Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ANIMATE (Animation, Materials, Transcultural Ecologies: Performing Worlds at the Baroque Savoy Court of Christine of France)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2024-01-01 do 2024-12-31
ANIMATE investigates the spectacles staged across the Duchy of Savoy, from its capital Turin to the top of Mont Cenis, during the lifetime of the regent Christine of Bourbon-France (1606-1663). By examining the natural resources, landscapes, and stagecraft that audiences would have seen in these performances, the research aims to construe these elaborate performances as a critical laboratory for thinking through the complexities of early modern global forces, the economic circulation they incited and the consequences on the landscapes they impacted. To pursue these aims, it focuses on a large archive of extant visual and textual documentation: twelve albums produced by court calligrapher, cartographer, and engineer Giovanni Tommaso Borgonio to document, over almost one thousand manuscript pages, as many performances in almost all their constituent elements, from lyrics to scenographies. Other 16th- and 17th-century textual and visual sources such as printed festival reports, travel narratives, natural history, medical treatises, and tax records are also relevant to this research. By way of an art historical and cross-disciplinary approach, ANIMATE training objectives are i) to further enhance our understanding of early modern Italian visual culture in the context of global connectivity and associated methodological debates; ii) to acquire new methodological tools for the critical evaluation of aesthetic practices from the point of view of ecology; and iii) to reinforce our mastery of an object of study – the courtly performance – that was expressed through all the available linguistic potential (e.g. words, body movements, two-dimensional scenery, scenic sculptures).
701 images from Borgonio’s archive of albums’ drawings, 90 primary sources and almost 300 secondary bibliographic sources have been the object of investigation during the 3 years of the project. The research activities were carried out at the UCLA YRL Research Library, the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, and through the digitisations previously acquired from the National Library of Turin and the Archivio Storico di Stato della Città di Torino for the outgoing phase; through the UNIBO Library System, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino, Biblioteca Reale di Torino, Archivio di Stato di Torino, Fondazione Giorgio Cini di Venezia, and the Bibliothéque Municipale in Lyon for the return phase.
The monograph resulting from ANIMATE has been finished and successfully submitted to the chosen editor, which will ensure the possibility of reaching out different target of audiences – either scholars and non-specialists interested in early modern visual, material and performative culture.
A specific part of my results has been preliminarily disseminated in the Conference Proceedings of the 35th CIHA – Comite International d’Histoire de l’Art World Congress “Motion: Migrations” (Saõ Paulo 2022). The data related to this paper have been published in the UNIBO repository AMSActa.
During the outgoing phase, the project was hosted by the Department of Art History at UCLA. The collaborations with the UCLA Center for Early Modern Global Studies and the Center of 17th- and 18th-Century Studies have been conducive to the events organized as part of the project and their advertising. ANIMATE has also benefited from the establishment of new scholarly collaborations with the international project “Making Green Worlds - Early Modern Art and Ecologies of Globalization”, the research networks “Oecologies” and "Earth Sea Sky", and the Ècole de Printemps in Art History.
During the return phase, the project was hosted by the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at UNIBO. The international conference organized at the conclusion of the project brought together art and theatre historians, literary scholars, and musicologists – among others – at work on a wide range of 17th-century artistic languages and media.
The activities I participated (e.g. 6 papers in international conferences and world congresses, 1 symposium and related workshop, 1 graduate school, 1 poster in research fair) as well as the 2 conferences and 2 workshops organized during the project were carefully tailored to the achievement of my training objectives, namely the expansion of my expertise in Italian visual and performative culture, and the development of a global and environmental approach to the study of art history – and, accordingly, the advancement of the monograph, its cross-disciplinary nature and theoretical aims at the intersection of art history and economic history, performance and literary studies, micro and global narratives.
The monograph resulting from ANIMATE has been finished and successfully submitted to the chosen editor, which will ensure the possibility of reaching out different target of audiences – either scholars and non-specialists interested in early modern visual, material and performative culture.
A specific part of my results has been preliminarily disseminated in the Conference Proceedings of the 35th CIHA – Comite International d’Histoire de l’Art World Congress “Motion: Migrations” (Saõ Paulo 2022). The data related to this paper have been published in the UNIBO repository AMSActa.
During the outgoing phase, the project was hosted by the Department of Art History at UCLA. The collaborations with the UCLA Center for Early Modern Global Studies and the Center of 17th- and 18th-Century Studies have been conducive to the events organized as part of the project and their advertising. ANIMATE has also benefited from the establishment of new scholarly collaborations with the international project “Making Green Worlds - Early Modern Art and Ecologies of Globalization”, the research networks “Oecologies” and "Earth Sea Sky", and the Ècole de Printemps in Art History.
