Biography

Elena Calvillo is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Richmond.  Her research and writing have focused on artistic service and imitative strategies in sixteenth-century papal Rome.  She has published several articles on the Croatian miniaturist Giulio Clovio at the court of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and the writings of Clovio’s Portuguese contemporary Francisco de Holanda.  Her most recent study, inThe Renaissance Quarterly (June 2013), considers techniques of painting developed by Clovio, Holanda, and Sebastiano del Piombo in the context artistic theory and practice during the Tridentine period. Elena’s research has received support from the University of Richmond and the American Philosophical Society.

Project Summary

This project examines, on one hand, the way in which artists experienced and reproduced in novel or precious media the canonical forms of sixteenth-century Rome and, on the other hand, the way in which collectors outside of Rome received and valued these artistic translations. The study will thus also consider the taste for novelty and preciosity in the sixteenth-century, when reproductive engravings were rapidly establishing and making accessible artistic canons. In this context, books of drawings, cabinet miniatures, or paintings on stone supports emerge as material means to convey originality and value to works that were otherwise becoming more standard in form.