Distinguished art historian and former director of the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Uffizi Galleries, Dr Marzia Faietti, is in Melbourne to present the 2025 NGV Italia Keynote lecture.
Dr Faietti will present a fascinating exploration of the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance polymath, whose superb draughtsmanship united his interests in art and science. Dr Faietti will reveal the experimental nature of Leonardo’s early drawings and how he developed a revolutionary new graphic language to depict the natural world and describe history.
This program will be held in person and livestreamed. When booking, you can choose to purchase an in-person ticket or a virtual ticket to access the livestream.
Dr Marzia Faietti is an art historian and curator who currently teaches at the University of Bologna and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. She was formerly Director of the Prints and Drawings Departments of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence (retired 2019) and the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. She is associated with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and collaborates with the Uffizi Galleries on exhibitions and publications and also co-ordinates the Euploos project for the digital cataloguing of drawings.
She is a member of the editorial board of the journals Print Quarterly, Nouvelles de l’Estampe, and Rivista d’Arte and has held committee positions on the International Advisory Committee of Keepers of Public Collections of Graphic Art (2000-2008) and CIHA (Comité International d’Histoire d’Art) from 2013 and is currently President of CIHA until June 2026.
Dr Faietti has published extensively and organised numerous international conferences and exhibitions. She has curated major Italian drawing exhibitions at museums including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Louvre, and the British Museum, in addition to those at the Uffizi and the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. Her research interests focus on Ferrarese painting of the post-Tridente period; Bolognese and Emilian painting; Italian prints and drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century drawings and later; the graphic language of Andrea Mantegna; Leonardo’s drawings; Raphael’s drawings and paintings; the antique culture of Parmigianino; and sixteenth-century Italian erotic engraving. Marzia Faietti has also conceived the LINEA project in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence-Max-Planck-Institute.
This program is part of NGV Italia, supported by the Italian Australian Foundation.
About NGV Italia
Discover stories of Italian art, design, culture and life in the NGV Collection through dedicated events and resources, and explore two millennia of Italian painting, sculpture, prints and drawings, decorative arts and textiles.