A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692

Winner of the 2020 Bainton Prize for Reference Works

This volume, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, focuses on Rome from 1492-1692, an era of striking renewal: demographic, architectural, intellectual, and artistic. Rome’s most distinctive aspects--including its twin governments (civic and papal), unique role as the seat of global Catholicism, disproportionately male population, and status as artistic capital of Europe--are examined from numerous perspectives. This book of 30 chapters, intended for scholars and students across the academy, fills a noteworthy gap in the literature. It is the only multidisciplinary study of 16th- and 17th-century Rome that synthesizes and critiques past and recent scholarship while offering innovative analyses of a wide range of topics and identifying new avenues for research.

Committee's statement

"The volume includes a multidisciplinary study of early modern Rome by focusing on the 16th and 17th centuries by re-examining traditional topics anew. This volume will be of tremendous use to scholars and students because its focus is very well conceptualized and organized, while still covering a breadth of topics. The authors celebrate Rome’s diversity by exploring its role not only as the seat of the Catholic church, but also as home to large communities of diplomats, printers, and working artisans, all of whom contributed to the city’s visual, material, and musical cultures". Roland H.Bainton Prizes

Contributors are: Renata Ago, Elisa Andretta, Katherine Aron-Beller, Lisa Beaven, Eleonora Canepari, Christopher Carlsmith, Patrizia Cavazzini, Elizabeth S. Cohen, Thomas V. Cohen, Jeffrey Collins, Simon Ditchfield, Anna Esposito, Federica Favino, Daniele V. Filippi, Irene Fosi, Kenneth Gouwens, Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, John M. Hunt, Pamela M. Jones, Carla Keyvanian, Margaret A. Kuntz, Stephanie C. Leone, Evelyn Lincoln, Jessica Maier, Laurie Nussdorfer, Toby Osborne, Miles Pattenden, Denis Ribouillault, Katherine W. Rinne, Minou Schraven, John Beldon Scott, Barbara Wisch, Arnold A. Witte.

Pamela M. Jones, Ph.D. (1985), Brown University, is Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her books include Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni (Ashgate, 2008).

Barbara Wisch, Ph.D. (1985), University of California, Berkeley, is Professor Emerita of Art History at SUNY Cortland. Her publications include the co-authored Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome (Saint Joseph's University Press, 2013).

Simon Ditchfield, Ph.D. (1991), Warburg Institute, is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York (UK). Papacy and Peoples: The Making of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion, 1500-1700 is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.