Around Nicola Pisano and a small pyrite head belonging to the Kircherian Museum

SERIES: Messi in Luce (Brought to light). Paintings and Sculptures from Palazzo Venezia
SPEAKER: Laura Cavazzini
DATE: Thursday 27 October, 6 p.m.
PLACE: Sala del Refettorio

The Palazzo Venezia Museum holds a curious object in its collections: the head of a veiled young woman, which could fit in the palm of a hand, sculpted in a rare material, pyrite, typical of the Maremma and the island of Elba. The peculiarity of the material explains its provenance from the museum set up in the 17th century at the Collegio Romano by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, a veritable Wunderkammer, or Chamber of Wonders, where the most interesting and curious products of nature and art were kept and displayed. The fragment, of significant naturalness, has been referred to Nicola Pisano, the patriarch of Italian Gothic sculpture. The lecture will address the problem of this attribution, retracing the work of the great master, attempting to focus on its cultural roots and position in the history of European art.

A professor of Medieval Art History at the University of Trento, her research focuses mainly on Tuscan and Po Valley Gothic sculpture, international Gothic art, the Tuscan and Northern Renaissance, and the fortunes of Medieval art in the Modern Age. On these subjects she has published books (Il crepuscolo della scultura medievale in Lombardia, 2004, Donatello, 2005) and numerous articles, contributing to exhibitions (Il fratello di Masaccio, Giovanni di Ser Giovanni detto lo Scheggia, 1999; Masaccio e le origini del Rinascimento, 2002; Il Gotico nelle Alpi a Trento, 2002; Mantegna, 2008; Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello. Le arti a Siena nel primo Rinascimento, 2010; Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza. Milano al centro dell'Europa, 2015; Donatello, il Rinascimento 2022), conferences and study seminars. Since 2021 she has been the national manager (with Paola Vitolo and Clario Di Fabio) of the FISR project MemId (Memory and Identity), on the reuse of medieval sculpture in the modern age.