Lorenzo Pericolo
Vincent V. and Agatha Thursby Professor and Department Chair
Early Modern Art and Architecture
PhD École pratique des Hautes Études, Paris
1019 William Johnston Building
Dr. Lorenzo Pericolo joined the Department of Art History in 2022. He is an art historian with special interests in European Renaissance and baroque art and architecture. His research focus lies mostly in the artistic production of Italy, France, and Spain, although he has also published essays on Flemish and Dutch painting (Rubens, Rembrandt). An undergraduate and graduate student of the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Pericolo was initially trained as an ancient Greek and Latin philologist, and this has led to his numerous philological undertakings in the history of art, such as the critical edition of Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina pittrice–Lives of the Bolognese Painters (1678) in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Paired with a meticulous examination of the formal qualities of the artworks, Dr. Pericolo’s investigation of and acquaintance with art theory has enabled him to adapt different methodologies to the specificity of the topics he has studied. These include the evolution and dismantlement of the istoria (the visual narrative) in the age of the Counter-Reformation as a result of Caravaggio’s pictorial vanguard; the notion and limits of subject in early modern art; the “survival” of the Middle Ages between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries; the representation of hybrid architecture in painting; the notion of metapainting; the role of the lyrical tradition in the visual arts; and the concept of artistic perfection. Pericolo’s interest in philosophy has resulted in his forthcoming Deleuze’s Modern Baroque: The Fold, Leibniz, Informal Art, and the Objectile. In this monograph, he examines Gilles Deleuze’s definition of the modern baroque, which the French philosopher identified with the art of Jean Dubuffet, Simon Hantaï, and to a lesser extent, American Minimalism, and which inspired the “Folding in Architecture” trend as epitomized in the architectural projects of Peter Eisenman executed in the early 1990s. Dr. Pericolo is currently working on a monograph on the body in the arts of the baroque, and a research project on design as knowledge in the age of Leonardo da Vinci.
“Beauty and the aesthetic experience of art and architecture have been and are the focus of my most recent research. Beauty is a social and cultural product and a particular kind of language. It is the means by which anthropological, sociocultural, ecocritical, and intercultural practices, ideas, and processes become structurally manifest, serving as compelling catalyzers of knowledge and reflection by luring our senses and imagination. In the early modern period, the concept of beauty pervades and supports the domains of natural philosophy, cosmology, medicine, theology, social order (ethics), politics, and culture. As a scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art, I have always rebelled against the monolithic construct of the “classical canon” and “classical beauty.” I have sought and seek multiplicity and contradiction in the emergence of historical canons and notions of beauty. I have gone and go after artistic individuality and taste for license in order to break down the complexity of the messages conveyed by artistic forms. I use formal analysis and art theory to explore issues of nature, identity, gender, race, and religion in early modern art. My current research on the baroque body aims to demonstrate how a thorough investigation of the concept of beauty can uncover the richness of artists’ reflection on society, culture, and knowledge in the broadest sense. I also have a natural inclination toward theory and hermeneutics. My most recent monograph on Deleuze’s ‘modern Baroque’ shows my engagement with contemporary art, aesthetics, and philosophy. I welcome students interested in art theory and aesthetics, and in the relationship between early modern art, literature, natural philosophy, medicine, cosmology, and theology in Italy, Spain, and France.”
Professor Pericolo was an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow at the Humboldt Universität, Berlin (2004–2005); Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington (2005–2006); Fellow in Resident of the Getty Research Center, Los Angeles (2007–2008); a recipient of a three-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant (2007–2010); and most recently, “Profesor Invitado” at the Centro de Estudios, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (2022).
Contact and Files
Research and Teaching Areas
Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture
Visual Narrativity
The Body in Early Modern Art
Art and Science in the Age of Humanism
Early Modern Sources on Art Theory
The Depiction of Architecture in Painting
The Lyrical Tradition in the Visual Arts
The Classical Roots of the Baroque
Mannerism
Bologna as an Early Modern Capital of the Arts
Art Historical Methodologies (special interests in interdisciplinarity, formalism, iconology, social art history)
Selected Publications
Books
Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice: Lives of the Bolognese Painters. Volume Nine: Life of Guido Reni (London: Harvey Miller, 2019; two volumes).
Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative: Dislocating the Istoria in Early Modern Painting (London: Harvey Miller, 2011).
“Philippe, homme sage et vertueux”; Essai sur l’art et l’œuvre de Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) (Tournai: La Renaissance du Livre, 2002).
