Research Highlights

Though my expertise lies in art history, my primary research interest is the architecture of early modern Italy. My undergraduate and master's theses focused on Francesco Borromini, one of Rome's leading architects of the High Baroque period. Later, during my time studying abroad at the University of Florence, I worked with a professor who specialized in Roman Baroque architecture and began to shift my attention to Florentine architecture, taking advantage of the rich primary sources at Archivio di Stato di Firenze, the Department of Prints and Drawings of Galleria degli Uffizi, and Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

The days of transcribing materials in archives are a distant memory for me now, not just due to the pandemic but also because my interests have shifted to a more general and abstract level. In recent years, I've become deeply interested in the interplay between Baroque architecture and contemporary science.

My fascination can be traced back to my time in Florence. This city and its architecture, though a vibrant center of the Renaissance with figures like Brunelleschi, were essentially in decline by the 17th century—a fact vividly portrayed in British historian Harold Acton's seminal work, The Last Medici. Yet, Florence was also a center of the Scientific Revolution, due largely in part to the contributions of Galileo Galilei. This drove me to explore the relationship between Galileo's mechanics and contemporary architectural designs.

My present focus remains on this trajectory. One of the defining stylistic features of Baroque architecture, as exemplified by Borromini and others, is the extensive use of curves. The science of the time was also interested in the mathematical and mechanical properties of various curves. It's overly simplistic to argue that one directly influenced the other; it's more accurate to say they ran in parallel. However, one of my current goals is to clarify the reality of their interconnectedness as much as possible. Specifically, I'm examining the history of these concepts’ application in parabolic arches and catenary arches of dome structures, features prominently seen in the works of Antoni Gaudi, a master of modernist architecture. One of Gaudi’s references was Giovanni Poleni, an 18th-century Italian mathematician and architectural theorist known for his writings on the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican. In my upcoming analysis, I aim to outline how these curves were applied in dome designs based on structural mechanics, going back even before Poleni's time.

(2024/4/1)