Bio

Cecilia Paolini teaches Art Market, Diagnostics for Cultural Heritage and Artistic Techniques at the University of Teramo; she specialised in Medieval and Modern Art History at the University of Rome “Sapienza”, where she obtained her PhD.
She collaborated with the Hallie Ford Museum of Willamette University in Salem (Oregon – USA) with a research project sponsored by the “Center for Ancient Studies and Archaelogy” (CASA). In 2018, together with Raffaella Morselli, she organised the international conference Rubens and Italian Culture 1600-1608 (Rome, Palazzo Venezia – Musei Capitolini). She is the author of the monograph Peter Paul Rubens e gli arciduchi delle Fiandre meridionali (Rome, 2018). She was a member of the scientific committee of the exhibition Rubens and the birth of the Baroque (Milan 2016-2017/Tokyo 2018-2019) and collaborated in the curatorship of the exhibition Rubens a Palazzo Te. Pittura, trasformazione e libertà’ (Mantua, Palazzo Te, 7 October 2023 – 7 January 2024). She traced documents related to Pietro Paolo Rubens’ family during his eight years in Italy, published in various journals including “Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte” and “The Burlington Magazine”. She has dealt with the technical-stylistic analysis and historical reconstruction of Guercino’s Allegory of Fame at the Casino Ludovisi, publishing an essay in the monographic volume no. 157 of “Storia dell’Arte” journal (2022). She has studied the professional and financial relationships between the Flemish painter Paul Bril and the Milanese sculptor Ambrogio Buonvicino through the critical reading of unpublished archival documents. She also worked on the biographical-critical reconstruction of the Flemish painter Jacob de Hase. She directed the diagnostic laboratory of the Fine Art International Switzerland Institute in Zurich. She is a member of the scientific council of the MetArte Inter University Research Centre, dedicated to technological implementation in art historical research, museography and diagnostics of Cultural Heritage. She directed and coordinated the scientific research group for computational calculation in deep learning applied to Multispectral Imaging of Pictorial Surfaces (False Colour Analysis in Artificial Intelligence. Kermes 132, 2024, pp. 33-39). In the field of museography, she presented a scientific project on the employment of automation technologies for the abandonment of differentiated museum paths in the case of disability (Accessible and Shared Tridimensionality. Congress of the National Association of Scientific Museums, Chieti 2019; conference proceedings: èDICOLA Publisher 2019, pp. 99-102). She was the curator of ‘La mostra che (non) c’è’ (The exhibition that (non) exists), in collaboration with the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Altemps and the Musei Capitolini in Rome, an entirely virtual exhibition based on augmented reality technologies aimed at creating a multisensory educational path (Teramo, European Researchers’ Night 2023; Rome, Casa delle Tecnologie Emergenti 2024).

Abstract

Caterina Marchetti: the importance of Italian wives for the network of foreign artists in early 17th century Rome. Caterina Marchetti was the wife of the Flemish painter Jacob de Hase. Although very little is known of his catalogue, Jacob de Hase was a well-known and appreciated artist in early 17th century Rome: enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca, he knew Peter Paul Rubens and was a master of Michelangelo Cerquozzi. From the study of archive documents, the Flemish painter’s rise from his youth to his membership of the Teutonic Congregation of Santa Maria della Pietà in Camposanto is reconstructed. During the long career of Jacob the Hase, Caterina Marchetti seems to have played a key role in weaving the network of relationships that benefited her husband: she was godmother to other painters’ children, together with important artists such as Giuseppe Cesari, the so-called Cavalier d’Arpino. The large number of children, of whom Catherine was godmother, legitimises the hypothesis of a real relationship strategy based on trust on the one hand, and on the other on the interest of social attestation. Moreover, Catherine’s family supported the Flemish painter in consolidating his economic position through financial transactions with important members of Roman society of the time. From documents held in the Archivio Capitolino in Rome, we reconstruct the Jewish origin of Caterina Marchetti, who joined the neophyte community shortly before her marriage. After Jacob de Hase’s death, Catherine married again to another Flemish artist, the master glazier Gerard Maes, inheriting her first husband’s substantial fortune and increasing the reputation of the young and unknown glazier through his already established network of social connections. The aim of the speech proposal is to reconstruct the family origins, the financial heritage but above all the social role Caterina Marchetti played in supporting Jacob de Hase’s career, introducing the Flemish painter into the circle of intellectuals and artists in Rome. This research is based on the critical reading of some unpublished documents, such as the will of this ‘muse’ of 17th century Rome. In this respect, the case of Caterina Marchetti is investigated in the broader context of marriages with Italian women that were contracted by other foreign artists, including her contemporary Paul Bril, configuring a kind of social strategy among the community of foreign painters in Rome in the early 17th century.