Sonia Maffei - Biography#

Sonia Maffei is Associate Professor of History of Art Criticism at the University of Pisa. After graduating at University of Pisa, in 1997 she obtained her PhD degrees in History of Art at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, where she dealt mainly with artistic lexicography of 15th and 16th centuries, iconography and ITC methodologies for cultural heritage (XML/TEI database: online Vasari database, Corpus Informatico Belloriano, Michelangelo’s letters online etc.).

Her studies deal with artistic historiography, in particular between 16th and 17th centuries particularly with regard to artistic vocabulary and its relationship with greek and latin classical sources (e.g. Luciano di Samosata, Descrizioni di opere d'arte, translation, commentary and introduction by Sonia Maffei, Einaudi, Turin 1994; Paolo Giovio, Scritti d’arte. Lessico ed ecfrasi, ed. by S. Maffei, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1999). A more specific focus of her scientific activity is on the reception of classical models (e.g. S. Maffei, La fama di Laocoonte nei testi del Cinquecento, in S. Settis (ed. by), Laocoonte, Fama e stile, Donzelli, Rome 1999, pp. 98-230; translated in several languages, including a Japanese edition, at Sangensha Publishers Inc., Tokyo 2006). More recently her research deals with Renaissance iconography and sources of symbolic language between 16th and 18th century (with several studies, e.g., on Anton Francesco Doni’Pitture, on Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, on Vincenzo Cartari‘s Imagini degli dei, and on the reception of by Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum in the 16th century), Lorenzo Pignoria and the Tractate about deities of West and East Indies (2020).

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