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

«“Ed io così in groppa a mio padre.” Giuliano e Francesco da Sangallo,» in: Giuliano da Sangallo architetto, eds. A. Belluzzi, C. Elam, and F.P. Fiore (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2017)

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«La fortuna ottocentesca dei Sangallo e le origini della disciplina storiografica,» in: L’architettura del Rinascimento nell’Ottocento, eds. A. Brucculeri and S. Frommel (Rome: Campisano, 2016)

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«Bramante agli Uffizi. I disegni per San Pietro e la storiografia architettonica,» Annali di Architettura, 26 (2014 [2015])

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«L’altra antichità di Francesco da Sangallo. Due medaglie di fondazione nella Firenze di Cosimo I,» in: Le arti a dialogo. Medaglie e medaglisti tra Quattro e Settecento, ed. L. Simonato (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2014)

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«“Scultore et architetto fiorentino.” Francesco da Sangallo a Santa Croce,» in: Architettura e identità locali, eds. L. Corrain and F.P. Di Teodoro (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2014)

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«Le Antichità Greche di Giuliano da Sangallo. Erudizione e rovinismo nel Libro dei Disegni, Codice Barberiniano Latino 4424,» in: Les ruines, entre destruction et construction de l’Antiquité à nos jours, eds. S. Frommel and K. Kaderka (Rome: Campisano, 2013)

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«“I colori, i toni e le architetture delle scene.” Pietro Aschieri scenografo,» Palladio, 52 (2013 [2014])

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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