Library Special Collections Blog
“Modern Family:” Processing the Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino Papers
Library Special Collections is fortunate to have Italian history and paleography scholar Orietta Filippini in residence through December to process the Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino family archive, which includes civil and ecclesiastical documents, wills, legal cases, estate inventories, genealogies, certificates of nobility, and correspondence of one of the earliest aristocratic families of Italy.
Once the archive is processed, researchers will have access to a wealth of information not only in Italian social history, in which the Bourbon del Monte family played such an important role, along with other powerful noble families of Italy such as the Sforza, Farnese, and Gonzaga, but in geography, diplomatic history, literature, paleography, economics, and law as well. The archive was a gift in 2011 of Montino Bourbon, sixth Principe di San Faustino, Marchese di Monte Santa Maria, and his wife Rita, of Santa Barbara, California.
Orietta studied at the University of Bologna, where she earned the Laurea degree—the equivalent of a Master’s Degree—in political science, with a concentration in history. Between 1996 and 2002, she completed two doctorate degrees: one in history from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, and one in historical sciences from the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici at the University of San Marino. She received her archival training at the Vatican School of Paleography, Diplomatics and Archival Science, and at the School of the State Archives of Bologna.
Orietta’s research interests lie in the fields of archival and institutional history of the Early Modern Age. Among her many publications are La coscienza del re: Juan del Santo Tomas, confessore di Filippo IV di Spagna (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2006), and more recently, Memoria della Chiesa, memoria dello Stato: Carlo Cartari (1614-1697)e l’archivio di Castel Sant’Angelo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010).
From New Zealand to Los Angeles: Ahmanson Fellow Explores Art and Patronage in the Orsini Family Papers
Pippa Salonius is a New Zealander with an international formation in medieval and Renaissance art history.
She completed her laurea in art history under the supervision of Professor Luciano Bellosi at the University of Siena in Italy and her PhD with Professor Julian Gardner at Warwick University in the UK. She has been awarded research scholarships and funding from institutions such as the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence – Max Planck Institute and the University of Florence. She has taught both Italian and North American university students in Italy and Canada. Her practical knowledge of museums has been acquired working in institutions such as the Museo dell’Opera (Cathedral Museum) in Siena, Italy and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Currently, she is coediting a compiled volume of essays in art history entitled The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought, which will appear in the Leeds International Medieval Research series in 2014. She specializes in the art and architectural history of the Italian cathedral and the patronage of the papal court, with reference to the transmission and circulation of ideas both within and beyond the Italian peninsula. As an Ahmanson Research Fellow she will be examining the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Orsini Family Papers and evaluating the Roman baronial family’s appropriation of ecclesiastic benefices in relation to its patronage of the arts.
