This outstanding series features some of the world’s foremost art historians, curators, artists, and collectors. Everyone is invited to these free lectures. An always elegant reception for Collectors Circle members, also sponsored by Northern Trust, is held one hour before the lecture. Cynthia Astrack is President of the Collectors Circle.

Dr. Franco Mormando will profile “Bernini: Impresario Supreme of Baroque Rome.” He is the author of Bernini: His Life and His Rome, the first English-language biography of the artist, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Dr. Franco Mormando

No other artist has left such a large, enduring, and delightful mark on Rome as Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). His countless statues, fountains, and buildings transformed the city into the Baroque theater that continues to enthrall tourists today. He was also a gifted painter and playwright and has been placed by both his contemporaries and historians in the same exalted company as Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

Dr. Mormando is Professor of Italian and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Boston College, where he has taught since 1994. In 1999 he was Principal Curator and Catalogue Editor of Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image. His book, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy, received the Howard Marraro Prize for Excellence in Italian historical scholarship from the American Catholic Historical Association.

He has lectured widely, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and Harvard and Yale Universities. In 2005, he was named Cavaliere in the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana by the Republic of Italy for his achievements in promoting the Italian language and culture.

Dr. Mormando earned his BA from Columbia University and his MA and PhD in Italian from Harvard. He also holds a licentiate (MA) in church history from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.

This lecture is open to the public and free with MFA admission.

This Collector's Circle event is sponsored by