Lucia Simonato

After obtaining my classical high school leaving certificate (maturità classica) in Bolzano in 1995, I studied at the University of Pisa (1995-1999) and at the Scuola Normale Superiore (1995-1999, undergraduate course; 1999-2002, PhD course), where I attained my Ph.D. in historical and artistic disciplines in May 2005 with a thesis on the medals of Urban VIII (published in 2008). I then completed my education at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, first as a scientific assistant (2002-2005), then as a postdoctoral fellow with a project on Joachim von Sandrart (from 2007). In December 2008 I returned to the Scuola Normale as a researcher in the history of modern art and since 2014 I have been engaged in regular teaching activities here. After publishing my second monograph (Bernini scultore e il difficile dialogo con la modernità) (Bernini the sculptor and the difficult dialogue with modernity) and gaining my national scientific qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) as a full professor in Art History in 2018, in September 2020, by a selection procedure, I attained the post of associate professor at the Normale in the academic discipline of Museology and art criticism and restoration.

Starting from February 2025 I am on leave for three years as chair of European Art History in the modern age (as a full professor) at the University of Vienna.

My main fields of research are the history of sculpture between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, pontifical commission in the Baroque era and the European artistic literature between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, I have carried out research into the concept of materiality and, within the topic of the reception of the Baroque, into the history of the museum.

Over the years, I have had the possibility to lecture as a visiting professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau (2012, 2014) and to carry out research studies as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (2013), at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris (2016) and at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies-Villa I Tatti in Florence (2019).

I have collaborated with various museums. In 2023 I was the scientific director of the new set-up of the Sala del Medagliere in the Bargello National Museum, after having co-ordinated a research project on its 'small serial metals', co-funded by the Tuscany Region (2020-2022). At the Galleria Borghese in 2023-2024 I co-curated the exhibition Il tocco di Pigmalione. Rubens e la scultura a Roma (Pygmalion's touch. Rubens and sculpture in Rome). The nineteenth- and twentieth- century history of the Galleria Borghese is the subject of the PRIN of which I am the principal investigator, and which was launched in October 2023.

Lastly, since January 2022 I have been the scientific director of the Progetto Piazza dei Cavalieri (the Piazza dei Cavalieri Project).