Since 2007, Dr. Lorenzo Pericolo, together with Dr. Elizabeth Cropper, has been leading the “Malvasia Project:” the critical edition and annotated English translation of Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Lives of the Bolognese Painters (1678). So far, seven volumes have been published, and work continues on two more volumes, one on the Mannerist artists Prospero and Lavinia Fontana, Orazio Samacchini and Lorenzo Sabatini, and the other on two Baroque masters contemporaneous with Malvasia, such as the female painter Elisabetta Sirani (whose career Malvasia launched) and her father, Giovanni Andrea.
To reintroduce Malvasia to his own city and celebrate his art historical achievements, Dr. Pericolo and Dr. Cropper for some time have been planning to organize an international conference on this Bolognese art historian. Thanks to the support of Dr. Maria Luisa Pacelli (now Director of the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo), the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, has embraced this project and finalized this event, which took place on November 2022, 2024, over three days, with Dr. Cropper’s keynote lecture delivered at the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna, and Dr. Pericolo’s keynote lecture delivered at the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna.
During the course of the conference, twelve interdisciplinary scholars had the opportunity to clarify different aspects of Malvasia’s career: his role within the social context of his city; his relationship with literati and scientists in and outside Italy; his research and publications as an antiquarian; and the novelty of his art historical methodology.
The entire conference has been recorded and is accessible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh2iwtPIJkg.
