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Mattia Biffis was a postdoctoral fellow in art history at the Norwegian Institute in Rome from february 2018 until april 2021 and has been associate professor at the University of Messina since 2024.
Fields of interest
History of Art (main focus on 16th century Venetian and 17th century Bolognese art), Cultural and Intellectual History, Renaissance Studies, Geography of art, Mobility of objects and provenance studies, Exile studies, Material Culture of Identity, History of collecting, History of Art criticism.
My research focuses primarily on issues of geography and materiality, and is mostly concerned with ideas of physical displacement and mobility of works of art and forms of knowledge in early modern Europe. I have worked on topics such as the representation of exile; the quest for identity by early modern mobile individuals; the mobility of artworks and their provenance. Addressing the career of migrant artists in Renaissance Venice, my Ph.D. dissertation investigated the cultural and professional integration of transplanted painters in early modern Italy, considering their roles as agents of artistic change. As a member of the research project “Early Modern Sources in Translation” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, I also maintain a strong research interest in the field of Baroque art and culture, and in the history of art criticism. Entitled “Painting, Distance, and Circulation: a Geography of Things in Early Modern Europe,” my current research project investigates the physical and material circumstances by which art is transmitted, displaced, and re-contextualized in the early modern world, creating new markets, audiences, and meaning.
Background
- Ph.D. in the History of Art, University of Venice (2013). Title of the dissertation: Giuseppe Salviati in Venice, 1540–1565. A research into his artistic production and literary legacy.
- M.A. in Cultural and Intellectual History 1350–1600, The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London (2007). Title of the dissertation: Francesco Sansovino as a publisher. Three essays on bibliography and textual criticism.
- Laurea (MA), University of Venice (2006). Main subjects: History of Art, Literature, Philosophy.
Visiting scholarships and grants
- Visiting scholar, The Warburg Institute (2018)
- Francis Haskell Memorial Fund grant (2016)
- Visiting scholar, the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin (summer 2014)
- Predoctoral Research Fellow, The Dutch Institute for Art History, Florence (2013)
- Ph.D. grant, University of Venice (2009–2012)
- Research fellowship, Accademia dei Lincei – British Academy (2008)
Selected invited lectures and talks
- January 2018: The Warburg Institute, London: “The return of Andrea Casali. Imposture, Identity, and the Power of Images in Late Renaissance Italy.”
- November 2017: University of Virginia, Venice program: “Painting and the Senses: art and sensations in Renaissance Venice.”
- October 2017: University of Warwick, Venice program: “Painting the Otherness in Sixteenth Century Venice: Giuseppe Porta Salviati (1520–1575).”
- May 2016: Medici Archive Project, Florence: “‘Repatriaranno i fuoriusciti?’ Venetian portraits of Florentine exiles, 1540-1545.”
- June 2014: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, Berlin: “Giuseppe Salviati’s Libro dei suoni: Art and Knowledge in Late Renaissance Venice.”
Major collaborations
“Early Modern Sources in Translation” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Directed by Elizabeth Cropper, this project will result in a full critical edition and annotated translation of Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice (Bologna, 1678), one of the most important early modern texts on Italian art.
Major publications
Book in progress: “Painting, Distance, and Circulation. A Geography of Things in Early Modern Europe,”
Journal articles and book chapters
“A rediscovered St. Jerome on copper by the young Guido Reni and its early provenance,” in The Burlington Magazine 148 (2016), pp. 610-15.
“Tra poesia e pittura. Versi di Francesco Zannio per Giuseppe Salviati,” in Afat, 32 (2013), pp. 39-46.
“Prima di Salviati. L’altare dei Frari, i procuratori di San Marco e un documento per Marco Basaiti,” in Venezia Cinquecento, 45 (2013), pp. 41-56.
“Zuan Paolo Pace, chierico e laico: documenti e riproposte,” in Studi Tizianeschi, 8 (2009), pp. 48-67.
“Le immagini del Petrarca Spirituale (1536): strategie retoriche e significati religiosi,” in Un giardino per le arti: «Francesco Marcolino da Forlì». La vita, l’opera, il catalogo, edited by P. Procaccioli, P. Temeroli, V. Tesei (Bologna: Compositori, 2009), pp. 353-363.
Reviews
D. Rijser, Raphael’s Poetics: Art and Poetry in High Renaissance Rome, Amsterdam 2012, in CAA Reviews (http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/1956).
Forthcoming
“Tintoretto: the Storyteller,” in Tintoretto 500, catalogue of the exhibition (Venice, Palazzo Ducale; Washington, National Gallery of Art), eds. F. Ilchamn and R. Echols (expected 2018)
Historical notes for: Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice. Lives of the Bolognese Painters, vol. 9, Guido Reni, edited by E. Cropper, CASVA, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (London: Harvey Miller, expected 2018)
“Negotiating an art deal in eighteenth-century Europe: Guido Reni’s Disputa and its acquisition by Sir Robert Walpole in 1731,” in Journal of the History of Collections (in print, spring 2018).
“‘Barberino gli volse donare un quadro’: Francesco Barberini, Walter Leslie e una nuova traccia documentaria per il Bacco e Arianna di Guido Reni,” in Studi Secenteschi 59 (2018), in print.
“Gifts from Heaven. Secular ambitions of the Annunciation in 16th century Venice,” in The Announcement. Annunciation and beyond, edited by Hana Gründler and Itay Sapir (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, in press, spring 2017).
“The Anxieties of Distance. Setting Paintings in Motion in Renaissance Italy,” manuscript under submission, for I Tatti - Studies in the Italian Renaissance.