During the return phase, the project was hosted by the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at UNIBO. The international conference organized at the conclusion of the project brought together art and theatre historians, literary scholars, and musicologists – among others – at work on a wide range of 17th-century artistic languages and media.
The activities I participated (e.g. 6 papers in international conferences and world congresses, 1 symposium and related workshop, 1 graduate school, 1 poster in research fair) as well as the 2 conferences and 2 workshops organized during the project were carefully tailored to the achievement of my training objectives, namely the expansion of my expertise in Italian visual and performative culture, and the development of a global and environmental approach to the study of art history – and, accordingly, the advancement of the monograph, its cross-disciplinary nature and theoretical aims at the intersection of art history and economic history, performance and literary studies, micro and global narratives.
ANIMATE advances our understanding on how courtly theatre staged world-changing transformations – environments into resources and resources into commodities. In so doing, it probes new ways of investigating art history and early modern performative culture through the lens of mobility and ecological upheaval. The project enriches the composite puzzle offered by three types of studies and debates: investigations that have called attention to the non-straightforward ways early modern states across the Italian peninsula have projected themselves on the global stage of colonial commercial flows; inquiries on the mobility of resources and commodities, their agency, modes of consumption and making of consumer experiences; recent research exploring the foundations of environmental thinking, early modern approaches and conceptualization of nature, and current debates about climate change.
The international conference “Converting Natural Resources – Representations, Performances, Narratives”, held at UCLA on Dec. 1-2, 2023, co-organized with the project "Making Green Worlds", brought together scholars from a range of humanities disciplines and perspectives at the intersection of art history, ecocriticism and economic history to explore the complex relationships between resources, labour and consumers in the early modern world. By examining a wide range of textual, material and visual sources, the papers questioned their value and use in rethinking the demands and state of the humanities. The conference brought together graduate students, museum curators and academics, as well as residents and visitors to California.
The second international conference “Arguzia/Natura/Artificio. Baroque Contraptions and Ingenuity in Baroque Arts and Literature” organized as the culmination of ANIMATE dissemination activities by UNIBO at Palazzo Magnani, Bologna, on Dec. 5-6, 2024, brought together 13 scholars from different parts of the world at work on the 17th century. Papers brought to the fore visual and textual representations that mirrored or recreated natural environments and phenomena through immersive or deceptive experiences, as well as mechanisms and media – ranging from mechanical mountains and trees to musical interpretations and objects such as prisms and manuscript volumes – that showcased the intricate blend of craftsmanship and ingenuity defining the early modern engagement with nature and perception.
The research data and outputs stemming from ANIMATE will be useful to scholars and students in the humanities (visual and performative arts historians, science historians, philologists, anthropologists, environmental scholars, and gender scholars) and, as the outreach event has demonstrated, to non-academic public interested in the field.
The international conference “Converting Natural Resources – Representations, Performances, Narratives”, held at UCLA on Dec. 1-2, 2023, co-organized with the project "Making Green Worlds", brought together scholars from a range of humanities disciplines and perspectives at the intersection of art history, ecocriticism and economic history to explore the complex relationships between resources, labour and consumers in the early modern world. By examining a wide range of textual, material and visual sources, the papers questioned their value and use in rethinking the demands and state of the humanities. The conference brought together graduate students, museum curators and academics, as well as residents and visitors to California.
The second international conference “Arguzia/Natura/Artificio. Baroque Contraptions and Ingenuity in Baroque Arts and Literature” organized as the culmination of ANIMATE dissemination activities by UNIBO at Palazzo Magnani, Bologna, on Dec. 5-6, 2024, brought together 13 scholars from different parts of the world at work on the 17th century. Papers brought to the fore visual and textual representations that mirrored or recreated natural environments and phenomena through immersive or deceptive experiences, as well as mechanisms and media – ranging from mechanical mountains and trees to musical interpretations and objects such as prisms and manuscript volumes – that showcased the intricate blend of craftsmanship and ingenuity defining the early modern engagement with nature and perception.
The research data and outputs stemming from ANIMATE will be useful to scholars and students in the humanities (visual and performative arts historians, science historians, philologists, anthropologists, environmental scholars, and gender scholars) and, as the outreach event has demonstrated, to non-academic public interested in the field.