Conférence : Frank Fehrenbach, Lucia Simonato, « Il tempo della terracotta », Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, 28 février 2023

Taking a broad chronological approach, this seminar reflects on some of the main moments in terracotta’s critical reception in the modern age. In literary judgements and collecting alike, terracotta seems more than other materials to have passed from the background to the fore of art history several times within the space of a few centuries.

At times terracotta appears to impose its own peculiar expressive qualities in a transmedial manner on other productions, first and foremost those in marble; elsewhere it instead imitates formal models typical of other materials, or responds vigorously to specific historical, religious, social, conservational and critical contexts. The seminar anticipates the initial findings of an ongoing research project on terracotta and its affordance. The project does not aim at a historical reconstruction of the reception of Renaissance and Baroque clay works, but rather at measuring, from this privileged point of view, the dialectic in art history between ‘materiality’ and ‘culture’, both visual and literary.

Lucia Simonato is Associate Professor in Art Criticism at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. She was visiting professor at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg. She has been awarded fellowships at the KHI, CASVA, INHA, and I Tatti. Recent publications include “Impronta di Sua Santità”. Urbano VIII e le medaglie (Pisa, 2008) and Bernini scultore. Il difficile dialogo con la modernità (Milan, 2018, forthcoming in English) and the co-edition of The Drill in Sculpture, from Ancient Egypt to Modernism (Turnhout, 2023). Since 2020 she has been co-general editor of Brepols’ series Materiality.

Frank Fehrenbach is an art historian whose work focuses on the relationship between art, natural philosophy, and science in early modern Europe. He is currently co-director of “Imaginaria of Force”, a Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Hamburg. Prior to joining the University of Hamburg as Alexander-von-Humboldt professor in 2013, he was a senior professor at Harvard University. His most recent book Quasi vivo. Lebendigkeit in der Italienischen Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, De Gruyter 2021) focuses on the concept of ‘enlivenment’ in Italian Renaissance art. He has also published widely on Leonardo, most recently Leonardo da Vinci: Der Impetus der Bilder (Berlin, Mattes & Seitz 2019).