Dr. Mary Vaccaro

Art History, Professor & Area Coordinator
Ph.D., Columbia University
FA-299
817-272-2800
vaccaro@uta.edu

Mary Vaccaro wrote a book on the paintings of Parmigianino (2002) after co-authoring a volume on the same artist's drawings (2000). She has been invited to lecture at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Art Collection, and the Fondazione Il Correggio (Italy), and has received grants such as a post-doctoral fellowship at Villa I Tatti-The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies, awarded annually to fifteen scholars of Renaissance studies worldwide. Dr. Vaccaro specializes in Renaissance art, especially sixteenth-century northern Italian painting and drawing. Her books were published by Umberto Allemandi & C. (Turin and London) in four versions: two special editions, respectively in English and Italian, sponsored by a major Italian corporation, followed by two commercial editions, respectively in English and Italian. She has written numerous essays and book reviews on Parmigianino and sixteenth-century Parmese art in journals and anthologies, including Word & Image, Master Drawings, Aurea Parma, and the Burlington Magazine. As an authority on Parmigianino, she has been guest lecturer in conjunction with key exhibits, for example, "Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draftsmen of the Renaissance" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (March, 2001) and "The Art of Parmigianino" at the Frick Art Collection (April, 2004), as well as the international conference marking the 500th year anniversary of the artist's birth, held in Parma, Italy (June, 2002). Dr. Vaccaro is the recipient of prestigious fellowships, including the American Academy in Rome Prize and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence, Italy. She received a research enhancement grant from UTA in 1996, a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend in 1998 and a Fulbright Senior Scholar travel grant in 1998-99. She chaired a session on "Plagiarism: Ethics in Art and Art History" at the 1999 College Art Association Meeting (Los Angeles), and edited a related special issue of the journal Visual Resources (2000). One of her current research projects--in collaboration with the Fondazione Correggio, an institute in Correggio, Italy devoted to the eponymous artist--involves the impact of the seventeenth-century drawings collector Padre Sebastiano Resta on Correggio's critical fortune. She recently completed a study on artists as godparents, spiritual kinship, and social alliance in early modern Europe. Dr. Vaccaro has begun research for a book on the pratice, use, and exchange of drawings among artists in the so-called School of Parma, including lesser-known but remarkably talented draftsmen as Michelangelo Anselmi and Giorgio Gandini del Grano.