Dario Donetti

Biography

Dario Donetti is a historian of Renaissance and contemporary architecture. The primary goals of his research are to understand the interdependence between graphic experiments and conceptual achievements in design practice, as well as to investigate the role of draftsmanship in architectural production, with a focus on issues of authorship and materiality.

Reassessing the function of drawing as a primary instrument of inquiry for architectural avant-gardes across time, Donetti’s studies have covered a wide range of topics, including: the activity of Tuscan and Roman architects in the sixteenth century, such as Bramante, the Sangallo family, and the circles of Raphael and Michelangelo; the history of collecting, photo-reproduction technologies, and the development of historiography in Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century; the analogical methods of representation of monumental architecture in Fascist Italy; the relationship between radical utopias of the 1960s and their consequences for subsequent architectural theory. Among the results of these studies are the exhibition catalog Giuliano da Sangallo: Disegni degli Uffizi (Giunti: 2017, coauthored with Sabine Frommel and Marzia Faietti) and the monograph Francesco da Sangallo e l’identità dell’architettura toscana (Officina Libraria: 2020). Donetti is also the editor of the volumes Architecture and Dystopia (Actar: 2019) and Building with Paper: The Materiality of Renaissance Architectural Drawings (forthcoming from Brepols: 2021, with Cara Rachele).

Currently, he is working on the critical edition and commentary of the Codex Mellon of the Morgan Library: a sketchbook produced in the circle of Raphael during the reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during its sixteenth-century reconstruction. Parallel to this, he is developing a project for the mapping of domed structures in the Mediterranean world, in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Plank-Institut and the Shahid University in Tehran, with the aim to illuminate the migration of technical knowledge from the Ilkhanate to late medieval and early modern Italy.

Having trained as an architect in Paris and Florence, where he obtained an MA in Architectural History from the Università degli Studi di Firenze (2008), Donetti subsequently received his PhD in Art History from the Humanities Division of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2016). He has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University, the Italian Art Society, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio. Before joining the University of Chicago as a Harper-Schmidt Fellow, he was a research associate at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and a member of the "Rinascimento conteso" research group.

Publications

Building with Paper. The Materiality of Renaissance Architectural Drawings, eds. D. Donetti and C. Rachele

Brepols
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2021

Francesco da Sangallo e l'identità dell'architettura toscana

Officina Libraria (Milano)
,
2020

Architecture and Dystopia

edited by D. Donetti. Barcelona/New York: Actar Publishers
,
2019

Giuliano da Sangallo: Disegni degli Uffizi

eds. D. Donetti, M. Faietti, S. Frommel. Giunti Editore
,
2017

«Into the Fold. Drawings on the Move from the Sangallo Archive,» in: Building with Paper. The Materiality of Renaissance Architectural Drawings, eds. D. Donetti and C. Rachele (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021): 59-79.

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«Just as Dante, so too Michelangelo. The Sculptor’s “Doglienza” in Francesco da Sangallo’s Letter,» in: Lettres d’Artistes. L’anthologie de Benedetto Varchi. Dialogue entre Vasari, Bronzino, Pontormo, Bastiano del Tasso, Francesco da Sangallo, Tribolo, Cellini et Buonarroti, ed. F.D. de Gaillarbois and O. Chiquet (Paris: Spartacus IDH, 2021): 61-74.

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«Building an Icon: Architecture from Project to Product. Introduction,» with F. Cakir Phillip, in: Motion: Transformation. Proceedings of the 35th CIHA International Congress (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2021): 293-298.

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Architectural Prints and the Practice of Copying in the Late Renaissance [review of C. Yerkes, Drawing after Architecture. Renaissance Architectural Drawings and their Reception (Venice: Marsilio, 2017)], Print Quarterly, XXXVI: 3 (2020): 479-484.

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Crafting Perfection: Leon Battista Alberti, Language and the Art of Building, in Perfection. The Essence of Art and Architecture in Early Modern Europe, eds. E. Oy-Marra and L. Pericolo (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019): 75-83.

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«Architecture and Dystopia, or Negative Thought as a Design Method,» in: Architecture and Dystopia, ed. D. Donetti (Barcelona/New York: Actar Publishers, 2019): 9-21.

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Modelli, produzione, variazioni. L’organizzazione del lavoro nel cantiere della Sacrestia Nuova, in: Michelangelo. Arte, materia, lavoro, eds. A. Nova and V. Zanchettin (Venice: Marsilio, 2019)

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«La sepoltura di Piero il Fatuo a Montecassino: una “linea del marmo” da Firenze al Regno di Napoli,» in: Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane. Architettura e decorazione da Leone X a Paolo I, ed. M. Beltramini and C. Conti (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2018)

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«Etruscan Speech. Cinquecento Architecture in Florence and the ArameiMitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, LX: 1 (2018)

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«Piazza della Romanità all’Eur. La costruzione scenografica dell’architettura,» in: Platz-Architekturen. Kontinuität und Wandel öffentlicher Stadträume vom 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart, eds. E. Kossel and B. Sölch, (Berlin/Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2018)

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Exhibitions

Giuliano da Sangallo. Disegni degli Uffizi (with Marzia Faietti and Sabine Frommel), Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, 2017

Giuliano da Sangallo’s Surface Architecture, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, 2017

Profiles

Andrei Pop
Andrei Pop
Modern Art and Aesthetics
Department Chair
CWAC 162 | Tuesdays 1-2pm or by appointment.
773.702.0278
Niall Atkinson
Niall Atkinson
Medieval and Renaissance Architecture and Urban History
CWAC 260
773.702.0270
Wei-Cheng Lin
Wei-Cheng Lin
Chinese Art and Architecture
Architectural Studies Advisor
CWAC 268 | Office Hours: Wednesdays 9-10am and 12-1pm
773.702.0268
2006-07
Iowa State University
Assistant Professor, East Asian Art and Architecture
Potters Wheel
Richard Neer
Ancient Greek Art and Architecture
CWAC 259
773.702.5890
Megan Sullivan
Megan Sullivan
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
CWAC 272
773.702.5126