Biography

Francesca is a doctoral candidate in History of Art & Architecture with a secondary field in Italian Studies at Harvard University, where her research has focused on Renaissance art and visual culture, and on the work of Leonardo da Vinci in particular. She previously studied in Venice and Madrid, and holds an MA in Art History from Università Ca' Foscari. She is interested in the relationship between natural philosophy and artistic theory (with special regard to notions of force, violence and motion), and in issues of early modern spectatorship. Her dissertation addresses the vital role that battle painting played in the art-critical discourse of the Cinquecento, as the genre became a privileged site to explore fundamental pictorial problems and to manipulate the dynamics of visual perception. Her reading at I Tatti will therefore focus on Leonardo’s notes on antagonism, as well as on contemporary military writings, treatises on poetics and rhetoric, and epic poetry.