Francesco Freddolini
Visiting Professor of Early Modern European Art History
Affiliation: Visiting
Education: PhD, University of Pisa
Research Areas: Early Modern Art; Global Early Modern Art History; Material Culture History; Ecocritical Art History
Driven by questions about how art shapes human relationships across cultures and our engagement with ecosystems, Francesco Freddolini’s most recent writing and teaching focus on early modern European art and its global entanglements.
In addition to two volumes devoted respectively to the Baratta family of sculptors (Giovanni Baratta e lo Studio del Baluardo. Scultura, mercato del marmo e ascesa sociale tra Sei e Settecento, Pisa University Press, 2010) and to Giovanni Baratta (Giovanni Baratta, 1670–1747. Scultura e industria del marmo tra la Toscana e le corti d’Europa, L’Erma di Bretscheider, 2013), Freddolini has published on Roman palaces (Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550-1750, edited by Gail Feigenbaum with Francesco Freddolini, Getty Research Institute, 2014), as well as on the history of collecting and display in early modern Rome and Florence.
More recently, Freddolini has focused on global early modern artistic exchanges, with a series of publications including edited volumes on relations between Grand-Ducal Tuscany and the Eurasian context (Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia, edited by Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo, Routledge, 2020), and between Rome and the global world (Global Networks in Early Modern Rome: Images, Objects and Diplomacy, edited by Francesco Freddolini, Mandragora, 2025).
In 2025, he co-curated, with Francesca Cappelletti, the major exhibition Global Baroque: The World in Rome in the Age of Bernini at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome (April 4 –July 13, 2025) and co-edited the accompanying catalogue. His most recent publications include an edited volume on landscapes of alterity and imagination from the early modern period to the present (Paesaggi: Pittura, alterità e immaginazione dalla prima età moderna ad oggi, DeLuca Editori d’Arte 2025).
His current book projects include Connected Histories of Early Modern Art in Italy, which examines globally entangled narratives across seven case studies in a variety of media, and At the World’s Edges: Contested Spaces and Imagined Horizons in the Early Modern Age, co-authored with Caterina Volpi (Sapienza University of Rome), which explores ecocritical histories of landscapes in a global context.
Prior to joining NYUAD, Freddolini taught Art History at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada, and at Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. From 2019 to 2020, he served as Director of the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Regina, Canada.