Dr Angelo Lo Conte

About

Angelo Lo Conte specializes in visual culture and social history of art with a focus on the period 1450–1700. Current areas of interest include the economic lives of early modern artists, intersections between art and disability, the life stories and professional careers of deaf painters. He is the author of studies on various aspects of Renaissance art, including ‘A visual testament by Luca Riva: a deaf and mute pupil of the Procaccini’, winner of the 2023 Renaissance Studies Article Prize; The Procaccini and the Business of Painting in Early Modern Milan (Routledge, 2021); and articles in Source, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, and the Journal of the History of Collections. His research has been supported by individual project grants, fellowships and residencies from institutions that include the Hong Kong Research Grants Council; the Renaissance Society of America; the Australian Government; the Trustees of the Burlington Magazine Foundation; the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies; the Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He is principal investigator of two research projects funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council: ‘Seeing the Invisible: Visual Representations of Disability in Early Modern Europe’ (2023–2025) and ‘The colours of silence: untold stories of deaf painters in early modern Europe’ (2020–2022).

 

Research Projects

• 'Seeing the Invisible: Visual Representations of Disability in Early Modern Europe (1400-1700)'. General Research Fund (GRF) (2022-2025). University Grants Committee Hong Kong. 
• 'The Colours of Silence: Untold Stories of Deaf Painters in Early Modern Europe'. Early Career Scheme (ECS) (2020-2022). University Grants Committee Hong Kong.

Achievements

• Prize, Renaissance Studies Article Prize (2023) 
  Awarded for: ‘A visual testament by Luca Riva: a deaf and mute pupil of the Procaccini’.
  https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12730

• Award, AVA Performance Award in Early Career Teaching, HKBU (2022)

• Fellowship, RSA-Samuel H. Kress Fellowship in Renaissance Art History (2022)

• Award, AVA Performance Award as Young Researcher, HKBU (2021)
• Fellowship, David Rosand Library and Study Centre, Venice (2018)
• Fellowship, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2017)
• Prize, Francis Haskell Memorial Fund (2014)

Research Outputs

• Lo Conte, Angelo. 'Family strategy at the crossroads: the Procaccini in Milan'. In Le métier de peintre en Europe au XVIe siècle, Michel Hochmann, Guy-Michel Leproux and Audrey Nassieu Maupas (eds.), (Paris: Institut d'histoire de Paris, 2023), 157-172.
• Lo Conte, Angelo. 'Talking colours: Ercole Sarti and the verses that gave voice to his paintings'. Source: Notes in the History of Art, 41, 4, (2022), 255-266. https://doi.org/10.1086/722322
• Lo Conte, Angelo. 'A Visual Testament by Luca Riva, a Deaf and Mute pupil of the Procaccini'. Renaissance Studies, Vol. 36, 2, (2022), 222-251. https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12730
• Lo Conte, Angelo. The Procaccini and the business of painting in early modern Milan. New York and London, Routledge: 2021.
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Antipodean prints: Joseph Burke and the development of the University of Melbourne’s print collection’. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 69 (2020), 179-190. https://doi.org/10.1080/24750158.2020.1755924
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Carlo Antonio and the bottega Procaccini’. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 83 (2020), 7-32. https://doi.org/10.1515/ZKG-2020-1001
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Piranesi, Guercino and Goold’s fascination for the Baroque’. In The Invention of Melbourne, Jaynie Anderson, Max Vodola and Shane Carmody (eds.), Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2019, 166-179.
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘How one Global Collection of Old Master Prints was created: the nine Sadeler albums in the Baillieu Library of the University of Melbourne’. Journal of the History of Collections, 30, (2018), 339-350. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhx018
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Sadeler and Procaccini: the secular decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardo’. Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 44 (2018), 27-46. https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04401002
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘The Garden of Love (Studio of Antonio Vivarini)’, in Love: Art of Emotion 1400-1800, Angela Hesson and Charles Zika (eds.), Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2017, 72-73.
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Federico Borromeo e l’invenzione della ghirlanda di fiori: evoluzione italiana di un genere pittorico’, Italian Studies, 71 (2016), 67-81. https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2015.1132607
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Giovanni Battista Piranesi: rediscovering the antiquity’. In The Piranesi Effect, Gerard Vaughan and Kerrianne Stone (eds.), Sydney: New South, 2015, 79-93.
• Lo Conte, Angelo. ‘Symbolism of blood in two masterpieces of the early Italian Seicento’ Journal of Baroque Studies, 3 (2015), 109-129.
• Lo Conte, Angelo. Guida all’arte medievale in Finlandia. Helsinki: Edizioni della Rondine, 2014. ISBN: 978-952-67725-1-6.

Feature

Investigating Art practice and Deaf culture

A few years ago, Dr Angelo Lo Conte was visiting the state archives in Milan, Italy, when he came across an interesting document from the 17th Century. The rare manuscript included the last wishes of the deaf Milanese painter Luca Riva, but instead of taking the form of a traditionally written testament, it featured a number of drawings that illustrated how his inheritance should be distributed.

The unusual visual testament sparked Dr Lo Conte's interest in researching the interconnections between art and disability in Europe between the 16th and 17th Centuries. "I thought, perhaps Luca Riva was not the only deaf artist working in this period. As a consequence, I began looking at the careers of deaf painters", says the Assistant Professor of the Academy of Visual Arts on his latest research project, "The colours of silence: untold histories of deaf painters in early modern Europe".

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