Carlotta Paltrinieri

Dr. Carlotta Paltrinieri received her PhD in Italian Studies from Indiana University Bloomington, with a specialisation in early modern literature and art history.  Before joining RHUL, she was Assistant Director of the Medici Archive Project, and Senior Researcher in the programme ‘Towards a National Collection’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has held research fellowships at the University College Cork (Euronews Project, 2019-2020) the Bibliotheca Hertziana-Max Planck Institute for Art History (Roma Communis Patria, 2020-2021), and at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (University of London).

Her research interests lie at the intersection of intellectual and social history, and artistic literature. Her most recent publications focus on the sociological analysis of art academies, and on the study of the rhetoric of early modern newsletters. 

Carlotta is also interested in exploring digital approaches to the study of art history, intellectual history, and literature. She obtained a certificate in Digital Art History and Digital Archiving from the European Summer University in Digital Humanities in 2017. In the past year, she  was an invited speaker at the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s “Digital Reflections” seminar; at the Center for Research Libraries’ “New Shapes of Sharing”, a series of workshops aimed at connecting digital humanists, archivists, and librarians worldwide; and at the Renaissance Society of America’s roundtable “Early Modern Material Culture: New Approaches in Digital Humanities”, where she  discussed the latest trends in Digital Humanities for the study of early modern sources. She is currently writing a chapter on digitised cultural heritage collections in Italy, which will be published in the edited volume "The Digital Turn in Italian Studies: New Perspectives on Teaching, Research, and Cultural Analysis edited by Emanuela Patti and Massimo Riva, Peter Lang, series: Panoramas.

Her current digital projects include a digital edition of a manuscript held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (Magl. XVII, Lezzione sulla pittura) and a reconstruction of the library of the Altemps, a noble family in 17th century Rome. She has previously worked on the application of network analysis to track the movements of early modern intellectuals and artists between Florence and Rome; the application of topic modeling on early modern newsletters; and on crowdsourcing projects for digital archiving. 

Research Interests

Early modern artistic literature

Early modern academies 

Early modern newsletters (avvisi)

Digital Humanities

Digital Cultural Heritage 

Teaching 

Carlotta currently teaches modules in Italian medieval and Renaissance studies, Comparative Literature, and Liberal Arts, including:

• IT1230: Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio and their Heritage
• IT2400/IT3400: Art and Literature in Renaissance Florence
• IT2600/IT3600: Fake News, Rumors, and the Pursuit of Truth 
• IT3230: Dante - Divine Comedy II
• LA2001: Digital Worlds: the Untapped Potential of the Digital for Arts and Humanities Research
• LA2000: Liberal Arts 2: Power, Society, and Cultural Practice 
• EN5607 (MA): Medieval Narratives in Cultural Contexts - Boccaccio's Decameron
• Intercollegiate MA: Materiality and Temporality - Reframing Narratives and Identities through Digitised Cultural Heritage Collections  

   

Publications 

MONOGRAPHS:

1. ‘Liberali Ingegni’: the Educational Revolution of Renaissance Artistic Theory, De Gruyter [forthcoming].
2. News Making Women: Re-writing a History of News with Women in the Renaissance World, Brepols [forthcoming].

POLICY MAKING REPORTS

1. Paltrinieri, Carlotta. (2021). International Benchmarking Review: A Towards a National Collection Report. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5793173
2. Paltrinieri, Carlotta. (2023). Consolidation Report: Insights from Towards a National Collection Foundation Projects. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7674816

