Spring 2021 Digital Research Seminars

Filmed as part of the Spring 2021 Digital Research Seminars presented by scholars affiliated with the O’Donnell Institute’s Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples.

12 March 2021

CLAIRE VAN CLEAVE

Dr. Claire Van Cleave

The American Friends of Capodimonte

Farnese Drawings at Capodimonte

When Charles of Bourbon inherited the vast collection of Farnese treasures from his mother Elisabetta Farnese, he received not only arms and armour, decorative arts, paintings and ancient sculptures, but also a collection of drawings amassed by his Farnese ancestors. Many of these drawings date back to collecting in the Palazzo Farnesein Rome during the reign of Pope Paul III, his nephews Cardinals Alessandro and Ranuccio, and their fascinating librarian Fulvio Orisini, but it also continued in Parma under the Farnese dukes.

Today around fifty sheets remain from the original group, forming the nucleus of the Museum of Capodimonte’s Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe. This talk traces the critical fortunes of the Farnese drawings, touch on some of the highlights and spotlight progress on cataloguing for the Museum’s digitization project.

BIO

Dr. Van Cleave, a native of Chicago, is a writer and lecturer on Renaissance art and a specialist on Italian drawings. After graduating from Georgetown University, she completed her MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and her doctorate at the University of Oxford, where her thesis was on Luca Signorelli as a Draughtsman. She has written books on Renaissance drawings for the British Museum and was a co-author on the 2014 catalogue of Italian drawings in the Princeton University Art Museum. She has curated exhibitions such as the drawings gallery of the monographic show dedicated to Signorelli in Perugia in 2012 and is currently in discussions with the Uffizi for another exciting Renaissance project. Since September 2021 she has been the American Friends of Capodimonte Senior Fellow, working within the curatorial team of the Museum to assist in its enormous project to digitize the collections.