Francesca Romana Posca

Francesca Romana Posca has been a contract doctoral student at Université Bordeaux Montaigne since 2022. Her thesis project, Au-delà de la Péninsule : la scène artistique internationale, espace d’affirmation des artistes italiennes (1870-1915), is being carried out in cotutelle with the Università degli Studi Roma Tre. She holds a degree in contemporary art history from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, and has worked with Italian and international cultural institutions such as the Musée du Louvre and the Vatican Museums. With the latter, she recently published the article “La Malaria di Maria Martinetti, un quadro e un’artista ritrovati”. She has also collaborated on various exhibition projects as assistant to the curators and authors of the catalogs, and recently took part in the colloquium The cow, the horse and the lioness. Being an artist, a woman and living with animals in the 19th century organized by the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature and AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions.

 

Thesis: Beyond the Peninsula: the international art scene, a space for Italian artists to assert themselves (1870-1915).

 

 

In residence at Villa Medici, Francesca Romana Posca will develop a research project on the role of Italian artists in the post-unitary state, and the link between their professionalization and their integration on the international art scene. The starting point for this study is the way in which their careers are embedded in a context of increased circulation of works and artists. Indeed, in the period under study, international exhibitions multiplied and entrepreneurial freedom, linked to the history of feminism, coincided with the creation throughout Europe of associations of women artists, whose events promoted the idea of a “feminine art” beyond borders.
More specifically, the aim is to investigate the careers of some of these women, who lived and worked in Rome. In the 19th century, the city was a privileged hub for artistic training and exchange, thanks in part to its artistic and cultural heritage, as well as the presence of foreign academies that enlivened Roman cultural life. With the founding of Roma Capitale in 1870, the city established itself on the Italian political and artistic panorama, thanks to numerous building projects and commissions. The migration of artists to the capital intensified, a phenomenon that also affected women, who won official commissions. Today, however, the work of these artists remains little-known, if not unknown, even though their works are preserved in Italian and international institutions. This study, part of Francesca Romana Posca’s doctoral research, is based on an analysis of public and private archives in situ, accompanied by a visual study of selected works held in Roman museums and institutions.