ANGELAMARIA ACETO

Senior Researcher (Italian Drawings)

Angelamaria Aceto

Angelamaria Aceto

Email: angelamaria.aceto@ashmus.ox.ac.uk
Tel: 01865 278050
Academia.edu page

Research

I am a drawing specialist with an interest in the early modern period and am currently in the first year of research on a three-year project, working towards a detailed scholarly catalogue of the drawings by Raphael and his school held by the Ashmolean Museum, which is the most important collection of his drawings in the world.

My work at the Museum, and publications in peer-reviewed journals, reflect my concerns with the functions, use and materiality of works on paper, with questions of connoisseurship, and the application of non-invasive scientific methods applied to the understanding of works on paper, as well as my broader interest in architecture, sculpture and painting. 

Biography

I trained as an art historian at the University Federico II in Naples, where I wrote a dissertation on the architecture and sculpture of the Caracciolo di Vico Chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara, before completing a further postgraduate degree at the UCL focusing on graphic arts.

I joined the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum as a Michael Bromberg Fellow, and subsequently the Ashmolean Museum where I managed the Prints and Drawings room, before moving onto a research role.

Over the last seven years, I worked on major projects on drawings at the Ashmolean Museum, first as a Research Assistant on a Leverhulme Trust funded project devoted to Raphael and eloquence in drawing, which culminated in the acclaimed exhibition 'Raphael: the Drawings' (2017), and from 2018 to 2022, I contributed to an online catalogue of the outstanding collection of Italian drawings of the Museum.

My scholarly work has received the support of the Francis Haskell memorial fund, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute, Rome, where I was Museum Fellow in 2018.

I regularly collaborate with national and international museums, most recently as a guest curator of an exhibition at the Royal Museums of Turin, exploring Raphael’s extraordinary legacy through the rich and underexplored drawing collection of the Biblioteca Reale. 

Select Publications

BOOKS

  • 2022: On the footsteps of Raphael. Drawings from the Royal Library of Turin, Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2022

RECENT JOURNAL ARTICLES/ BOOK CHAPTERS

  • 2022: On some late Renaissance ornament drawings at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford  : Giovanni Battista Lombardelli, Avanzino Nucci, Giovanni Battista della Rovere and a proposal for Federico Brandani. In Studi di Memofonte, Numero 29 (2022), pp.1-24
  • 2022: Nel Segno di Raffaello. Disegni della Biblioteca Reale di Torino, exhibition catalogue, Turin, Biblioteca Reale, 29 April 2022 – 17 July 2022,  Milan 2022
  • 2020: On Raphael’s use of blind stylus and on new sketches for the Disputa, in Catherine Whistler, Ben Thomas eds., Raphael: Drawing and Eloquence, Accademia Raffaello, Urbino, 2020, pp. 85-99
  • 2020: A drawing by Simone Cantarini, called Il Pesarese, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in Master drawings, 58,3 (Autumn 2020), pp. 327-332 
  • 2020: (with F.P. Di Tedoro), L’architettura disegnata: nuove indagini e prospettive per 'Raffaello architetto', in Raffaello (1520-1483), Milan, Skira, pp. 317-329
  • 2019: The Last Supper, Vienna 195r, a new geometrical study and an hypothesis for its architecture, proceedings of the international symposium Raphael Zeichnungen (Albertina, Vienna, 21-22 November 2017, Milan, Skira, 2019, 155-171
  • 2018: Raphael in three early drawings around 1499 (and a new source for the Massacre of the Innocents), Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 60,2,2018, pp. 311-321
  • 2017: From building to print: Giovanni Giacomo de’ Rossi and the making of architectural books, The Burlington Magazine, 2017, pp. 697-705
  • 2017. Raphael. The Drawings, Catherine Whistler, Ben Thomas, with Achim Gnann and Angelamaria Aceto, Oxford, 2017
  • 2016: A rediscovered drawing by Jean Boulanger (c.1608-1680), Print Quarterly, (4) pp. 406-14
  • 2014: Rare drawings for Prints by Francesco Antonio Bufalini, Print Quarterly, (2) pp. 167-74
  • 2011: La Cappella Caracciolo di Vico in San Giovanni a Carbonara a Napoli e il problema della sua architettura, Bollettino d’Arte del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, (6) pp. 47-80 

Full publications: Angelamaria Aceto | University of Oxford - Academia.edu