Alina Payne will deliver the American Academy in Rome Friends of the Library Lecture for 2019–20. Her talk is titled “Architecture, Words, and the Limits of Drawing.”

Payne is Alexander P. Misheff Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University and Paul E. Geier Director of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She is the author of The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture (1999), Rudolf Wittkower (with Francesco Peri, 2011), From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism (2012), The Telescope and the Compass: Teofilo Gallaccini and the Dialogue between Architecture and Science in the Age of Galileo (2012), and L’architecture parmi les arts: Matérialité, transferts et travail artistique dans l’Italie de la Renaissance (2016). Payne has edited numerous volumes of essays including, most recently, Renaissance and Baroque Architecture (2016), Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local (with Gülru Necipoglu and Michele Bacci, 2016), and Revision, Revival, and Return: The Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century (with Lina Bolzoni, 2016). In 2006 Payne was awarded the Max Planck and Alexander von Humboldt Prize in the Humanities (2006–12). She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The lecture will be held in English. You can watch it live at https://livestream.com/aarome.

For centuries Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s magnificent etchings and books have been the most influential images of ancient Roman architecture, both in fact and in fantasy. They were so much desired, and so many copies of Piranesi’s works have flooded the world, that it is hard to sort out which ones are actually the closest to what their author wanted, and the best as works of art. The American Academy in Rome has one of the finest copies of Piranesi’s fundamental 1764 book on the antiquities of Albano.
 
On Tuesday, February 9, Andrew Robison, a prominent Piranesi scholar and the now-retired senior curator of prints and drawings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, will situate the Academy’s copy of the Antichità d’Albano in Piranesi’s broader work and reveal the special qualities of this copy.

The Patricia H. Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture, to be presented on Zoom, is free and open to the public. The start time is 6:00pm Central European Time (12:00 noon Eastern Time).

The Friends of the Library supports the Library through annual dues and special initiatives. The group also helps to raise awareness of the Library’s resources through regular programs. Join online today!

A distanza di circa cinquecento anni dalla costruzione di Palazzo Farnese per volere ed opera di Papa Paolo III (Alessandro Farnese, 1468–1549, Papa dal 1534) e dei suoi cardinali nipoti, il "gran" cardinale Alessandro, Ranuccio e Odoardo, Palazzo Farnese continua ancora oggi ad assolvere un ruolo di primaria importanza nella cultura europea come ha dimostrato la mostra organizzata lo scorso anno dall’Ambasciata di Francia. Questa "vocazione culturale" ha radici profonde e si sviluppò solo grazie alla accorta e lungimirante iniziativa di Casa Farnese che chiamò a lavorare a Palazzo i migliori architetti, artisti e decoratori del Rinascimento oltre ai più colti umanisti del tempo. Questa Accademia ”ante-litteram” non venne mai meno, anzi si rigenerò nei secoli ed ancora oggi, a distanza di secoli, ne possiamo apprezzare i contenuti e i risultati.

La conferenza si terrà in lingua italiana. Posti disponibili fino ad esaurimento.