Romance Languages and Literatures
Franco Mormando
Professor of Italian
Department Chair
Affiliate Faculty, Dept. of History
Franco Mormando
Ph.D.
Contact
Lyons Hall 304B
Telephone: 617-552-6346
Email: franco.mormando@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-2721-7467
Education
- B.A., Columbia University
- S.T.L. (licentiate), Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley
- M. Div., Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley; Biennio di Filosofia, Gregorian University, Rome
- M.A., Harvard University
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Research Interests
The Religious Culture of Italy (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque); History of Preaching, 15th-17th Centuries; Gian Lorenzo Bernini; Bernardino of Siena; Social Context and Literary / Religious Sources of Italian Art (Renaissance and Baroque); the Bubonic Plague in European Society.
Select Articles and Book Chapters
"Did Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa Cross a Seventeenth-Century Line of Decorum?, " Word and Image 39:4, 351-83.
"Bernini's painting collection: A reconstructed catalogue raisonné," Journal of the History of Collections, 34.1 (March 2022): 33-50.
"Gian Paolo Oliva: The Forgotten Celebrity of Baroque Rome," in The Holy Name. Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age, ed. Linda Wolk-Simon (Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press, 2018, 187-223).
"A Bernini Workshop Drawing for a Tomb Monument," Burlington Magazine (London), n. 1376, vol. 159, November 2017: 886-92.
Entries ("Bernini, Gian Lorenzo," "Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ," "Boston College," "IHS Monogram" and "Oliva, Gian Paolo") in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits, ed. Thomas Worcester, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
"Nudus Nudum Christum Sequi: The Franciscans and Differing Interpretations of Male Nakedness in Fifteenth-Century Italy," Fifteenth Century Studies 33 (2008): 171-197.
Book Reviews
review of Girolamo Mercuriale, On Pestilence, translated with introduction and notes by Craig Martin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), in Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 45.2 (Spring 2022): 227-29.
review of Thomas Troy, Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), in Religion and the Arts, 22 (2018): 362-364.
review of Audrey Nicholls, ed., The Arts and Jesuit Influence in the Era of Catholic Reform (special issue of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 104:416, Winter 2015-2016) in Journal of Jesuit Studies, 3 (2016): 722-24.
review of Willibald Sauerländer, The Catholic Rubens: Saints and Martyrs. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2014), in Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2 (2015): 694-96.
review of Marcia B. Hall and Tracy E. Cooper, eds., The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church (Cambridge University Press, 2013), caa.reviews (online publication of the College Art Association), May 15, 2014.
review of Irving Lavin, Bernini at Saint Peter's: The Pilgrimage (Pindar Press, 2012), in caa.reviews (online publication of the College Art Association), Dec. 27, 2013.
review of Maarten Delbeke, The Art of Religion: Sforza Pallavicino and Art Theory in Bernini's Rome (Ashgate, 2012), in Renaissance Quarterly, 66.2 (2013): 614-615.
review of Sarah McPhee, Bernini's Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini (Yale University Press, 2012), in Renaissance Quarterly, 65.3 (2012): 888-89.
Recent Papers and Presentations
“Artemisia Gentileschi: The New Superstar of Italian Painting.” The Italian Cultural Society of Naples, FL., February 20, 2023.
"Bernini: A Discussion of His Works at the Getty (and Elsewhere)." Presentation for the Docents of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. June 18, 2022.
"Bernini and Caravaggio: Kindred Spirits." Dartmouth College, sponsored by the Department of French and Italian, May 11, 2022.
"Art Responds to Medical Disaster: Italian Painting and the Bubonic Plague, 1500- 1800." Presentation for University of Trier (Germany) seminar, "Der rote Tode: Pandemische Krankheiten in Kunst und Wissenschaft der Neuzeit und Moderne" (led by Prof. Ulrike Gehring). January 19, 2022.
"Hope and Healing: The Role of Art in Times of Pandemic (Italian Art and the Bubonic Plague, 1500-1800). Online interview for Faculti.net, March 2021
"Ignatius the Franciscan: The Franciscan Roots of Jesuit Spirituality." Public lecture sponsored by the Boston College Center for Ignatian Spirituality, November 6, 2019. (Video available on Youtube.)
"Bernini's Painting Collection." Presentation at the Frick Museum, New York, symposium, "When Michelangelo Was Modern: The Art Market and Collecting in Italy, 1450-1650," April 12-13, 2019.
“Bernini, the Jesuit Artist?” Presentation at the Symposium, “Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age,” Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT, April 6, 2018.
“Raphael’s Disputa: Neither Disputation nor Eucharist is Its Subject,” Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 24th Interdisciplinary Conference, February 10, 2018, Scottsdale, AZ and The Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, November 2, 2018, Albuquerque, NM.
"Domenico Bernini sul busto del Salvatore: Come leggere il testo." Invited lecture at international scholarly symposium held in conjunction with major exhibition of Bernini's works at the Galleria Borghese, Rome, Jan. 22, 2018.
"Playing with Fire: Did Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa Cross a Seventeenth-Century Line of Decorum?" Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Boston, March 31, 2016.
"The Evolving Profile of the 'Witch' in Early Renaissance Europe: The Trial of Matteuccia of Todi, 1428." Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 21st Interdisciplinary Conference, February 6, 2016, Scottsdale, AZ.
"Bernini, Impresario." Casa Italiana, New York University, February 22, 2016, sponsored by Salon / Sanctuary Concerts.
"Michelangelo: The Life and Works of the Renaissance Genius." Presentation for the Docents of the Phoenix Art Museum, in conjunction with the exhibition, "Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane. Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti, Florence." February 5, 2016.
"How to Become a Celebrity Public Speaker: Instructions from Bernardino of Siena, Popular Preacher of Quattrocento Italy," Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 21st Interdisciplinary Conference, February 7, 2015, Scottsdale, AZ.
"Bernini: Impresario Supreme of Baroque Rome." Yale University, Institute of Sacred Music, April 26, 2014.
Bernini: His Life and His Rome: lecture given at The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort, Worth, Texas, March 2, 2013 and The Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, October 23, 2013.
"Bernini's Models in Clay: What the Biographical Sources Reveal," paper given in the symposium, "Bernini Beyond Clay," Harvard University, the Mahindra Humanities Center, Nov. 16, 2012.
"Bernini and the Baroque Transformation of the Catholic Imagination," public lecture, Villanova University, Oct. 2, 2012, sponsored by the Villanova Office of the Vice President for Mission and Ministry.
"Bernini and His Rome," public lecture at the Italian Institute for Culture, San Francisco, Feb. 17, 2012.
"A Pope's Banquet and a Jesuit's Oration for a Newly Converted Queen: Alexander VII, Gian Paolo Oliva, and Christina of Sweden, Dec. 26, 1655," Sixteenth Century Conference, Geneva, May 28, 2009.
"Nothing as It Seems: Annotations (Reconstructive and Deconstructive) upon Domenico Bernini's Vita del Cav. Gio. Lorenzo Bernini." Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 4, 2008.