BEGIN:VCALENDAR METHOD:PUBLISH VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:-//NONSGML WPForms//NONSGML Sugar Calendar Feeds v3.17.0//EN X-WR-CALNAME:2026 IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy\, Bologna X-WR-CALDESC:Italian Art Society X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Chicago BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Chicago BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 DTSTART:20260308T080000 TZNAME:CDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Rome BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 DTSTART:20260329T010000 TZNAME:CEST END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:2026 IAS/Kress Lecture in Italy\, Bologna DESCRIPTION:This was the 15th Annual IAS/Kress Lecture\n\n\n\nDr. Robert s is a former IAS President and currently\, Teaching Associate Professor in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee\, Knoxville. Having extensively published early modern Italy and the Mediterranean\, his cu rrent research looking at one of Bologna’s most important Renaissance masters Francesco Raibolini\, known as “Francia.” \; It is this current research in which he will present at the IAS/Kress Lecture. &nbs p\;\n\n\n\nThis year\, the IAS is also partnering with the Scuola di Spe cializzazione in Beni Storico Artistici to bring the 15th annual lecture to Bologna.\n\n\n\nYou can watch the recording of the lecture on our Yo uTube Channel here.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2026 IAS/Kress Lecture – Tuesday 26 May 2026 at 4pm CEST (10 am EST)\n\n\n\nLocation: Dipartimento delle Ar ti\, Università di Bologna\, Piazzetta G. Morandi 2\, \;Bologna\n\n \n\nSpeaker: Dr. Sean Roberts\, Teaching Associate Professor\, School of Art\, University of Tennessee\, Knoxville\n\n\n\nLecture Title: Francia \, Michelangelo\, and the Problem of Metal\n\n\n\nAbstract: In his Vite Giorgio Vasari relates an encounter between his perennial hero Michelang elo and the Bolognese goldsmith and painter Francesco Raibolini\, known as “Francia.” Michelangelo was working on the now destroyed statue o f his great benefactor Pope Julius II for the portal of San Patronio. Fr ancia came to look for himself at the Florentine’s sculpture having heard much of his fame and works\, but never having seen any of them. \n\n\n\nOn being asked what he thought\, he replied that it was a fine casting from beautiful metal. But hearing this\, Michelangelo supposed t hat he was praising the bronze rather than the artist\, and remarked to Francia: ‘I am indebted to pope Julius\, who gave it to me\, as you ar e to the shopkeepers who supply you with your paint.’ He continued ang rily\, in the hearing of all the men gathered around\, that Francia was an idiot.\n\n\n\nMichelangelo’s probably apocryphal insult follows a c lear pattern for the Lives\, driven by Vasari’s sense of local Tuscan pride. Francia is accused of being a provincial Bolognese rube who commi ts the cardinal sin of valuing base materials over their transformation through disegno\; of valuing gold over skill. The paradigm of Leon Batti sta Alberti’s – and later Michael Baxandall’s – conceptions of a rtistic evolution are thus assailed.\n\n\n\nIn fact\, over the course of a forty-year career\, Francia oversaw Bologna’s preeminent goldsmith s shop\, supervised the city’s mint\, and established himself as amo ng the most sought-out painters of Italy. Vasari himself knew this. His own life of Francia presents a laudatory portrait that departs sharply f rom the role in which he cast the artist within the life of Michelangelo . Despite this place in the visual and material fabric of one of the pen insula’s most vibrant cultural centers\, however\, Francia’s positio n in both the scholarly tradition and popular conception outside of Emil ia lags far behind his Roman\, Milanese\, and Florentine contemporaries. \n\n\n\nThis lecture seeks to restore a sense of the historical centrali ty of this pivotal artist and\, more importantly\, of works in metal at the start of the century. I shed light on the reasons for this nearly fi ve-century process of marginalization and focus on several core issues r aised by Francia’s location within changing conceptions of Renaissance media and their motivations. I consider the longstanding and misplaced characterization of early sixteenth-century Bologna as peripheral to cen tral artistic hubs\, especially Florence and Rome. I examine Francia’s liminal status within Italian art history on account of his supposed foreignness.” The artist took his nickname from his teacher\, an unid entified Frenchman\, and Francia’s story may have a good deal to tell us about the negotiation of immigrant and transnational identities withi n the artistic communities of the Renaissance. Most importantly\, I expl ore the role that Francia’s reputation as a goldsmith played in this m arginalization\, situating my own inquiry within renewed attention to ma terials\, reconsideration of the historical status of the applied arts\, and careful re-reading of Alberti\, Vasari\, and their later Bolognese counterpoint Carlo Cesare Malvasia\n\n\n\nThe Samuel H. Kress shared the lecture recording in their news here. URL;VALUE=URI:https://www.italianartsociety.org/events/15th-annual-ias-k ress-lecture/ UID:urn:uuid:bff1e803-7279-4ae1-9de4-1db8ec90aefe STATUS:CONFIRMED ORGANIZER: DTSTAMP:20261109T141315Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Rome:20260526T160000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Rome:20260526T160000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR