Enfilade

From ArtHist.net and the American University of Rome:

Architecture and the Literary Imagination, 1350–1750

American University of Rome, 6–8 November 2025

Organized by Fabio Barry and Paul Gwynne

Architecture & the Literary Imagination broadens the repertoire of period voices for understanding pre-modern architecture, beyond the usual theoretical tracts, to foster dialogue between scholars across disciplines, and encourage intermedial perspectives on architecture and literature.

t h u r s d a y ,  6  n o v e m b e r

19.00  Introductions

19.15  Keynote
• Luis Javier Cuesta Hernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) — ‘Ephesians will no longer be proud of the Great Temple that Herostratus burned’: Imagined Architecture in Mexico in the 17th Century

f r i d a y ,  7  n o v e m b e r

9.30  Medieval
• Elizabeth Pastan (Emory University) — ‘Let stond the wyndow glasid’: Writings about Windows
• Sara Ronzoni (Università di Padova) — ‘La closture et la muraille’: la costruzione della città utopica tra ‘La Cité des dames’ e ‘La città del sole’
• Hannele Hellerstedt (Lincoln College, Oxford) — Divine Inspiration: Imagining Construction in ‘La Cité des dames’

11.00  Coffee break

11.30  Interiors
• Klaus Tragbar (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München) — Gli ambienti di Franco Sacchetti
• Caterina Cardamone (Vrije Universiteit, Brussels) — Diplomatic Reports as Sources for the Florentine Imagery of Northern Architectural Culture
• Christian Frost (London Metropolitan University) — Dante and Boccaccio and the Emergence of the Civic Palazzo in Late Medieval Florence

13.00  Lunch

14.30  Vitruvius, Pliny, and Others
• Mikel Marini (Università di Bologna) — ‘Erger cantando machina sublime’: Un’analisi vitruviana dell’architettura ecfrastica in poesia
• Fabio Colonnese (La Sapienza, Roma) — Between Text and Imagination: Reconstructions of the Tomb of Lars Porsenna

15.30  Coffee break

16.00  Gardens
• Luke Morgan (Monash University, Melbourne) — ‘Bodies without Souls’: Avatars of Circe in the Early Modern Garden
• Nicholas Temple (London Metropolitan University) — Virgil’s Eclogues and Early 18th-Century Pastoralism on the Janiculum in Rome

17.00  Break

18.00  Keynote
• Níall McLaughlin (Níall McLaughlin Architects, London) — My Portfolio in Poems
Venue: Università Roma Tre, Aula Magna Adalberto Libera, Largo G. B. Marzi 10

s a t u r d a y ,  8  n o v e m b e r

9.30  Ruins and Humanists
• Theodoris Koutsogiannis (Art Gallery, Parliament, Athens) — Atene immaginaria cartacea e la tradizione letteraria nella prima età moderna
• Elisa Bacchi (Università di Pisa) — Parola come monumentum, parola al monumentum: leggere e scrivere le rovine dell’Antico nell’Umanesimo italiano
• Susanna de Beer (Royal Dutch Institute, Rome) — The Literary Imagination of Ruins and the Rebuilding of Rome(s)

11.00  Coffee break

11.30  Counter Reform
• Nathaniel Hess (Warburg Institute, University of London) — The Church between Two Temples: Poetry and Images in the Works of Marco Girolamo Vida
• Stefano Canciosi (Corpus Christi College, Oxford) — Angelo Rocca’s Approach to Classical Sources in his ‘Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana’

12.30  Lunch

14.00  17th and 18th Centuries
• Giovanni Santucci (Università di Pisa) — Real and Imagined Architecture in Daniel Defoe’s ‘Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain’: National Ornament and the Design of Political Ideals
• Daniela Roberts (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) — The Perception of Medieval Architecture in the Journals and Letters of English Travelers, 1720–1750
• Maicol Cutrì (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) — «quanti poetici concetti potrebbero scaturire da quelle metaforiche pietre?» Spazi architettonici e invenzioni poetiche in Emanuele Tesauro

15.30  Coffee break

16.00  Ephemera
• Micaela Antonucci (Università di Bologna) — ‘La storia è il più durevole monumento’: Le architetture effimere nelle cronache delle cerimonie pubbliche a Roma nel primo Cinquecento
• Laura García Sánchez (Universitat de Barcelona) — ‘Apparato funebre dell’anniversario à Gregorio XV celebrato in Bologna à XXIV di luglio M. DC. XXIV dall’ illustrissimo & reverendiss. sig. Cardinal Ludovisi’: Una fonte letteraria al servizio di una architettura effimera

17.00  Break

18.00  Keynote
• Shirine Hamadeh (Koç University, Istanbul) — Poetry, Epigraphy, and the Sensory World of Ottoman Architecture