Organisers

Allegra Baggio Corradi is a PhD candidate at the Warburg Institute, London. Her research focuses on the dialogues of the Paduan philosopher Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (1456–1531), which she is currently studying in combination with Tomeo’s translation of Aristotle’s natural books and Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Her main interest lies at the intersection of natural history and metaphysics as found in early modern Paduan Neoplatonism. In particular, she focuses on questions concerning the immortality of the soul, the role of the imagination in the construction of knowledge and the relationship between natural magic, theology and science. On a broader level, her thesis seeks to reassess Tomeo’s importance for the development of Renaissance intellectual history.

Valentina Cacopardo is a PhD student at the Warburg Institute. Her research focuses on ars memorativa in fifteenth-century Italy. Her studies concentrate on cultural history, early modern philosophy, neo-Latin literature, art history and iconology. Valentina holds a BA in Arts, Music and Drama Studies and a master’s degree in Art History from the University of Bologna. She has also been awarded an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History 1300–1650 from the Warburg Institute, University of London.

Margherita Clavarino is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at the Warburg Institute. Her research focuses on miraculous prints in early modern Italy, especially examining understudied yet crucial aspects of printmaking in relation to miraculous imagery. She contributed her research to the College Art Association 2018 Annual Conference, having been awarded the Samuel H. Kress Foundation CAA Travel Fellowship for International Scholars. She holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art in the History of Art with a specialisation in ‘Print Culture and the Early Modern Arts’.

Gemma Cornetti is a PhD student at the Warburg Institute and Michael Bromberg Fellow at the British Museum, with a keen interest in Renaissance and early modern printmaking, especially in Italy and France. Her research focuses, in particular, on how sixteenth-century portrait prints that were printed and published in Italy were conceptualised at the time and, broadly, on their role in disseminating and constructing visual knowledge. She worked as editorial intern at Print Quarterly and earned a master’s degree in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture from the Warburg Institute, in collaboration with the National Gallery. She previously received a BA and MA in History of Art from the University of Florence.

Sarah Coviello is a PhD candidate at the Warburg Institute, London. Her research investigates the modus operandi of art historians as collectors in the twentieth century. Focusing on paradigmatic examples such as that of Bernard Berenson, Roberto Longhi, Kenneth Clark and Federico Zeri, her research aims to reconstruct the dialogues established between objects and their collectors through the lens of object-oriented studies, ultimately presenting art history and collecting practices as intellectually and materially intertwined. She holds an MA in Museum Studies from the University of St Andrews and an MA in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture from the Warburg Institute in collaboration with the National Gallery, and is an active member of the Society for the History of Collecting.

Merlin Cox is currently a PhD student at the Warburg Institute, supported by an LAHP doctoral award, researching the renaissance of Iamblichean theurgy in the philosophies of Marsilio Ficino and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Much of his scholarly focus concerns the intersection of learned magic and divination and Platonic philosophy. He is a series editor of the Black Mirror Research Network on esoteric art, and co-edited and co-translated the Compendium rarissimum totius artis magicae (Touch Me Not, London: Fulgur, 2017). He holds an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History 1300–1650 from the Warburg Institute and is a veteran freelance editor of trade and academic books.

Vito Guida is a PhD candidate at the Warburg Institute. The focus of Guida’s research has been on the philosophy and theology of the medieval and early modern periods. His expertise includes the interaction of cultural phenomena and intellectual ideas, the development of theology within the Franciscan and Dominican orders, the correlation between Reform and Counter-Reformation, and the relationship between ecclesiastical institutions and laity. His studies also concentrate on the tension existing between the notions of free will and predestination, the role of eschatology in social structures, and the conflict between dystopia and utopia in religious texts. Guida recently completed an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History at the Warburg Institute. Previous to this he received a BA in Humanities with Classical Studies at the Open University.

Fabio Tononi is a PhD candidate at the Warburg Institute. His research focuses on the role of visual imagination in the aesthetic responses of contemporary beholders to incompleteness in the visual arts. The main focus of Tononi’s research has been on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian art, philosophy and experimental aesthetics. His studies also concentrate on the relation between art, history, psychology and cognitive neuroscience on topics that include memory, imagination, empathy, perception of emotions and movements, and the theory of animism. Tononi recently completed an MA in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture at the Warburg Institute, in collaboration with the National Gallery. Previous to this he received an MA in History of Art at the University of Florence and a BA in History of Art at the University of Parma. He also held an internship at Villa I Tatti, where he worked as an Assistant Archivist in the Photographic Collection.