Paola Barocchi (1927–2016)

Paola Barocchi was born in Florence, Italy, and graduated from university in 1949 with a dissertation on the 16th-century artist Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, known as Rosso Fiorentino. It was published in book form the following year, bringing Barocchi to the attention of the art history world. She became a reknown expert on Renaissance and Mannerist art, and wrote numerous influential books and publications, including a monumental commentary on Giorgio Vasari’s two Lives of Michelangelo (1962), and edited a five-volume edition of Vasari's famous work published in 1964, the result of 11 years of research. From 1960 to 1968, she taught art history at the University of Lecce and then was appointed to the first chair of History of Art Criticism at the Scuola normale superiore in Pisa. There she organized the Seminario di Storia della Critica d’Arte, one of the most lively research centers in Italy, and helped make the Scuola a world-famous institution. She was an early advocate for the use of computers in art history research. In 1974, Prof. Barocchi established her own publishing house, SPES (Studio per edizioni scelte), which published a wide range of titles that included the decorative arts, historical source material, Futurist manifestos, and exhibition catalogues. Following her retirement from the Scuola in 2002, she began researching 17th and 19th century art and the history of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Some of her projects resulted in influential exhibitions in Florence, such as those on the Palazzo Vecchio during the Medici anniversary (1980) and on Donatello and his reception (1985). With Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, director of the Bargello, Prof. Barocchi produced the publication of the Archivio del collezionismo mediceo (1987–2005).