Hybrid Republicanism: Italy and American Art, c. 1840-1918 (Rome)
Hybrid Republicanism: Italy and American Art, c. 1840-1918 Rome, October 6-7 2016 Sponsors: American Academy in Rome, Centro Studi Americani, Rome, and Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi, Rome Italy has served as a key destination for American artists since the founding of the republic. American painters, sculptors, and illustrators were enchanted with its mythic arcadian past, fascinated with its classical legacy, and impassioned by its political movement toward independence and unification, the Risorgimento. This conference will consider the shared notions of republicanism and tyranny that animated American and Italian politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Italians eventually chose a constitutional monarchy as their governing structure, Americans understood the Italian state in republican terms—as a nation comprised of free, autonomous, and self-governing citizens. The scope of the conference will take into account significant historical events that linked Italy and the United States, such as the Italian wars of […]