Amélie Bernazzani

Amélie Bernazzani is a PhD at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR). Her thesis, given at the University of Tours in 2011, deals with the theme of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ in Italian painting during the XVth and XVIth Amélie Bernazzani is a PhD at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR). Her thesis, given at the University of Tours in 2011, deals with the theme of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ in Italian painting during the XVth and XVIth centuries, and will appear in a study in the “Renaissance” collection for the Presses Universitaires François Rabelais at the beginning of 2014. Besides filling a historiographic lacuna, this essay presents an in-depth reflection on the modes and functions of the resemblances which unite the Virgin, Mary Magdalene and John in these images of devotion. Parallel to her thesis, Amélie Bernazzani has published several articles based on religious iconography and taught History of Modern Art for six years.

Her project for Villa Medici consists of a new field of research: the illustrations of the French and Italian «canards sanglants» (literally “bleeding ducks”). Aimed at the general public, the canards were brochures reporting recent crimes. In order to follow current news at close hand, these brochures were printed hurriedly. The images accompanying the texts, therefore, were very rarely created expressly for the canards: the printer, for reasons of time and economy, would draw from his stock. Certain wooden matrices used to illustrate religious texts were thus reutilized to illustrate absolutely profane events. These displacements from the religious to the profane sphere are what interest Amélie Bernazzani. She will attempt to identify and understand the reasons underlying the choice of the reutilized images.