Saida Bondini

Visiting Scholar

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (Italy)

From destruction to construction: natural catastrophes and art-making in sixteenth-century Bologna

2023–2024: Fall and Spring

Saida Bondini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut. In 2021, she received her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, with a dissertation entitled Urban and Social Spaces. Art, Architecture, and Family Patronage in Bologna (c. 1470–1520).

Saida has been the recipient of fellowships and internships from international institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014); the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2015); and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2020–2021). During her doctoral studies, she held the position of Teaching Assistant in the Renaissance Department and Associate Lecturer in Early Modern Art at the Courtauld Institute.

Her current postdoctoral research, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, explores the interdependence of natural disasters and art making in the sixteenth century, with an emphasis on the Italian territory.