Joris van Gastel (Coming soon)

Joris van Gastel (1977) is an art historian based in Switzerland, where he teaches at the University of Zurich. He studied psychology and art history in Amsterdam and Venice, and completed his doctorate at Leiden University. In addition to short-term fellowships in Florence, Rome, Ferrara and Berlin, he has held postdoctoral positions at Berlin’s Humboldt University, the University of Warwick and the University of Hamburg. Before taking up his post in Zurich, he was a research assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. As part of his habilitation, he worked on questions of materiality and identity in Baroque Naples.

His project at Villa Medici

Focusing on etchings of Roman ruins by the 17th-century Dutch painter-engraver Bartholomeus Breenbergh, his project seeks to associate the irregular and contingent nature of the etching medium with what will be characterized as the ecology of the ruined landscape. The main hypothesis is that medium and subject have something in common, something that can be linked to the interconnected themes of chance and memory in early modern thought, both in relation to Dutch and Italian art theory.

Portrait © Amélie Korzil