Faculty Research Fellows Talk with Emanuele Lugli

Emanuele Lugli: "Properzia de’ Rossi, or How a Woman Carved Out a Place in Sixteenth-Century Italy"

This talk traces the life and few surviving works of Properzia de’ Rossi, Europe’s first professional woman sculptor, to explore how sculpture itself was gendered in sixteenth-century Italy. From her intricate peach-pit carvings to her marble relief for Bologna’s main church, it examines how material and reception conditioned the very possibility of a woman’s authorship in sculpture. At the same time, it argues that Properzia’s practice unsettled entrenched boundaries of gender and authorship, exposing how the same patriarchal logic that casts women primarily as victims of power also obscures their capacity for authorship, agency, and even aggression.

Emanuele Lugli is Associate Professor of Art and Art History.

Clayman Faculty Affiliates are welcome to attend the lunch seminars.  All Stanford academics are eligible to become Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliates.