Team


Henri de Riedmatten is a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Professor at the Department of Art History at the University of Geneva. 

He holds a master’s degree in philosophy (2004), a doctorate in art history from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland (2009) and an habilitation in art history from the University of Zurich (2021).

He was research assistant at the University of Fribourg in the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) “Mediality” (2005–8). He was also Head of the Academic Programs at the Swiss Institute in Rome (20092014), and a postdoctoral assistant at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich (20142018). He has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University (2007), at the NCCR eikones/Iconic Criticism at the University of Basel (2013), at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (2020), at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut for Art History in Rome (2021) and at the Centre André Chastel in Paris (2023).

Since 2018, he has been leading the SNSF research project “Restoration as Fabrication of Origins: A Material and Political History of Italian Renaissance Art.” His work focuses on the material and anthropological dimensions of art in the early modern period. His latest publication concerns the representations of Lucretia's suicide in the art of the 15th and 16th centuries, both south and north of the Alps: Le suicide de Lucrèce. Éros et politique à la Renaissance (Arles: Actes Sud, 2022). He has also published: Lucrèce selon Rembrandt. Une question de restauration  (Paris: Institut national d'histoire de l'art, 2021). His doctoral dissertation was published as Narcisse en eaux troubles. Francis Bacon, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall in 2011, and translated into English in 2014 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider). He has co-edited several collective works including Restoration as Fabrication of Origins: A Material and Political History of Renaissance Arts (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2023) and Senses of Sight: Towards a Multisensorial Approach of the Image; Essays in Honor of Victor I. Stoichita (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2015). He is also the author of several articles on early modern art, including "Le lever du voile. Voir, être vue, se montrer : le costume féminin à Venise et Padoue (1575-1600)," in: Massimo Leone et al. (ed.), Système du voile. Transparence et opacité dans l’art moderne et contemporain (2016). His current research is devoted to issues of iconoclasm and restoration as well as animal representation in early modern art.


Fabio Gaffo is a PhD candidate at the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under the supervision of Prof. Henri de Riedmatten.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in ancient history and art history from the University of Geneva (2015) and a master’s degree in art history from the University of Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2017).

His master’s thesis investigated the artistic legacy of the Pazzi family following the condemnations of 1478. His current research deals more broadly with anti-Medicean patrons in quattrocento Florence and the political implications on the cultural legacy of these families. Besides, he also worked in the Department of Sculpture at the Louvre, Paris, chiefly assisting with the final stages of the exhibition A Dream of Italy. The Marquis Campana’s Collection (July 16, 2018–Oct. 20, 2019) and the preparation of the exhibition Body and Soul. Italian Renaissance Sculpture from Donatello to Michelangelo (Oct. 22, 2020–Jan. 18, 2021).


Mathilde Jaccard is currently writing a PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. Henri de Riedmatten as part of this project.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in art history and cultural anthropology from the University of Basel (2017). She defended her Master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Victor Stoichita at the University of Fribourg (2019).

Her current research focuses on the Etruscan heritage in Tuscany during the 15th and 16th centuries. Through a comparative approach with Greco-Roman antiquities, one of the objectives is to study the potential malleability of Etruscan antiquity. The thesis project also covers imitation and falsification practices in order to understand the conception of the Etruscan style during the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. This led to the forthcoming publication of an article in the journal Anabases about a false Etruscan Venus.

Mathilde Jaccard is at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome during the academic year 2021-2022.


2019-2020


Cristina Brezae is a student assistant currently preparing her masters thesis as a part of this research project.

She holds a bachelors and a masters degree in architecture from the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, Romania. She completed further studies in art history at bachelors level at the University of Geneva. Previously, she undertook a one-year Erasmus stay at the University Iuav of Venice.

Her masters thesis, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Henri de Riedmatten in collaboration with Prof. Jan Blanc, is on life-size sculpted crucifixes in sixteenth-century Italy.