The American Academy in Rome welcomes the first two of five Italian fellows who will live and work at the Academy this year. Earlier this month, PhD candidate Marco Rossati and artist Marco Raparelli arrived to join the AAR community and settle in to their respective study and studio.
Each year, at least one Italian scholar from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and one Italian artist are offered a fellowship that enables them to pursue their work while living among the American Rome Prize winners, Residents, Visiting Artists and Scholars. Five recipients will share these two fellowships this year, enjoying a three or six month stay in Rome.
Meanwhile, one American scholar, Eric Bianchi, FAAR’09 will spend an academic year in Pisa as part of the scholar exchange. These fellowships are supported by the proceeds of the Academy’s McKim Medal Gala, held every spring in Rome, and by gifts and grants.
Marco Rossati is the first of two Italian scholars to arrive at the American Academy in Rome this year. He was born in Turin in 1983. He attended the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he graduated with a degree in Art History in 2008; he is now studying for his PhD at the same institution. His research is primarily concerned with the relationship between Italy and Northern Europe at the end of the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance period. During his fellowship at the AAR, Marco Rossati plans to study the Italian sources which informed the works of sculptor Jean Mone, and also hopes to trace documentary evidence relating to his probable presence in Rome. Marco shares this one year fellowship with Danica Pusic, who arrives in January for a six month term.
Marco Raparelli is one of three Italian Fellows in the Arts who will share this year’s fellowship. Marco was born in 1975, studied at the Moderna University of Siena and now lives and works in Rome. Marco uses the style typical of comic illustration in his drawings, paintings and animations. He plans to use his time at the Academy to work on a collective portrait - a series of drawings informed by the AAR community’s ideas about the city. Marco has participated in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, has published two books and collaborates with many art magazines. Marco will share this one year fellowship with Paola Pivi and Giovanna Latis, who arrive later this year, each for a three month term.
Eric Bianchi, FAAR’09, arrives in Pisa this month to begin a one year residency at the Scuola Normale Superiore. Eric is a doctoral candidate in musicology at Yale University. During a 2008-9 fellowship at the AAR he explored the culture of music and learning in Baroque Rome through the writings of one of its central figures, the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. While in Pisa this year, he will expand his study to examine the ways in which the erudites of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy engaged the science of music. He will consider the changing relationship of music to mathematics and astronomy, and examine early efforts at historical research into the music of the distant past.
Benvenuto Marco Rossati, Marco Raparelli, and Eric Bianchi!