Franco Mormando
Professor of Italian

romance languages and literatures

Academic Degrees

Ph.D., M.A., Harvard University; B.A., Columbia University

S.T.L., M. Div., Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley; Biennio di Filosofia, Gregorian University, Rome

Research Areas

History of Preaching and Popular Religious Literature, 15th-17th Centuries; Social and Religious Context of Renaissance and Baroque Art; the bubonic plague in European society; Bernardino of Siena; Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Honors and Awards

Cavaliere (Knight) in the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana, awarded by the President of the Republic of Italy, October 2005, in recognition of achievement in the promotion of Italian language and culture.

The Howard R. Marraro Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in Italian History, conferred January 2001, by the American Catholic Historical Association for my book,The Preacher's Demons.

Books

Bernini: His Life and His Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Domenico Bernini's "Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini:" An English Translation and Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011.

Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque, co-editor. Truman State University Press, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 2007.

Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Missions in the Far East: An Anniversary Volume of Early Printed Sources in the Jesuitana Collection of the John J. Burns Library, Boston College, co-editor. Chestnut Hill: The Jesuit Institute, 2006.

Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800, co-editor. Exhibition catalogue, Worcester Art Museum, 2005.

The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image. Exhibition catalogue, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 1999.

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

"Nudus Nudum Christum Sequi: The Franciscans and Differing Interpretations of Male Nakedness in Fifteenth-Century Italy," Fifteenth Century Studies 33 (2008): 171-197.

Recent Papers and Presentations

"Bernini: His Life and His Rome." The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort, Worth, Texas, March 2, 2013.

"Bernini's Models in Clay: What the Biographical Sources Reveal," paper given in the symposium, "Bernini Beyond Clay," Harvard University, the Mahindra Humanities Center, Nov. 16, 2012.

"Bernini and the Baroque Transformation of the Catholic Imagination," public lecture, Villanova University, Oct. 2, 2012, sponsored by the Villanova Office of the Vice President for Mission and Ministry.

"Bernini and His Rome," public lecture at the Italian Institute for Culture, San Francisco, Feb. 17, 2012.

"A Pope's Banquet and a Jesuit's Oration for a Newly Converted Queen: Alexander VII, Gian Paolo Oliva, and Christina of Sweden, Dec. 26, 1655," Sixteenth Century Conference, Geneva, May 28, 2009.

"Nothing as It Seems: Annotations (Reconstructive and Deconstructive) upon Domenico Bernini's Vita del Cav. Gio. Lorenzo Bernini." Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 4, 2008.

"Raphael's Disputa at the Vatican: Neither Disputation nor Eucharist," UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Mellon Fdtn Sawyer Seminar Series, "Disputation: Arguing In and Out of the University," April 22, 2008.