10/29/02

ITALIAN ARCHITECT, ART HISTORIAN TO LECTURE AT AUBURN

AUBURN -- Architect, art historian and Italian museum curator Francesco Petrucci will present the Auburn UniversityCollege of Human Sciences' annual Mildred Brown Davis Lecture on Monday (Nov. 4).

Petrucci will present "Villas of the Roman Countryside" at 7 p.m. in the AU Hotel and Dixon Conference Center auditorium. His lecture is part of the College of Human Sciences Day for Global Understanding and the public is invited to attend.

Curator of Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, Italy, Petrucci was lecturer for a unique study abroad program for the College of Human Sciences last summer in Italy.

An expert on the Italian architect Bernini, Petrucci has specialized in the study of baroque art of Rome and the restoration of monuments. He was director of the Department of Urban Development and Public Works of Ariccia, a Rome province.

In addition to his job as curator, he is editor of the historical journal Castelli Romani and president of the music society "Accademia degli Sfaccendati."

Petrucci is also honorary inspector of the Ministry of Culture for Archaeology and has conducted several projects of architectural restoration on 17th and 18th-century monuments, many of them created by Bernini and Carlo Fontana.

He is working on research projects in the fields of sculpture, painting, architecture and decorative arts of the 17th and 18th century. And he has published extensively in specialized periodicals and in several monographs, exhibition catalogs and essays.

Petrucci is about to publish a monograph on Bernini as a painter and is preparing a "catalogue Raisonne" of the work of Ferdinand Voet. He wrote the section "The Portrait of Rome and the Papal State in the 17th and 18th Centuries" in the two-volume work The Portrait in Italy to be published by Skira, Milan.

Petrucci graduated from La Sapienza University of Rome in 1982.

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CONTACT: Carol Warfield, professor and head of the Department of Consumer Affairs, 334/844-1329; and Harriet Giles, director of external relations for the college, 334/844-3241.