Gerevini Awarded a Harvard Fellowship to Study Art in the Medieval Mediterranean

Stefania Gerevini, Assistant professor of art history at Bocconi, has recently been awarded a summer fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection for 2016. Dumbarton Oaks is an institute of Harvard University and an important research center in the field of Byzantine studies and western medieval art.

"My research concerns the nexus between visual arts and politics and focuses on issues of artistic interaction, political conflict, and public memory in the medieval Mediterranean", explains the academic. At Dumbarton Oaks, she will work on her study, Visualizing politics in the baptistery of San Marco and chapel of St Isidore in Venice, the centerpiece of a broader book project exploring the correlations between political and institutional transformation and the selective adoption of Byzantine visual language in late medieval Venice.

"This fellowship will enable me to complete my fieldwork on the fourteenth-century mosaics of San Marco. Starting from 1973, Dumbarton Oaks funded a decade-long cleaning campaign and study project of the mosaics of the basilica led by Prof. Otto Demus, the preeminent scholar of Byzantine art in Venice. The archives of the institute preserve unpublished documentary and photographic reports of this campaign that are pivotal for my research", she continues. "Furthermore, the fellowship represents a unique opportunity for intellectual exchange with an international community of specialized scholars, offering great prospects for future research collaborations".