Stefano de Bosio
Free University of Berlin (Germany)
Gerda Henkel Foundation Fellow in the History of Art
Like butterfly wings: image doubling in Early Modern displays and visual culture
2025–2026: Fall
Stefano de Bosio teaches Art History at Freie Universität Berlin – FUBiS and is the founder of the international scholarly network "Logic of the Negative: Techniques and Metaphors of Imprinting". His research investigates the visual and conceptual dynamics of orientation in the early modern period, with particular emphasis on image reversal and broader patterns of cultural transmission across Europe.
He received his PhD in Art History from the University of Turin and holds a postgraduate diploma in Cultural Heritage from the University of Bologna. His first book, Frontiere. Arte, luogo, identità ad Aosta e nell'arco alpino occidentale (Officina Libraria, 2021), which was awarded the Premio Giovanni Testori for Art Criticism, examines the role of the Western Alps as a contact zone around 1500. His current book project, Patterns of Reversal, explores the perceptual and cultural impact of image reversal in early modern art.
His work has been supported by fellowships from the DFK – German Center for Art History in Paris; the IKKM – International Research Institute for Media Philosophy in Weimar; Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut; and Imaginaries of Force, the University of Hamburg’s Center of Advanced Studies.
At the Italian Academy, Stefano de Bosio will pursue research on the cultural, perceptual, and theoretical implications of image doubling—through mirroring, replications, and counterproofing—in the display and circulation of drawings, prints, and paintings in early modern Europe.
Read here: an interview done with Stefano de Bosio after his Fellowship in autumn 2025.