Susanna Caviglia, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies

Susanna Caviglia joins the department as an assistant professor of art history and visual studies. She took her degrees at the Sapienza University in Rome and the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris. She teaches courses on early modern art and culture. Her research interests focus on French and Italian Art in the long eighteenth century, early modern theories of drawing and the artistic creative process, a critical investigation of the body in art, and cross-cultural and artistic relationships in early modern Europe. Her books include Charles-Joseph Natoire, 1700-1777 (2012), and three edited volumes: L’événement “tragique” aux époques moderne et contemporaine: définition, représentations (with Michel Cassan, 2009); Le prince et les arts en France et en Italie, XIVe-XVIIIe siècles (2011); and Body Narratives: Motion and Emotion in the French Enlightenment (2017).



Before coming to Duke, Caviglia taught at the University of Limoges (France) and the University of Chicago. In France, she acquired curatorial expertise working at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musée Condé in Chantilly, and the Musée du Louvre; she co-curated the exhibition Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700-1777), le dessin à l’origine de la création artistique at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes (2012). Her current projects include a study of rococo history painting, which examines how this genre participated in constructing the image of Louis XV’s peaceful and stable regime founded on a culture of leisure. With Niall Atkinson, she is investigating the aesthetics of wandering that constituted the experience of Rome for early modern French travelers. Caviglia is the editor-in-chief of the series The Body in Art (Brepols, 2017-).