Research
Research
My research breaks down into a few distinct areas. First, my period of research of early modern painting and drawing. Centered mostly on the Italian peninsula and the period after the Council of Trent, I am interested in the ways in which images were put to new uses due to religious demands, and the way in which the art functioned as a kind of visual technology.
My interest in Rudolf Arnheim and the psychology of art has resulted in a book and numerous papers. I am focalizing this work into a new discipline, cognitive iconology, which is a delimited area of study of the psychological contribution toward the image's meaning. All of this research is informed of critical realist, that is, a philosophical stance toward the world (realism) that situates its knowledge production in social, interested labor (critical). The main protagonist of this thought of Roy Bhaskar but I have made a special study of Maurice Mandelbaum.
Federico Barocci/Early Modern Painting
"I ritratti di Vitali di Federico Ubaldo della Rovere: Ipotesi sulla collaborazione di Barocci," in Daphne De Luca and Enzo Borsellino, eds., Sulle orme di Federico Barocci. Tecniche pittoriche ed eredità culturale (Tab edizioni, 2022), 111-117.
Contributing editor (with Arthur DiFuria), Space, Image, and Reform in Early Modern Art: The Influence of Marcia Hall (Berlin and Boston: DeGruyter, 2021).
“Guidobaldo II della Rovere and Titian, Witnesses to History,” in Anne-Marie Eze, Matthew Hayes, Ian Kennedy and Ian Verstegen, Titian, the della Rovere Family, & his Portrait of Guidobaldo II and his Son (London: The Klesch Collection, 2021), 69-91.
"A 'Rediscovered' Portrait of Vittoria Farnese, Duchess of Urbino, by Taddeo Zuccaro," Colnaghi Studies Journal 9 (2021): 43-54.
“Guidobaldo II in European Perspective,” Yale Art Gallery Bulletin (2016), 43-52.
“Barocci’s Immacolata within ‘Franciscan’Umbria,” Kunstgeschichte: Open Peer Review Journal (2016).
Federico Barocci and the Oratorians: Corporate Patronage and Style in the Counter-Reformation (Truman State University Press, 2015).
“Conjugal Piety: Creusa in Barocci’s Flight of Aeneas from Troy,” in Marice Rose and Alison Poe, eds., Receptions of Antiquity, Receptions of Gender (Brill, 2015), 393-417.
(with John Marciari) "A Newly Reattributed Painting by Francesco Vanni in Malta," Melita Historica 16 (2012).
"Due varieta' in se: Practices of Engagement in Bronzino's Portraits," Source 30 (2011): 26-32.
(with John Marciari) "Grande quanto l'opera: Scale and Function in Barocci's Drawings," Master Drawings 46 (2008): 289-321.
"Federico Barocci invented Light and Color," Source 26 (2007): 18-23.
"Barocci, Cartoons, and the Workshop: A Mechanical Means for Satisfying Demand," Notizie da Palazzo Albani 34/35 (2005/2006): 101-124.
"Three Cartoon Fragments for Barocci's Madonna di San Simone," Master Drawings 41 (2003): 378-383.
"The Apostasy of Michelangelo in a Painting by Federico Barocci," Source 22 (2003): 27-34.
"Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit," Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003); 56-87.
Perspective/Mathematics/Fortifications
“The Longue Durée of the Borgo Fortifications,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 81 (2022): 42-62.
"Perspective, Space, and the Camera Obscura in the Renaissance," in Krešimir Purgar, ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 75-91
“Common Scales in Military Maps from the Fortification Projects for Rome,” Nexus Network Journal 23 (2021).
"Leonardo, Raphael and Painterly Influences on the Development of Ichnography," in Ian Verstegen and Allan Ceen, eds., Giambattista Nolli and Rome: Mapping the City before and after the Pianta Grande (Rome: Studium Urbis, 2014).
“Francesco Paciotti, Military Architecture, and the European Geopolitics,” Renaissance Studies 24 (2010): 1-22.
"Due varieta' in se: Practices of Engagement in Bronzino's Portraits," Source 30 (2011): 26-32
"A Classification of Perceptual Corrections of Perspective Distortions in Renaissance Painting," Perception 39 (2010): 677-694.
"Between Presence and Perspective: The Portrait-in-a-Picture in Early Modern Painting," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 71 (2008): 513-526.
“Tacit Skills in the Perspective Treatise of the Late Renaissance,” in Karl Enenkel and Wolfgang Neubehr, eds., Cognition and the Book (Intersections: Yearbook of Early Modern Studies) (Leiden: Brill, 2005.
“The Embodied Perspective Viewer and its Implications for Semiotics,” in Winfried Nöth, ed., Körper, Verkörperung, Entkörperung (Kassel: Universität Kassel, 2004).
Historiography/Philosophy of History
“Is Historical Anti-Realism (Ever) Politically Progressive?” in Tor Egil Førland and Branko Mitrovic (eds.), The Poverty of Anti-Realism: Critical Perspectives on Postmodernist Philosophy of History (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), 141-161.
“Bryson, Kuhn, and the Exorcism of Progress from Art Historical Discourse,” in Maria Giuseppina di Monte, Valentina Filamingo and Emilia Ludovici, eds., Arte e filofia del ‘900 (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2021), 61-76
“Doing Underlaboured Theory,” Journal of Critical Realism 17 (2018): 233-243.
“Revisiting Arnheim and Gombrich in Social Scientific Perspective,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (2018): 45-56.