EDITED VOLUMES

1. The Global Language of Fake News, University of London Press [forthcoming]

BOOK CHAPTERS 

1. Paltrinieri, C. and Magni, I. “Digitizing Italy's Cultural Heritage: Charting Research Frontiers and Innovations for Italian Studies” in The Digital Turn in Italian Studies: New Perspectives on Teaching, Research, and Cultural Analysis edited by Emanuela Patti and Massimo Riva, Peter Lang, series: Panoramas [in progress].
2. ‘Imagining Italy: Cultural Identity and Representation in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731–1735’, in News from Italy, edited by Nicholas Brownlees Cambridge Scholars Publishing [forthcoming].
3. “David Ricciolo, accorto, savio et virtuoso: the Birth of the Myth in the Medici Avvisi” in David Rizzio at the Scottish Court: History and myth across arts and media, Edinburgh University Press [forthcoming].
4. “È necessario che costà non si porga orecchia alle male relationi, ma guidi cavandosi le cose dagli effettii: Truth, Falsehood, and Persuasion in Manuscript Avvisi”, in The Historical Truth, Pisa University Press, 2022.
5. “The Celebrations of the Canonization of Saint Andrea Corsini: A Florentine Saint in Rome,” Pensieri ad Arte: Roma 1629, eds. Jan Blanc and Marije Osnabrugge (Rome: Artemide, 2020), pp. 189-200.
6. “Filippo Baldinucci ‘Scultore’? A New Light on His Fifty Years in the Accademia del Disegno”, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz (2020), pp. 21-34.
7. “Cosimo I de’ Medici and the Birth of the First Art Academy” in Nel Segno di Cosimo, ed. Marzia Cantini (Florence: Angelo Pontecorboli, 2019): 119-132.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

1. “Anonimo, Negletto, Incompreso: il manoscritto Magliabechiano XVII, 7 e le Disquisizioni fra Teoria Pittorica e Teoria Umorale in Seno all’Accademia del Disegno di Firenze” in the Journal of Società italiana per la Storia della Critica d’Arte [forthcoming]
2. “se sotto questa voce di disegno si comprendino le stampe: gli accademici del Disegno di Firenze e la disputa sollevata da un nobile urbinate”, in Storia di Critica d’Arte (2019), pp. 63-69.
3. “Rediscovering the sociabilite’ of the Florentine Academy of Arts” in Tuscan Academies of the 17th Century and their Intellectual Networks, in Edizioni Universita’ di Per Stranieri di Siena (2020), pp. 3-20.
4. “Social and Spatial Dimensions of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno” in Motion, Transformation, Proceeding of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, Florence 2019, Bononia University Press, (2021), pp. 83-86.

CATALOGUE / ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

1. Dictionary of Tuscan Academies, eds. Jean Boutier and Maria Pia Paoli (Florence University Press, 2022). Six entries (Arti del Disegno; Pastori Antellesi; Belle Arti; San Gallo; Sacra Accademia; Agiati). This encyclopedia will be the most exhaustive study of Tuscan academies since the 1950s. FORTHCOMING
2. 100 Lances for the Prince (Exhibition Catalogue, Uffizi Gallery), Giunti, (2019). Four entries: Karl Paris Edinger, Brevi regole della pronunzia alemanna (Brief Rules to Pronounce German) (1673); Piero Salvetti, Brindisi (1723); Francesco Redi, Scherzo poetico (Poetic ‘scherzo’) (1781); Lorenzo Lippi, Il Malmantile racquistato (1731). 

BOOK REVIEWS

1. Nicholas Brownlees (ed.), The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 1, Beginnings and Consolidation 1640–1800 (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2023). Diciottesimo Secolo (2024).
2. Roberta Cella, “Sonnets between Benedetto Varchi and Lionardo Salviati” (Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 60), Italianistica (2016) XlV, 3: 47-98. La Rassegna della letteratura italiana (2019): 143-144.
3. Carlo Vecce, The Lost Library – Leonardo da Vinci’s books. (Roma: Salerno editrice, 2017). La Rassegna della letteratura italiana (2018): 452-454.
4. Francisco Pacheco, On Christian Iconography: Selections from the Art of Painting (1649). Eds. Jeremy Roe and Carles Gutiérrez Sanfeliu. Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts 16. (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2017). Sixteenth Century Journal (2017): 294-296.