Books (as Co-editor)
Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo, eds., Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice: Lives of the Bolognese Painters. Volume Two–1: Lives of Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa (London: Harvey Miller, 2021).
Lorenzo Pericolo and Elisabeth Oy-Marra, eds., Perfection: The Essence of Art and Architecture in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).
Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo, eds., Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice: Lives of the Bolognese Painters. Volume Two–2: Life of Marcantonio Raimondi and Critical Catalogue of Prints by and after Bolognese Masters (London: Harvey Miller, 2017).
Lorenzo Pericolo and Jessica N. Richardson, eds., Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015).
Lorenzo Pericolo and David M. Stone, eds., Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions (Aldershote: Ashgate, 2014).
Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo, eds., Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice: Lives of the Bolognese Painters. Volume Thirteen: Lives of Domenichino and Francesco Gessi (London: Harvey Miller, 2013).
Elizabeth Cropper and Lorenzo Pericolo, eds. Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice: Lives of the Bolognese Painters. Volume One: Early Bolognese Painting (London: Harvey Miller, 2012).
Alexander Nagel and Lorenzo Pericolo, eds., Subject as Aporia in Early Modern Art, (Aldershote: Ashgate), 2010.
Articles and Essays in Books
“‘Knowing through the Eye’: Leonardo da Vinci’s Imprensiva and Alhazen’s Intuitio,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 44 (2019–2020): 205–61.
“1582: The Beginnings of the Carracci Academy between Bologna and Rome,” in Vita Segreto, ed., The Dawning of the Drawing Academy: Rome, Florence, Bologna (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023).
“The Liver, the Heart, and the Brain: Francesco Scannelli and the Body of Painting,” in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 71/72 (2019):178–91. [German translation: “Die Leber, das Herz und das Gehirn: Francesco Scannelli und der Körper der Malerei,” in Elisabeth Oy-Marra and Irina Schmiedel, eds., Zeigen–Überzeugen–Beweisen: Methoden der Wissensproduktion in Kunstliteratur, Kennerschaft und Sammlungspraxis der Frühen Neuzeit (Merzhausen: Ad picturam, 2020):177–214].
“Introduction: Ubiquitous Perfection,” in Lorenzo Pericolo and Elisabeth Oy-Marra, eds., Perfection: The Essence of Art and Architecture in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019):4–32.
“The Renaissance Masterpiece: Giorgio Vasari on Perfection,” in Lorenzo Pericolo and Elisabeth Oy-Marra, eds., Perfection: The Essence of Art and Architecture in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019):155–209.
“‘Donna bella e crudele’: Michelangelo’s Divine Heads in Light of the Rime,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes Florenz 59 (2017):203–33.
“The Shifting Boundaries of the Middle Ages: From Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) to Anachronic Renaissance (2010),” in Lorenzo Pericolo and Jessica N. Richardson, eds., Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015): 271–321.
“Incorporating the Middle Ages: The Bellini and the ‘Greek’ and ‘German’ Architecture of Medieval Venice,” in Lorenzo Pericolo and Jessica N. Richardson, eds., Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015): 139–67.
“Giorgio Vasari and the Invisible Prince: The Palazzo Vecchio as a Figure of Introjection,” in L. Bertolini, A. Calzona, G.M. Cantarella and S. Caroti, eds., Il Principe Invisibile: La rappresentazione e la riflessione sul potere tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015): 401–24.
“Statuino: “An Undercurrent of Anticlassicism in Italian Baroque Art Theory,” Art History (2015): 862–89.
“What is Metapainting? The Self-Aware Image Twenty Years Later,” in Victor Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image: New, Revised, and Updated Edition with an Introduction by Lorenzo Pericolo (London, Harvey Miller, 2015):11–31.
“Nude in Motion: Rembrandt’s Danae and the Indeterminacy of the Subject,” in Alexander Nagel and Lorenzo Pericolo eds., Subject in Aporia in Early Modern Art (Aldershote: Ashgate, 2010): 195–216.
“The Invisible Presence: Close-Up, Cut-In and Off-Scene in Antonello da Messina’s Palermo Annunciate,” Representations 107 (2009): 1–29.
“Heterotopia in the Renaissance: Modern Hybrids as Antiques in Bramante, Cima da Conegliano and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” in Getty Research Journal 1 (2009): 1–16; a shorter version of this essay is published as “Heterotopia in the Renaissance: Modern Hybrids as Antiques in Bramante and Cima da Conegliano,” in Jaynie Anderson, ed., Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migrations and Convergence (Carlton: The Miegunyah Press, 2009): 186–91.