“Is Art History Still a Coy Science?” [Preziosi Tribute], Journal of Art Historiography 15 (2016): 15/IV1:
“Crying Hegel in Art History," Journal of Critical Realism 15 (2016): 107-121.
"Burckhardt, Narrative, and Objectivity,” in Sabine Frommel and Maurizio Ghelardi, eds., L’idea di stile nella storiografia artistica (Paris and Geneva: Droz, 2013).
"Materializing Strukturforschung," in Dan Adler and Mitchell Frank (eds.) German Art History and Scientific Thought (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 141-160.
"When Are We Speculating on History? A Mandelbaumian Theory," Journal of the Philosophy of History 6 (2012): 60-83.
"Vasari's Progressive (but Non-Historicist) Renaissance," Journal of Art Historiography 5 (2011), 5-IV/1, 19 pages.
"John White's and John Shearman's Viennese Art Historical Method," Journal of Art Historiography 1 (2010), 1-IV/1.
"Death Dates, Birth Dates, and the Beginnings of Art History," Storiografia: Rivista annuale di storia 10 (2006): 1-19 (published 2007).
“Arnheim and Gombrich in Social Scientific Perspective,” Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 34 (2004): 91-102.
Rudolf Arnheim/Psychology of Art/Aesthetics
"Is Lakoff Arnheimian?" Debates in Aesthetics 18 (2022): 45-57.
“Right for the Wrong Reason, Wrong for the Right Reason: Gibson and Arnheim on Picture Perception,” Public Journal of Semiotics 9 (2021): 74-87.
"Illusory Planes in Fred Sandback's Sculpture," Leonardo 54 (2021): 418-422.
"Pictorial Continuous Narratives: Perceptual-Representational Strategies" (with Tamara Prest and Laura Messina Argenton), Art & Perception 7 (2019): 238-250.
Alberto Argenton, Art and Expression: Studies in the Psychology of Art, edited by Ian Verstegen (London: Routledge, 2019).
“Revisiting Arnheim and Gombrich in Social Scientific Perspective,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (2018): 45-56.
“Britsch’s Lesson: Synthetic Cubism as Gestalt-Perception,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 60 (2015): 245-255.
"What can Arnheim Learn from Flusser (and Vice Versa)?" Flusser Studies 18 (2014): 1-11.
"An Ontological Turn in the Philosophy of Photography" (with Carlo Maria Fossaluzza), Proceedings of the European Society of Aesthetics 6 (2014): 1-13.
Cognitive Iconology: How and When Psychology Explains Images (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014)
"Arnheim and Ingarden on the Ontology of Art," Gestalt Theory 32 (2011): 307-322.
"A Classification of Perceptual Corrections of Perspective Distortions in Renaissance Painting," Perception 39 (2010): 677-694.
"Tizian, Prägnanz, Zeichen: Singularität in den bildenden Künsten," in Martina Pluemacher and Wolfgang Wildgen (eds.), Prägnanter Inhalt - Prägnante Form (Zeitschrift für Semiotik) (2009).
"Rudolf Arnheim's Contribution to Gestalt Psychology," Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 1 (2007): 8-15.
"Arnheim's Lesson: Cubism, Collage, and Gestalt Psychology," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2007): 287-297 (with Roger Rothman).
“A Plea for a Cognitive Iconology within Visual Studies,” Contemporary Aesthetics 4 (2006).
“Arnheim and Gombrich in Social Scientific Perspective,” Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 34 (2004): 91-102.
"The Thought, Life, and Influence of Rudolf Arnheim," Genetic, Social and General Psychological Monographs 122 (1996): 197-213; reprinted in Arnheim, Gestalt and Art.
Critical Realism/Theory/Philosophy
“The Politics of Physiognomic Perception,” Gestalt Theory 44 (2022): 183-200
“Frondizi and Mandelbaum on the Ontology and Phenomenology of Value,” Gestalt Theory 41 (2019): 277-291.
“Revisiting Arnheim and Gombrich in Social Scientific Perspective,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (2018): 45-56.
“Crying Hegel in Art History," Journal of Critical Realism 15 (2016): 107-121.
"An Ontological Turn in the Philosophy of Photography" (with Carlo Maria Fossaluzza), Proceedings of the European Society of Aesthetics 6 (2014): 1-13.
"Dispositional Realism and the Specificity of Digital Media," Leonardo 47 (2014): 167-171.
A Realist Theory of Art History (London: Routledge, 2013).
"Is William Epstein a Gestalt Psychologist?" Gestalt Theory 34 (2012): 179-190.
“Teoria della gestalt, enattivismo, e la rettorica di ‘realismo,’” in Fiorenza Toccafondi, ed. Fenomenologia e scienza. Punti d'incontro passati e presenti (Firenze, Le Lettere, 2012), 244-278.
Maurice Mandelbaum and American Critical Realism (London: Routledge, 2010).
“Mona Lisa's Smile: The Place of Experimental Phenomenology within Gestalt Theory.” Gestalt Theory 27:2 (2005): 91-106.
"Campo, Forze, Singularità: Prospetti per la spiegazione arnheimiana del ordine percettuale," in Lucia Pizzo Russo, ed., Rudolf Arnheim: Arte e Percezione Visiva (Palermo: Aesthetica Preprint, 2005).
"Gestalt Psychologists on the Gestalt-Switch," Il Cannocchiale: Rivista di studi filosofici 2 (2001): 3-9.
"Maurice Mandelbaum as a Gestalt Philosopher," Gestalt Theory 20 (2000): 46-58.