Stockholms universitet
This page in English

Anna BortolozziUniversitetslektor, docent

Om mig

Anna Bortolozzi has been Associate Professor of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University since 2015. She holds an MA in Art History from the Ca' Foscari University in Venice (1995) and a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from the School of Architecture in Venice, IUAV, (2005) with a thesis on the Roman church of Santi Ambrogio and Carlo al Corso and the artistic relations between Milan and Rome at the turn of the 17th century.

She specialises in early modern architecture, with particular interest in the relationship between architecture and cultural identity, the reception of classical and Christian traditions; the practice of architects; architectural drawings and their materiality.

 

 

 

Undervisning

Bortolozzi teaches various courses from undergraduate to masters’ level. She is director of the Graduate Studies in Art History since 2022.

In 2017, Bortolozzi developed a pedagogical project aimed at enhancing students’ observational skills and independent learning through physical engagement with art objects (in collaboration with the senior lecturer Magdalena Holdar and Stockholm University Centre for the Advancement of University Teaching, Ceul): https://www.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.384053.1525079609!/menu/standard/file/Pedamb_rapport_2017_2.pdf

Current PhD students: Clara Strömberg, "Bara stjärnorna sätter en gräns för hans rykte". Ära, minne och praktik: adliga gravmonument under 1600-talets andra hälft.

Past PhD students: Christopher Landstedt, Fester, platser och visuell kultur i Stockholm under den gustavianska epoken; Emma Kummerfeldt Quiroa, Making in Context: Reconsidering Anders Zorn’s Oil Painting Practice; Anna Pichetto Fratin, Carlo Bassi (Torino 1772 - Turku 1840), architetto Italiano fra Svezia e Finlandia (Università degli Studi di Firenze).

 

Forskning

Bortolozzi published on the completion of New St. Peter's under the pontificate of Paul V and the memory of the Constantinian Basilica, the Vatican Grottos, the transfer of architectural knowledge between Italy and Sweden in the 17th century, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, Renaissance guidebooks to ancient Rome; the drawing practice of Giulio Romano and Carlo Maderno.

As a research fellow and guest curator at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Bortolozzi conducted extensive research on the museum’s collections of architectural drawings and published a comprehensive study of the Italian architectural drawings in the Cronstedt Collection (Hatje Cantz, Berlin - Stockholm 2020). Between 2019 and 2023, she researched a corpus of over 600 drawings on transparent paper (in Swedish called kalker after the French calque) made between c.1720 and 1780 in the studios of the Swedish architects – and successive superintendents of the public works – Carl Hårleman (1700–1753) and Carl Johan Cronstedt (1709–1777). The aim of the project was to shed light on the use of transparent paper as a copying and design medium in architectural practice before the advent of machine-made tracing paper. By charting the Nationalmuseum's tracings the project aligned with recent research efforts addressing materiality in the study of artistic practices.

Bortolozzi’s investigation into the Nationalmuseum's tracings materialised in the digital exhibition Transparent designs: Copies and tracings in 18th-century architectural practice produced with support from the Getty Foundation through The Paper Project Initiative. The exhibition, launched on the Nationalmuseum's website in May 2023 (available in both English and Swedish), features a selection of more than 40 architectural tracings and drawings: www.nationalmuseum.se/en/transparent-design-copies-and-tracings A specially produced video shows how transparent paper was made in the early modern period, following recipes from art and architectural treatises. From 2024 there is an article entitled "Transparent Paper as a Medium of Copying and Design in the Early Modern Architectural Workshop" based on tracings from the 16th to the 18th century held in various European collections: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/rihajournal/article/view/108191.

Bortolozzi interests have recently turned to the Nordic Classicism of the 1920th. In 2023 she contributed to an edited volume on Materiality with a study of Gunnar Asplund's Stockholm City Library. Her analysis focused on the genesis and symbolism of on the linoleum floor of the central book hall, the so-called rotunda, interpreted through the lens of 'material aesthetics'. She is currently researching 19th and early 20th century plate books on Egyptian, Greek, and Roman architecture and decoration by authors such as Luigi Canina, and Hector d'Espouy, and Johann von Mauch once kept in Sigurd Lewerentz’s library. The aim is to explore the relationship between these visual sources and the classically inspired architecture designed and built by the architect.

Fellowships and grants

Anna Bortolozzi was a postdoctoral fellow of the Max Planck Society at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (2005-2006). Her research has been supported by the Tercentenary Fund of the Swedish National Bank (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond); Ragnar och Torsten Söderbergs stiftelse; Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond; and The Getty Fundation. Between 2013 and 2014 she participated in the interdisciplinary project Topos and Topography. Rome and the birth of the guidebook genre (funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) as a research fellow at the Swedish Institute for Classical Studies in Rome. In 2024 Bortolozzi was Visiting Senior Scholar at the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture, within the Faculty of History of Art at the University of Cambridge (UK).

Forskningsprojekt

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • Transparent Paper as a Medium of Copying and Design in the Early Modern Architectural Workshop

    2024. Anna Bortolozzi. RIHA Journal, 1-27

    Artikel

    This article explores the use and function of

    the lucido technique in architectural work-

    shops from the Renaissance through the late

    eighteenth century. By examining evidence

    from written sources and key drawing collec-

    tions, the study compares the copying prac-

    tices of architects with those of artists. The

    findings reveal that transparent paper was

    not appreciated as a copying medium in Eu-

    rope’s architectural workshops until the mid-

    eighteenth century. When employed, trans-

    parent paper was primarily used for copying

    figure and ornamental drawings that were

    challenging to transfer using the pricking

    technique. The paper argues that the

    marginalization of transparent paper in archi-

    tectural practice was possibly due to the

    coating process and the characteristics of the

    substances employed – vegetable oils and

    resins – which were incompatible with the

    working environment of architects. It was

    only with the commercialization of machine-

    made wove transparent paper in the early

    nineteenth century that architects and engi-

    neers began to systematically adopt this medium.

