Becoming Roman: Artistic Immigration in the Urbe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries

Organized by Ariane Varela Braga (RAHN/University of Zurich) and Thomas-Leo True (BSR)

Questions of artistic travel and mobility have been the focus of recent scholarly attention. Rome’s special status as caput mundi and the opportunities it provided as a cultural centre have attracted migrant artists from the Renaissance to the present day.

This conference addresses the issue of mobility from a novel perspective, by concentrating on case-studies of artists – or groups of artists – that not only travelled to, but settled in, Rome and examines issues of mobility, artistic exchange and cultural transfer, patronage and professional networks, cultural identity, and strategies for integration or voluntary exclusion from the local artistic life.
When (and how) do foreign artists become Roman artists? What is the role played by social and institutional networks for their integration? How does the process of integration evolve and modify over time? For what sort of clientele (particularly foreign or local) do foreign artists work? How do foreign artist interact with the local artistic environment? How does their activity shape questions of Romanitas or Roman cultural identity?

The conference is an initiative of the Rome Art History Network (RAHN), an independent and international network, based in Rome, which encourages the exchange of ideas between researchers from foreign academies and Italian universities, at an early stage of their career.

PROGRAMME

FRIDAY, 20 May 2016

9:30 Thomas-Leo True (BSR)
Welcome

09:40 Ariane Varela Braga (RAHN/University of Zurich)
Introduction

Session 1 - Dynamics of settlement and integration: studying foreign artists in Rome
Chair: Francesca Cappelletti (Università degli studi di Ferrara)

10:00 Patrizia Cavazzini (BSR)
La popolazione dei pittori a Roma nel Cinquecento

10:30 Laura Bartoni (Universita Telematica Internazionale Uninettuno)
Artisti stranieri nella Roma del Seicento tra fortuna e fallimento

11:00 Gilles Montègre (Université de Grenoble Alpes)
Sono stranieri o diventati romani ? Indagare sugli artisti e residenti francesi nella Roma settecentesca

11:40 Break

Session 2 - Networks and socio-institutional connections
Chair: Raffaella Morselli (Università degli Studi di Teramo)

12:00 Piers Baker-Bates (The Open University)
Tierra Tan Extraña: Spanish Artists in Sixteenth Century Rome

12:30 Elisabeth Kieven (Bibliotheca Hertziana-Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell‘Arte)
Becoming successfully Roman: the case of Gaspar van Wittel (1653-1736)

13:40 Lunch-break

Session 3 - Cosmopolitan circles
Chair: Sarah Linford (Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma)

15:00 Anna Frasca-Rath (Universität Wien)
Antonio Canova ed i borsisti internazionali a Roma

15:30 Sarah Kinzel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Patrons, parties, priceless portraits – Franz von Lenbach’s network in Rome

16:10 Break

Session 4 - Out of time – the choice of Rome
Chair: Laura Iamurri (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)

16:30 Anna Vyazentseva (Università dell'Insubria)
Alcuni artisti e architetti Russi a Roma nel Primo Novecento: le questioni dell’integrazione

17:00 Peter Benson Miller (American Academy in Rome)
Resident/Alien: American Artists in postwar Rome

EVENING LECTURE

18:00 Irene Fosi (Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio”, Chieti-Pescara) –
Roma in età moderna: un mosaico di “nationes”

FREE ENTRANCE

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