Ph.D. McGill University. Architectural Historian. Premodern architectural design, bodies, materials, and histories of medicine. Lecturer at the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Supervisors: Co-supervisors: Alberto Pérez-Gómez (McGill University) and David Theodore (McGill University)
H-ART. Revista De Historia, teoría Y crítica De Arte, 15., 2023
The present study theorizes the ornamentation of the
Laurentian Library’s vestibule as early mode... more The present study theorizes the ornamentation of the Laurentian Library’s vestibule as early modern architectural rhetoric and examines how architectural design constructed societal norms pertaining to articulation and eloquence, influence and power. I frame the Laurentian Library and its Medici manuscript collection as apparatuses that challenged and legitimized perceptions of the Medici’s constructed nobility and overbearing political identity. The study unfolds one manner in which early modern Florentine art production centralized around Medici patronage to glorify their lineage and the emerging Tuscan duchy.
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Website, 2023
"In Suspicion of Hercules’s Foot" interrogates how idealized bodies informed the proportions of e... more "In Suspicion of Hercules’s Foot" interrogates how idealized bodies informed the proportions of early modern architectural ornament through Vincenzo Scamozzi's (1548–1616) L’idea dell’architettura universale (1615).
This essay explores the ritual of the State Opening of Parliament set in Victorian London as the ... more This essay explores the ritual of the State Opening of Parliament set in Victorian London as the ceremony achieved its effective form due to the construction of its new setting – the new Palace of Westminster. The leading question concerns the relationship between political use of history, architecture as an active agent, and ritual as medium, in the creation of United Kingdom’s parliamentary democracy and national identity during the nineteenth century. I argue that the new Parliament building, as a scene of royal magnificence, overcompensated for the Sovereign’s diminishing authority and aided the re-casting of political power relations while avoiding civil war and preserving tradition. The study is conducted through an analysis of Queen Victoria’s sequence for the State Opening by detailing the chambers’ characteristics and iconography, and by observing the procession’s movement. The decorous ceremony and the edifice are theorized as ideological constructs that influenced the political structure by means of narratives shaped by palpable, material realities with characteristic performative agencies. This analysis presents a possibility that the architecture of the new Houses of Parliament had a role to play in the final configuration of the concept of the constitutional monarch.
Italian Quarterly - Issue 58 Summer-Fall - Dante Special Issue, 2021
Inferno is an exhibition curated by Simona Antonacci to commemorate the 700 th anniversary of Dan... more Inferno is an exhibition curated by Simona Antonacci to commemorate the 700 th anniversary of Dante's death at the MAXXI-the National Museum of XXI Century Arts-in Rome. An imaginative descend among Dante's damned, the show comprises fifteen photographs by Italian photographer Valentina Vannicola and a print of the artist's preparatory sketch depicting the spatial configuration of Dante's Inferno (150 x 180 cm). Arranged in a unifying composition, the photographs are superimposed onto a spiraling copper-toned line that sequentially connects the images and enacts Dante's gradual submersion in the Divine Comedy's first cantica, Inferno (c.1308-1321). Tucked in behind the main ground-floor gallery, in MAXXI's withdrawn Archives Center, the exhibit unravels before the visitor in a single captivating moment like a well-kept secret.
H-ART. Revista De Historia, teoría Y crítica De Arte, 15., 2023
The present study theorizes the ornamentation of the
Laurentian Library’s vestibule as early mode... more The present study theorizes the ornamentation of the Laurentian Library’s vestibule as early modern architectural rhetoric and examines how architectural design constructed societal norms pertaining to articulation and eloquence, influence and power. I frame the Laurentian Library and its Medici manuscript collection as apparatuses that challenged and legitimized perceptions of the Medici’s constructed nobility and overbearing political identity. The study unfolds one manner in which early modern Florentine art production centralized around Medici patronage to glorify their lineage and the emerging Tuscan duchy.
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Website, 2023
"In Suspicion of Hercules’s Foot" interrogates how idealized bodies informed the proportions of e... more "In Suspicion of Hercules’s Foot" interrogates how idealized bodies informed the proportions of early modern architectural ornament through Vincenzo Scamozzi's (1548–1616) L’idea dell’architettura universale (1615).
This essay explores the ritual of the State Opening of Parliament set in Victorian London as the ... more This essay explores the ritual of the State Opening of Parliament set in Victorian London as the ceremony achieved its effective form due to the construction of its new setting – the new Palace of Westminster. The leading question concerns the relationship between political use of history, architecture as an active agent, and ritual as medium, in the creation of United Kingdom’s parliamentary democracy and national identity during the nineteenth century. I argue that the new Parliament building, as a scene of royal magnificence, overcompensated for the Sovereign’s diminishing authority and aided the re-casting of political power relations while avoiding civil war and preserving tradition. The study is conducted through an analysis of Queen Victoria’s sequence for the State Opening by detailing the chambers’ characteristics and iconography, and by observing the procession’s movement. The decorous ceremony and the edifice are theorized as ideological constructs that influenced the political structure by means of narratives shaped by palpable, material realities with characteristic performative agencies. This analysis presents a possibility that the architecture of the new Houses of Parliament had a role to play in the final configuration of the concept of the constitutional monarch.
Italian Quarterly - Issue 58 Summer-Fall - Dante Special Issue, 2021
Inferno is an exhibition curated by Simona Antonacci to commemorate the 700 th anniversary of Dan... more Inferno is an exhibition curated by Simona Antonacci to commemorate the 700 th anniversary of Dante's death at the MAXXI-the National Museum of XXI Century Arts-in Rome. An imaginative descend among Dante's damned, the show comprises fifteen photographs by Italian photographer Valentina Vannicola and a print of the artist's preparatory sketch depicting the spatial configuration of Dante's Inferno (150 x 180 cm). Arranged in a unifying composition, the photographs are superimposed onto a spiraling copper-toned line that sequentially connects the images and enacts Dante's gradual submersion in the Divine Comedy's first cantica, Inferno (c.1308-1321). Tucked in behind the main ground-floor gallery, in MAXXI's withdrawn Archives Center, the exhibit unravels before the visitor in a single captivating moment like a well-kept secret.
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Laurentian Library’s vestibule as early modern architectural
rhetoric and examines how architectural design
constructed societal norms pertaining to articulation
and eloquence, influence and power. I frame the Laurentian
Library and its Medici manuscript collection as apparatuses
that challenged and legitimized perceptions of
the Medici’s constructed nobility and overbearing political
identity. The study unfolds one manner in which early
modern Florentine art production centralized around
Medici patronage to glorify their lineage and the emerging
Tuscan duchy.
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/90518/in-suspicion-of-theory.
https://drawingmatter.org/sets/drawing-week/ink-on-his-hands-montanos-visceral-roman-architectures/
https://www.colloqueartsmedias.ca/en/actes/2016/rituals-and-ceremonies-perpetuate-collective-beliefs
Laurentian Library’s vestibule as early modern architectural
rhetoric and examines how architectural design
constructed societal norms pertaining to articulation
and eloquence, influence and power. I frame the Laurentian
Library and its Medici manuscript collection as apparatuses
that challenged and legitimized perceptions of
the Medici’s constructed nobility and overbearing political
identity. The study unfolds one manner in which early
modern Florentine art production centralized around
Medici patronage to glorify their lineage and the emerging
Tuscan duchy.
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/90518/in-suspicion-of-theory.
https://drawingmatter.org/sets/drawing-week/ink-on-his-hands-montanos-visceral-roman-architectures/
https://www.colloqueartsmedias.ca/en/actes/2016/rituals-and-ceremonies-perpetuate-collective-beliefs