    Läs mer om Transparent Paper as a Medium of Copying and Design in the Early Modern Architectural Workshop

  • Materiell estetik i Gunnar Asplunds Stockholms stadsbibliotek

    2023. Anna Bortolozzi. Materialitet, 111-131

    Kapitel

    This essay addresses the relationship between materiality and-design in architecture through the investigation of one of the most iconic Swedish buildings of the 20th century, Gunnar Asplund's Stockholm City Library. In particular, the analysis focuses on the genesis and symbolism of on the linoleum floor of the central book hall, the so-called rotunda, interpreted through the lens of what the philosopher Gernot Böhme defines 'material aesthetics'.

    Läs mer om Materiell estetik i Gunnar Asplunds Stockholms stadsbibliotek

  • Francesco da Volterra, Antiquity and a lost Libro dei disegni

    2022. Anna Bortolozzi. Palladio. Rivista di Storia dell'Architettura e Restauro 2 (70), 23-42

    Artikel

    The article discusses a Libro dei disegni (Book of drawings) depicting ancient architectural fragments, including column bases and capitals, as well as entablatures and cornices, executed by the architect Francesco da Volterra between 1570 and 1575. Volterra's originals remain lost to us, but meticulous copies of his drawings were interpolated into a manuscript treatise compiled and assembled by Giovanni Maggi around 1614. The content of the Libro suggests that the acquisition of first-hand knowledge of antiquity was one of Francesco da Volterra’s means of professionalization and recognition as an architect, as had been the practice of previous generations of Renaissance architects. The undertaking also brings novel evidence to the argument of an unbroken continuity in the practice of copying after antiquity before and after the advent of the printed illustrated book.

    Läs mer om Francesco da Volterra, Antiquity and a lost Libro dei disegni

  • Italian architectural drawings: from the Cronstedt collection Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

    2020. Anna Bortolozzi.

    Bok

    This catalogue presents the first comprehensive study of the Italian architectural drawings in the Cronstedt Collection in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, comprising 181 drawings dating from c. 1570 to c. 1630. Among them are original projects by Francesco da Volterra, Carlo Maderno and other Roman architects of churches, chapels, palaces, gardens and fountains, many constituting primary and almost unknown source material relating to late Mannerist and early Baroque architecture. Also included is a large corpus of plans, façades, and architectural details by French draughtsmen that meticulously document ancient monuments as well as buildings by the Renaissance masters Bramante, Antonio da Sangallo, Michelangelo and Vignola. The catalogue puts forward new proposals of identification and attribution in the light of recent scholarship, also based on a close examination of the materiality of the drawings (paper, medium, technique, mounting). Comparative illustrations and a photographic catalogue of the watermarks complete the volume.

    Läs mer om Italian architectural drawings

  • Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso: identità, magnificenza e culto delle reliquie nella Roma del primo Seicento

    2014. Anna Bortolozzi.

    Bok

    Il primo santo dell’età moderna, un erudito cardinale cercatore di reliquie, un architetto romano fuggito in Lombardia e
 il progetto di una grande chiesa. Questo studio ricostruisce l’acceso scontro che, all’indomani della canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo, vide coinvolti un gruppo di devoti, una confraternita e due ordini religiosi per il primato del culto carolino a Roma, imponendo alla Nazione lombarda la costruzione lungo la via del Corso di una nuova chiesa “degna della grandezza e meriti del santo”. Il progetto del monumentale edificio che avrebbe assegnato per la prima volta ai Lombardi un posto di primo piano nella geografia dell’Urbe, integrava elementi propri della tradizione architettonica lombarda, ispirandosi ai modelli del Duomo di Milano e del santuario di Santa Maria presso San Celso.
 I lavori, iniziati nel 1612 e finanziati dalle ingenti donazioni
 e legati pii favoriti dall’arrivo a Roma della preziosa reliquia del cuore di san Carlo, si protrassero per tutto il corso del Seicento senza però mai abbandonare l’originario progetto di traslare “la chiesa identitaria di Milano nel cuore della cattolicità”.

    Läs mer om Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso

  • Recovered Memory: The Exhibition of the Remains of Old St. Peter's in the Vatican Grottos

    2011. Anna Bortolozzi. Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 80 (2), 90-107

    Artikel

    Between 1616 and 1618, during the pontificate of Paul V, a number of sarcophagi, holy images, fragments of sculpture and mosaics, relics, epitaphs and architectural elements originating from the demolition of the old St. Peter's were exhibited on public display in the Vatican Grottos. Quite exceptionally, the fragments were labelled with stone epigraphs commemorating their history and original locations. As a complement to the exhibition, Giovan Battista Ricci painted detailed fresco representations of the exterior and the interior of the old basilica on the walls of the Grottos, giving the visitors an evocative image of its past appearance. This essay analyses the character of the installation in the Vatican Grottos and its formation, also looking at it as a result of the increased interest in antiquarian studies related to Christian antiquity and as an expression of the seventeenth-century taste for displaying antique fragments in palace ornamentation.

    Läs mer om Recovered Memory

Visa alla publikationer av Anna Bortolozzi vid Stockholms universitet

Redigera profilen

profilePageLayout