We’re always excited to highlight our grant and award winners. IAS grant and award winners are scholars doing cutting edge work in their respective fields and IAS is committed to supporting members’ scholarship.
Dr. Camilla Parisi won the IAS/Samuel H. Kress Foundation International Conference Travel Grant to support travel to the 2024 Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference in Chicago.
Camilla Parisi is currently a fellow at Università degli studi di Roma Tre. She received her Ph.D. in October 2019 from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa with a dissertation on the sculptor Filippo della Valle, whereas she studied for her B.A. and M.A. at La Sapienza Università di Roma. She has been pre-doctoral fellow at the Warburg Institute in London and post-doctoral fellow at the Scuola Normale in collaboration with the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. She collaborated on several exhibitions in Italy on different artists and subjects, as Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Tiziano, Canova and XVIIIth century in general. She worked at the Soprintendenza in Rome, at the Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, at the post-earthquake reopening of the Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo in L’Aquila and for a short period at the Israel Museum of Jerusalem.
Dr. Parisi presented the paper Camilla della Valle. To be a woman in a sculptor’s atelier in the 18th century at RSA 2024 in the panel Molding Matters I & II, organized by Eve Straussman-Pflanzer and Caroline Paganussi.
The paper abstract: “Filippo della Valle, one of the most important 18 th -century sculptors active in Rome, had three sons and ten daughters. Nonetheless his artistic flair skipped the sons and was inherited by one of the daughters: Camilla (1743/1744-1777). Remembered as a “virtuous lady” (Chracas, 1775), she was a talented independent woman devoted to art. When her own father passed away in 1768, she decided to forge her own date of birth to obtain economic and social autonomy.
What does a woman do inside a sculpture atelier in the mid-18th century? How does she achieve the role she wants in society? Carving marble and casting bronze were foreclosed, yet a successful artistic business, at the time, needed to invest in production for Grand Tourists. This was clear to Filippo, who made copies to sell to English lords passing through Piazza Barberini. In this context Camilla fit in. She became a miniaturist and began collaborating with her brother-in-law, Luigi Valadier, creating precious replicas on ivory and marble set in rich frames or caskets.
Unfortunately, her untimely death did not allow us to see what might have been of her, but certainly the study of her activity helps understanding the role of women in art.”