Dr Matteo Chirumbolo

I am an art and architectural historian specialising in early modern Italy, with a particular focus on patronage and cross-cultural exchanges in the Renaissance period.
I completed my PhD at The Courtauld Institute of Art, under the supervision of Professor Scott Nethersole. My thesis, 'Family Lexicon: The Patronage of Girolamo Basso and Domenico della Rovere between Turin, Savona, Loreto, and Rome, 1477-1507', contributes to historiographic debates on ‘centre and periphery’, reframing a traditionally hierarchised understanding of the artistic production across the Adriatic and Ligurian coasts of Italy, as well as the cisalpine area of the Duchy of Savoy, through the lens of patronage studies. My research approach is both micro-historical and has a wide-ranging geographical focus.
In Cambridge, I am a member of the AHRC-funded project 'Objects and Spaces of Encounter in Renaissance Italy'. My current research project examines how communities of non-local settlers shaped cultic and visual traditions across the Italian peninsula, especially in the southern-Italian region of Calabria, recentring the experience of marginalised groups in the history of art. I also collaborate with the Fitzwilliam Museum to develop new narratives around objects in their collection, assisting with the rehang of the Italian Renaissance galleries.
I am an Associate Scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence–MPG, where I have held fellowships in Alessandro Nova and Gerhard Wolf's Abteilungen (2020-2023). I am currently working on a co-edited volume titled 'Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto', and I collaborate regularly with galleries and museums across Italy and the UK.
Research Interests
- Early modern art and architecture
- Coastal areas and cross-cultural encounters
- Minority groups as agents of cultural and artistic change
- Patronage networks in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century patronage Europe
- The Renaissance in the Duchy of Savoy, Piedmont, and Turin
- Rome, antiquity and their visual reinterpretation
- European sculpture, 1300-1900
Contact
Tags & Themes
Faculty of History, West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9EF
Edited Volumes
M. Chirumbolo, E. Giffin, A. Sorgini, eds., The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto, Boston/Leiden: Brill, forthcoming (2025).
Articles
‘The House on the Sea: Collective Identities, Adriatic Coastlines, and the Cult of Loreto in the Fifteenth Century’, in M. Chirumbolo, E. Giffin, A. Sorgini, eds., The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Santa Casa di Loreto, Boston/Leiden: Brill, forthcoming (2025).
‘Celebrating a Sistine “Second Coming”: Girolamo Basso della Rovere, Bernardino de Cuppis and the Marian Fresco Cycles at Santa Maria del Popolo and Sant’Onofrio al Gianicolo, Rome’, in M. Legeay and J. Jouan, eds., À l’ombre des maîtres: les artistes ‘secondaires’ en peinture, sculpture et architecture (XIIe – XIXe siècles), Rennes: Presse Universitaire de Rennes, 2024, pp. 243-259.
‘Introduzione’ (with G. Antoni, G. Petrone, C. Zuber), in G. Antoni, M. Chirumbolo, G. Petrone, eds., 'Inside the Exhibition': Temporalità, dispositivo, narrazione, Rome: Artemide, 2022, pp. 7-12.
Catalogues
Four Great Works of Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, London: Stuart Lochhead Sculpture, 2021. ISBN 9781838471606.