Adelina Modesti

Adelina Modesti is a Senior Fellow (Art History and Art Curatorship) in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. She was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow from 2008-2011 at La Trobe University (Art History), researching matronage networks in early modern Italy. She has also been AEUIFAI Fellow at the EUI, Florence, and is an Advisor in Florence for AWA. Former Lecturer in Art History at Monash University, Adelina specialises in Renaissance and Baroque art, culture and social history, and has published widely on women artists, patronage and the art market in the early modern period.

Dr Modesti received her PhD from Monash University in 2006, with a dissertation on the successful Bolognese Baroque artist Elisabetta Sirani. She currently is a Senior Fellow (Art History and Art Curatorship) in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. From 2008 to 2011 she was an Australian Research Council Post Doctoral Fellow in Art History in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University, for her project Mapping Matrons. She has received various awards over the years, most recently an AIAH research grant (2020) for her book project Elisabetta Sirani (forthcoming London 2022). Other grants include an Australian and European University Institute Fellowships Association Inc. Postdoctoral Fellowship (2008), at the Department of History and Civilization, EUI, Florence; a substantial publication subvention from the Fondazione della Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna for her first commissioned monograph on Elisabetta Sirani (Bologna 2004); another from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for a catalogue raisonné on the same artist (Turnhout 2014); and one from the Australian Academy of Humanities for her recent book Women's Patronage and Gendered Cultural Networks in Early Modern Europe. Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (London & NY: Routledge, 2020). 

Adelina was Lecturer in History and Theory of Art and Design at Monash University from 1984 to 2001, where she specialised in teaching renaissance and baroque art and architecture. Her research interests include women’s cultural production of the early modern period, history of collecting and the art market, and women’s cultural patronage networks. She has published widely on women artists and patrons, including essays and articles on Elisabetta Sirani and Artemisia Gentileschi, and on the artistic, cultural and diplomatic patronage of Vittoria della Rovere and Margherita de’ Medici. The latter appeared as a book chapter in Medici Women. The Making of a Dynasty in Grand Ducal Tuscany, edited by Giovanna Benadusi and Judith C. Brown (Toronto: CRRS, 2015). More recently Adelina has turned her attention to material culture and textiles, examining the transfer of luxury goods between the courts of France and Italy, with a focus on lace production and its representation in early modern portraits, and the production of luxury clothing by Medici court tailors (see, for example, "'Nelle mode le più novelle'. The latest fashion trends (textiles, clothing and luxury fabrics) at the court of Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere of Tuscany", in Telling Objects. Contextualizing the role of the consort in early modern Europe, edited by Jill Bepler and Svante Norrhem, (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018), pp. 107-29.)

Adelina is also an AWA Advocate in Florence, for the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, art historical consultant for the Italian consortium seeking UNESCO cultural heritage accreditation for Italian lace, and a member of the Associazione Bolsena Ricamo, Bolsena, Italy. 

Adelina is a contributor to the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies’ project, Textiles, Trade, and Meaning at the courts of northern Italy during the time of Isabella d’Este. You can read her essay on lace here, and find out more about the project here.

Profile image: Needle lace flounce, Italian (Venice), 17th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Ann Payne Blumenthal, Accession #36.130.5.