Francesco Benelli

Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna (Italy)

Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation

The birth of architectural criticism in early modern Italy

2022-2023: Spring

I published on several aspects of Renaissance Architecture, theory and historiography including books and essays on Giotto, Baccio Pontelli, Aristotele Fioravanti, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Michelangelo, Raphael, the Sangallo family, Gerolamo Genga, Medieval and Renaissance public architecture in Bologna, and religious and military architecture in the Marche region. I also published on building materials and techniques, history of design, painted architecture, Quattrocento architecture in Rome and Central Italy, the rediscovery of antiquity, and Marginalia on Renaissance architectural treatises. I dealt with Neo Renaissance architecture in New York and postwar engineering, focusing on structural engineer Mario Salvadori. I worked and published on Rudolf Wittkower and on Colin Rowe’s archival materials.

I am currently completing a book on Antonio da Sangallo the Younger’s studies on Vitruvius. I was the recipient of several fellowships, including the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, the Italian Academy, Columbia University and the Getty Research Institute. I am the director of the Serlio Digital Project (Avery Library, Columbia University) and I coordinated the study group of Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola appointed by the Italian Ministry of Culture. I taught at Columbia University, New York and I have been Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London and at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow.


Webpage: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/f.benelli/en