Dr. Stefano de Bosio

Curriculum

Stefano de Bosio is lecturer in European Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin – FUBiS and the coordinator of the international research network “Logic of the Negative: Techniques and Metaphors of Imprinting”. His research focuses on the different facets of the notion of ‘orientation’, spanning from theories and practices of image reversal, especially in printmaking, to dynamics of cultural exchange in Europe during the early modern period. He is the author of “Frontiere. Arte, luogo, identità ad Aosta e nell'arco alpino occidentale” (Officina Libraria, 2021; awarded the Premio Giovanni Testori for Art Criticism); his second book “Patterns of Reversal” is in preparation. In recent years, Stefano has held fellowships at the IKKM – International Research Institute for Media Philosophy in Weimar, Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Florence) and the Kunsthistorische Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut.

Publications (selection)

“Master and Judge: The Mirror as Dialogical Device in Italian Renaissance Art Theory”, Dialogical Imaginations: Debating Aisthesis as Social Perception, ed. Michael Zimmermann (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2024): in press.
L’inventio e il suo corpo polimorfo. Inversione laterale dell’immagine e pratiche ecfrastiche nel ‘Domenichino affair”, The Silence of Images/Il silenzio delle immagini, ed. Claudia Cieri Via (Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2023): 73–92.
Des deux côtés: The Lateral Reversal of Images as Aesthetic Strategy and Epistemic Concern in Early Eighteenth-century French Counterproofs and Prints”, Marginale Zeichentechniken: Pause, Abklatsch, Cut&Paste als ästhetische Strategien in der Vormoderne, ed. Iris Brahms (Berlin/Munich: De Gruyter, 2022): 145–159.
Frontiere: Arte, luogo e identità ad Aosta e nelle Alpi occidentali, 1490-1540. Roma: Officina Libraria, 2021
Butterfly Wings: Wölfflin, Kandinsky and the Role of Image Orientation in Pictorial Order”, Terms. Proceedings of the 34th Congress of Art History, eds. Shao Dazhen, Fan Di’an and LaoZhu (Peking: The Commercial Press, 2019): II, 272–278.

Research project: The Logic of the Matrix: Techniques and Metaphors of Imprinting in Early-Modern Europe

Imprinting is an action deeply rooted in the history of techniques, as well as of the human imagination. Across different civilizations, imprints have prompted reflections on presence and absence, reproduction and imitation, identity and difference. Focusing on the early modern period in Europe, my research aims to explore the cultural as well as aesthetic dynamics involved in the transmission of physical and, usually, visual resemblance to another object, upon which the imprint remains stored as memory. I am particularly interested in the constitutive but still-elusive duality linking the matrix and the imprint across techniques and technologies. In the context of the fellowship, I plan to work on the ways in which printing blocks and plates, despite being the very “sites of authority” and the repositories of physical labour, have long suffered from a kind of invisibility in both critical and theoretical discussions of Western printmaking. The 'generative' power of the matrix and the role played by the multifaceted imaginaries of pressure in early modern narratives on printmaking will represent the two main focuses of my research.