11 December 2017: Court and Curia in Early Modern Rome

The organizers of the Valle Giulia Dialogues kindly invite you all the next planned meeting. This will take place at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, on Monday 11 December 2017. The general subject of the meeting is court and curia in early modern Rome. Entrance is free, and the meeting will be followed by informal drinks offered by the Netherlands Institute.

Some new perspectives on Counter-Reformation and Baroque Rome

The organizers of the Valle Giulia Dialogues, a collaborative initiative of scholars associated with the foreign academies in Valle Giulia, kindly invite you to the next session of presentations which will take place on November 24^th, 17h, at the Danish Academy in Rome, Via Omero 18.

Bendt Fabricius (The Danish Academy) ‘Lutheran Reformation in Denmark in 1536: A historical analysis of its spiritual consequences for the Danish people’

Jessica Dalton (The British School) ‘Jesuit confession and the private absolution of heresy in sixteenth-century Italy’

Tom True (The British School) ‘Death and Virtue in the funerary monuments of Bernini’

Eleonora Gaudieri (The Austrian Institute) ‘Alois Riegl and The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome’ 

The presentations will be followed by discussion and drinks.

All welcome!

Special session: 18 May @ Swedish Institute & British School

Rebooting the Postwar Academy

After World War II, Rome’s claim to be the caput mundi ceded to a more complex and contested geography of global culture. And yet, Rome did not fall off the map. One contributing factor was the city’s constellation of national academies and cultural institutes that sponsor residencies for artists and scholars. From 1945-1960, existing institutions resumed their prewar programs, often in revised form. During these years, a wider circle of nations also established new centers. Collectively, they contributed to Rome’s persistence as a capital of not just historic, but late-twentieth century culture.

This half-day workshop will present new information about various challenges, people, and issues that shaped different institutions’ histories between 1945-60. These discussions will add depth, nuance, and context to currently available histories, showcase research resources, and identify common themes and problems for future analysis. In addition to presentations that focus on individual academies, which will include site visits to three Valle Giulia institutions built during the 1950s and 1960s, the workshop will include two scholars whose work synthesizes the history of multiple academies during the 1940s through the 1960s.

Frederick Whitling, Fellow of the Swedish Institute in Rome, will present his findings on the history of classical scholarship and research resources during and after the war. Denise Costanzo, Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and assistant professor of architecture at the Pennsylvania State University, will share her research into the postwar Rome Prize in architecture. 

This workshop will begin at 14:00 at the Swedish Instiute, Via Omero 14. From approximately 15:30-17:00 participants will visit the Danish Academy, Egyptian Academy and the Japanese Cultural Institute. At 17:00 the workshop’s final presentations will take place at the British School at Rome, followed by a reception at 19:00.

Organizers:  Frederick Whitling (Fellow, Swedish Institute in Rome) and Denise Costanzo (Fellow, American Academy in Rome and Assistant Professor of Architecture, the Pennsylvania State University). 

Next session: 8 May @ The British School

Next session: 27 February @ Dutch Institute

Next session: 14 March @ Swedish Institute

Next session: 9 December @ Dutch Institute

Next session: 18 November @ Romanian Academy

Next session: 21 October @ Austrian Institute

Next session: 27 May @ British School

Dimitri Van Limbergen (Academia Belgica/Ghent University): Oil and wine production in Roman Picenum. From intra-regional consumption to extra-regional export

This presentation focuses on a research project that explores the possible role of intra-regional urban consumption of locally produced wine and olive oil in the agrarian economy of central Adriatic Italy (Picenum and the Ager Gallicus) in Late Republican and Early Imperial times (200 BC – AD 100). Intra-regional consumption remains an often underexposed topic in Roman economic scholarship and little attention has been paid to the possible role of the domestic Italian urban market in the transformations that occurred in Italy between 200 BC and AD 100. Instead, such studies have long focused on extra-regional export and provincial import replacement as driving forces behind economic changes in the countryside. Therefore, in order to refine our understanding of the balance between regional consumption and export of wine and oil over time, this project aims at comparing potential agricultural production with potential urban consumption of these two commodities.

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Michelle Borg (BSR Coleman-Hilton Scholar/ University of Sydney): 'Style as substance': Pliny the Younger on oratory as a reflection of morality in post-Domitianic Rome

Words as weapons, a familiar idiom in literature, was an especially potent metaphor in the first century AD Roman mind: as intrinsically value-neutral as words were, they could be used by an orator for the benefit of good or evil. Indeed, for Quintilian the title orator itself could not be ascribed to the immoral man, regardless of his skill at speaking. In the wake of Domitian’s reign, and in particular the consequential rise of the delatores, the conjunction of ethics with rhetorical theory and practice attained especial significance for men, like Pliny, who wished retrospectively to align themselves with the group of those hostile to Domitian. This paper will explore Pliny’s attempt retrospectively to underline his affinity with the anti-Flavians through a discussion of oratorical style and delivery, which he asserted was indicative of one’s ethical allegiances.