Animation, Materials, Transcultural Ecologies: Performing Worlds at the Baroque Savoy Court of Christine of France

ANIMATE investigates the spectacles staged at the Savoy court in Turin during the lifetime of the regent Christine of Bourbon-France (1606-1663).

By examining objects and scenery, costumes and movements, this research explores how these virtual spaces performed new ways of thinking about the world, its natural resources and environments, at a time that saw a rapid increase in the circulation of bodies and things across borders.

To pursue this aim, the study focuses on a large archive of extant – and understudied – visual and textual documentation: fourteen albums produced by court calligrapher, cartographer, and engineer Giovanni Tommaso Borgonio to document, over 1.117 manuscript pages, the performances in all their constituent elements.

This investigation stems from my experience as a research associate with the project ""Making Worlds: Art, Materiality, and Early Modern Globalization"", based at McGill University, which examined issues raised by the global turn in art history and the humanities.

By pursuing an art historical and cross-disciplinary approach, in the unfolding of this research I will i) further enhance my understanding of Italian visual culture in the context of global connectivity; ii) acquire new methodological tools for the critical evaluation of aesthetic practices from the point of view of ecology; iii) reinforce my mastery of an object of study – the courtly performance – that involved different types of media.

The Art History Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the first in the United States to embrace a mission of comprehensive global coverage, and the DAR at the University of Bologna, the largest multi-focused Department of the Arts in Italy, will constitute ideal settings in which pursue this investigation.

The success of this project will strenghten my professional profile with the realization of my first monograph, thus boosting my chances of securing a tenure-track position within the DAR.