The Drawing Institute at The Morgan Library & Museum

The 2011–2012 Class of Fellows:

Rick Scorza, Independent Scholar, London
Thaw Senior Fellow
Vincenzo Borghini's Collection of Drawings

This investigation aims to reconstruct, to the fullest extent possible, Vincenzo Borghini's collection of drawings. Borghini (1515–1580) compiled his collection with the help of his great friend, the artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari, for whom he served as iconographic adviser. Prime examples by Pontormo, Bronzino, and by Vasari himself were hung on the walls of Borghini's rooms in the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, but the majority of the drawings he collected were preserved in several albums similar to Vasari's famous Libri di disegni, complete with mounts and inscriptions. Dismembered long ago, their contents widely dispersed, these albums will be the focus of my research.
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Barbara Rose, Independent Scholar and Curator, New York
Morgan-Menil Fellow
The Impact of Medieval Illumination on Modern Drawing

The influence of Romanesque illuminated manuscripts of the Apocalypse by the medieval Spanish monk Beatus of Liebena on modern drawing, specifically on the work of Miró, Matisse, Léger, and Picasso, is the focus of this project.
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Nancy Ireson, Guest Curator, Courtauld Gallery, London
Junior Fellow
Seurat and Physicality

Following recent advances in the understanding of Seurat's drawings as physical objects, this study considers how the artist's working process affects interpretive readings of his work. Most notably, 'Seurat and Physicality' asks how the artist's touch connects with wider attitudes to the human body in Third Republic France.
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Meredith Martin, Assistant Professor, Art Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Junior Fellow
Art, Diplomacy, and Intercultural Encounters in France from Louis XIV to the Revolution

This project explores the dynamic relationship among art, diplomacy, and
cross-cultural exchange in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France,
focusing on France's diplomatic relations with India, Southeast Asia, and
the Ottoman Empire. Drawings, as well as other art objects and gifts, played
a vital role in these exchanges in their ability to represent and shape
perceptions about diplomatic events, products, and participants.
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Lauren Jacobi, PhD Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York
Pre-Doctoral Fellow
The Life of a Street: Rome's Canale di Ponte Seen through Drawings
(ca. 1450–1527)
Situated across the Tiber from Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, the understudied Canale di Ponte was one of the city's most important streets during the early modern period. At the start of the sixteenth century, twenty-seven banks operated on or close to it and it played a key role in several pilgrimage routes. The primary aim of this project is to examine drawings that take the street and its two attendant piazzas as their subject. Such a study offers a fuller picture of early modern financial and quotidian street life in Rome and the ritual ceremonies that took place on the Canale di Ponte.
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