Emilie Beck Saiello

Emilie Beck Saiello
Period: 2008-2009
Profession: Art historian Born in 1976. Studies at the École du Louvre and the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne. Doctorate in Art History (2005), co-supervised by the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and the Université de Paris IV Sorbonne; post-doctorate at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence (2008). Published in 2004 with the Centre Jean Bérard and the support of the CNRS Le chevalier Volaire. Un peintre français à Naples au XVIIIe siècle (whose manuscript was awarded the Prix de l’Académie de Toulon in 2003), in 2005 with Artema Jean-Pierre Péquignot, and several articles for the INHA or the journals Napoli Nobilissima, Confronto and Ricerche di Storia dell’arte. He is currently preparing the publication, with L’Erma di Bretschneider, of his doctoral thesis, Da Vernet a Valenciennes. I pittori francesi di paesaggio a Napoli nella seconda metà del Settecento (which won the Strazzullo Prize in 2008); with Arthéna, of her post-doctoral thesis Pierre Jacques Volaire, known as le Chevalier Volaire (1729-1799). With Honoré Champion, published the proceedings of the colloquium she co-directed in Naples (Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane) in 2007, Le Vésuve en éruption : savoirs, représentations, pratiques. Assistant curator of the exhibition Girodet et Péquignot une amitié artistique at the Musée Magnin, Dijon, in 2005. Curator of the Joseph Vernet exhibition organized by the Louvre, the Calvet Museum in Avignon and the National Gallery in Washington (2011). Has also worked with numerous French and foreign museums (Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of New York, Galerie Trétiakov, Musée de Capodimonte). Lecturer at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, she regularly takes part in colloquia organized by French and Italian universities. She is also a consultant to antique dealers and auction houses. Focusing mainly on the study of 18th-century landscape painting in France and Italy, and in particular on the rediscovery of little-known artists, her work favors a social history of art, based on careful research of sources, historical knowledge of the milieu and stylistic analysis of the works, combining “eye and knowledge”, sensitivity and study. Resident at Villa Medici for 18 months, prepares critical edition of Joseph Vernet’s “Livre de Raison”.