Members' Research Report Archive

My research focuses on the paintings of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone (c. 1484–1539), a sixteenth-century Friulian artist whose career was marked by continual travel and a mercurial artistic persona. Unlike those of the most renowned artists from this period—Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian—Pordenone’s works do not embody a strong sense of emplacement; his style, in other words, cannot be seen as the reflection of a single place. By focusing on a migratory painter, my project severs the art-historical correlation of style with geography in order to redress fundamental questions about the ambiguities of stylistic influence, identity formation, and social theories of space. In doing so, my scholarship brings awareness to alternative networks of artistic exchange and forms of eclectic imitation that grew up alongside and in opposition to a Vasarian vision of artistic normativity.