Sara Bova

Università di Roma, Tor Vergata (Italy)

Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation

Dialogues carved in stone: partnerships between architect-sculptors and their role in the diffusion of architectural "varietas" in late 15th-century Rome

2021-2022: Spring

Sara Bova is an architectural historian with a specific interest in patronage, material culture, and cross-cultural influences on architecture, notably in the Early Modern Period. She earned her Ph. D. in Architectural and Urban History at the Università IUAV di Venezia in 2017. She previously studied at the Università degli Studi “Mediterranea” di Reggio Calabria, where she graduated in Architecture (2009), and at the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, where she gained a High Specialization Course Diploma in History of Architecture (2012).

Her research mainly focuses on the influence of Greek Humanism on patrons’ architectural choices, considering them in the framework of their political and symbolic aspirations, economic resources, and literary sources. In her current research project, she aims to analyze the role played by the still-medieval organizational structure of workshops and building sites on the rise and character of the early-Renaissance architectural language, and also to assess how stonemasons' artistic and architectural practices contributed to defining the architectural identity of their working contexts, in particular in fifteenth-century Rome.

She received research and travel grants from the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome (2012, 2013), where she contributed to studying and inventorying several architectural drawing collections; and also from the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura (CISA) Andrea Palladio (2016), and the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) (2020). Since 2018 she has been a Teaching Assistant in several Italian universities, while also collaborating as Research Assistant with the Superintendence for Architectural Heritage of the Vatican Museums (2018-2019), and with the Polo Museale del Lazio (Museum Center of Lazio) of the Italian Ministry of Culture (2019).

https://uniroma1.academia.edu/SaraBova