Geoffrey Ripert

Geoffrey Ripert (France, 1989) is a doctoral student in art history at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. His thesis focuses on the taste for marble objets d’art in eighteenth-century France (1700-1815). He was curatorial associate in charge of decorative arts at the Frick Collection, New York, from 2016 to 2019. He studied art history at the Sorbonne Paris IV, the EPHE (École pratique des hautes études) and the École du Louvre. He is the recipient of the 2023 Burlington Magazine Scholarship, and from 2024 to 2025 will be Anne L. Poulet Fellow at the Frick Collection.

His project at Villa Médicis :
While in residence at Villa Medici, Geoffrey Ripert will conduct a research project on the Franco-Italian networks for commissioning marble objets d’art in Rome in the eighteenth century, intended for French collectors. Rome was a hub for the marble trade at the time, and still contained many ancient marble remains, some of which were reworked by specialist craftsmen, mainly into vases, shuttles and columns, and then sold on to prestigious French patrons or their agents. The aim of this research is to identify the provenance, conditions and methods of manufacture, as well as the supply networks for these works of rare Italian marble to the Paris market.

© Geoffrey Ripert

Caption and copyright:
Pair of lidded urns, Rome, 1770-1820, Red porphyry and gilt bronze, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019, 2019.283.45a, b
Mounted vase, France and Italy, circa 1760, antique Pyrenean marble and gilt bronze, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 79.DJ.183