Professor Anthony Colantuono
Art in Seventeenth-Century Italy, Spain, and France

Art History & Archaeology
Mail: 1211-D Art-Sociology Building
Office: 4229 Art-Sociology Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1335
Email: pyr@umd.edu
Telephone: (301) 405-1496

Professor Anthony Colantuono is a specialist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian, French and Spanish art, with particular emphasis on the study of early art-theoretical and art-critical writings, interpretative methodology and the interaction between the visual and literary arts. Prof. Colantuono has been the recipient of the 2-year Kress “Rome Prize” fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and, most recently, a Fellowship at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Studies (for 2002-2003). His recent book entitled Guido Reni’s ‘Abduction of Helen’: The Politics and Rhetoric of Painting in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1997) reconstructs this famous painting’s use in the context of seventeenth-century diplomatic negotiations between the Holy See, Spain and France, and examines its reception in more that two dozen literary encomia written by the artist’s contemporaries - including several of the most prominent literary figures of his day.

Prof. Colantuono’s has recently lectured on “Ariosto, Tasso and Florentine Pictorial Stylistics ca. 1581-1666” in the conference L’arme e gli amori: Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini in Late Renaissance Florence (Villa I Tatti, Florence) (Summer 2001). In Spring 2002 he will lecture on “Marxism and Scepticism in the Work of Anthony Blunt” at the College Art Association Annual Meeting, Phildelphia (session: Alan Wallach and Andrew Hemingway, ‘Towards a History of Marxist Art History’); and on “Figuring the Ducal Libido: Alfonso d’Este, Mario Equicola and Titian’s Feast of Venus,” Renaissance Society of America (session: Dennis Looney, ‘Figuring Power in the Este Court of Ferrara’).

Recent articles include “Poussin’s Osservazioni sopra la pittura: Notes or Aphorisms,” in Studi secenteschi (2000); and an essay entitled “Scherzo: Hidden Meaning, Genre and Generic Criticism in Bellori’s Vite,” in Art History in the Age of Bellori (ed. Janis Bell and Thomas Willette) (acts of the1996 conference held at the American Academy in Rome on the 17th-century biographer, antiquarian and art theorist Giovanni Pietro Bellori (Cambridge University Press). Previous articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Storia dell’arte, and I Tatti Studies.