Staff profile

Dr Adelina Modesti

ARC Posdoctoral Fellow

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Historical and European Studies

DMB E116, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Area of study

Art History

Brief profile

Adelina Modesti joins the history program as ARC research fellow after many years as Lecturer in Theory and History of Art and Design at Monash. She was Italian translator for the Public Records Office of Victoria and Ballarat Council during the “Eureka 150” celebrations in 2004, and acts as consultant for Christie’s and Sotheby’s as well as international museums, in her specialised area of seventeenth century Bolognese art and culture.

Research interests

Art History

- Women’s cultural production

Art Theory

- Female patronage networks in early modern Italy and Europe

Recent publications

Modesti, A 2008, ‘Eight catalogue entries on Elisabetta Sirani, Giovanni Andrea Sirani and Artemisia Gentileschi’, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Catalogo Generale. Il Seicento: gli Incaminati, Reni, Guercino, la scuola Bolognese, ed. J. Bentini & G. Cammarota. Venice: Marsilio.

 

Modesti, A 2004, Elisabetta Sirani. Una Virtuosa del Seicento bolognese (Donne nell’Arte, I). Editrice Compositori: Bologna.

 

Modesti, A 2003, ‘Patrons as Agents and Artists as Dealers in Seicento Bologna’,in The Art Market in Italy: 15th – 17th centuries, ed. Marcello Fantoni, Louisa Matthew, Sara Matthews-Grieco. Modena: Cosimo Panini Editore.

 

Modesti, A 2001, ‘Alcune riflessioni sulle opere grafiche della pittrice Elisabetta Sirani nelle raccolte dell’ Archiginnasio’. L’Archiginnasio. Bolletino della biblioteca comunale di Bologna. 96: 151-215

 

Modesti, A 2001, ‘The making of a Cultural Heroine: Elisabetta Sirani, ‘Pittrice celebrissima’ of Bologna (1638 - 1665)’, in Per l’arte. Da Venezia all’Europa. Studi in onore di Giuseppe Maria Pilo (vol 2), ed. Mario Piantoni, Laura De Rossi. Monfalcone-Gorizia: Edizioni della Laguna.

 

Modesti, A 1995, ‘Elisabetta Sirani ‘Pittrice Eroina’: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman’, in Identità ed appartanenza: Donne e relazioni di genere dal mondo classico all’età contemporanea (Acts of the First International Congress of the Italian Society of Women Historians), ed. M. Palazzi. Bologna: Eurocopy.

 

Modesti, A 1995, ‘Modernism and the Australian Women Artist’, in Art in Diversity (2nd ed.), ed. B Hoffert, H Bak, J Wingate, A Modesti. Melbourne: Longmans Cheshire.

Research projects

apping Matrons: Women’s Cultural Patronage Networks in Seventeenth Century Northern Italy: from Maria Cristina of Savoy to Vittoria della Rovere. This ARC funded project will focus on a developing area of gender studies, matronage: the social agendas and politico-diplomatic motivations of élite women’s cultural patronage. This study will illuminate how our culture (and democracy) emerged in gendered networks of cultural exchange.