UTA art historian is sole U.S. university voice at Louvre
When the Musée du Louvre hosted Carracci: Thoughts and Unthoughts of the Ceiling, an international program convening scholars and museum curators from leading research institutions, Mary Vaccaro was invited to participate as the only representative from a U.S. research university. A distinguished professor of art history at The University of Texas at Arlington, Dr. Vaccaro took part in the program in conjunction with the exhibition Carracci Drawings: The Making of the Farnese Gallery. The invitation reflects international recognition of her scholarship and underscores the global reach of research conducted at UT Arlington.
You were the only scholar from a U.S. research university invited to speak at this program at the Louvre. What did that invitation mean to you personally and professionally?
The invitation was deeply meaningful to me. Professionally, it recognized many years of sustained research on drawings by Agostino and his younger brother Annibale Carracci, who—together with their older cousin Ludovico—founded a major art academy in their native Bologna in the second half of the 16th century. My work has focused in particular on their often collaborative creative practices and the resulting challenges of attribution, issues that were central to both the exhibition and the accompanying scholarly program. Being included in that conversation alongside eminent curators and scholars from major European institutions affirmed that my research is contributing in a substantive way to international debates in the field.
On a personal level, it was especially gratifying to represent a U.S. public research university in a setting that is often dominated by European academies and museums. I was proud to bring UT Arlington into that global scholarly space and to demonstrate that rigorous, internationally engaged research is very much happening here. The invitation underscored not only the reach of my own scholarship, but also the broader visibility and impact of research conducted at UT Arlington.
Ceiling decoration represents one of the most ambitious forms of painting in art history—the Sistine Ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1511 in Rome, being perhaps the most famous example. Carracci: Thoughts and Unthoughts of the Ceiling focused on the creative process behind the magnificent fresco cycle that Annibale and Agostino Carracci painted in the Gallery of the Farnese Palace in Rome at the end of the 16th century. Inspired by Michelangelo’s illustrious example in the nearby Sistine Chapel, Annibale and Agostino devised an innovative solution that likewise integrated painting with fictive sculpture and architecture.
Upon its completion, the Farnese Gallery was widely celebrated and went on to serve as a key model for artists across Europe for generations. The exhibition, The Carracci Drawings: The Making of the Farnese Gallery, showcased preparatory drawings that reveal how the Carracci conceived and developed this complex project. Tellingly, it opened with large-scale drawings (cartoons) made by French artists after the Carracci’s frescoes in order to reproduce them in a room for King Louis XIV in France.
Your remarks were titled “Toward a study of watermarks in the Carracci drawings at Windsor Castle and beyond.” For a general audience, how would you describe the questions you were exploring in that talk?
In my talk, I asked a straightforward but powerful question: What can the paper itself tell us about how and when the Carracci made their drawings? Because Ludovico Carracci and his younger cousins Agostino and Annibale were known for working closely together, distinguishing between their individual hands has long been one of the most challenging problems in the study of Old Master drawings. Rather than focusing only on style, my remarks explored how technical evidence—especially watermarks embedded in the paper—can offer new insights. Many catalogues, including a landmark 1952 study of the Carracci drawings at Windsor Castle, did not consider watermarks at all. By studying these marks, we can sometimes better understand when drawings were made and how materials circulated within the workshop, helping to clarify chronology even when precise attribution remains elusive.
How does collaboration among artists complicate the way historians study and interpret drawings from this period?
Collaboration complicates art-historical interpretation because many of the tools we traditionally rely on—stylistic quirks of the individual “handwriting”—are premised on the idea of a single, autonomous artist. In the case of the Carracci, drawings were often made in a shared workshop environment, with ideas, motifs and even sheets of paper circulating freely among family members. This means that a single drawing can reflect multiple moments of intervention or collective authorship rather than the work of one artist alone. As a result, drawings from this period resist neat attribution.
Beyond your formal remarks, you also conducted research in the Louvre’s drawings department later that week. What were you working on there, and how did that experience complement your talk?
I continued research in the Louvre's Department of Drawings for a book about the paintings of Agostino Carracci and their related drawings (under contract) that I'm coauthoring with Dr. Samuel Vitali of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, who also spoke at the conference. This experience complemented my talk by extending the same questions about materials, process and collaboration to a different group of drawings, allowing us to test ideas about chronology and artistic practice directly against original works in the Louvre’s collection.
Stepping back from the technical details, what do you find most exciting about this kind of research—and why should people outside the field of art history care about discoveries like these?
What I find most exciting about this kind of research is its detective-like nature. Each drawing contains clues—about materials, working methods, collaboration and chronology—and part of the pleasure for me is piecing those fragments together to help understand how artists actually worked. Slow, careful examination of original artworks often yields deeply satisfying results, when small discoveries suddenly unlock much larger questions. People outside my field should care because this kind of work encourages habits that matter well beyond art history: looking closely, staying curious and remaining open to multiple explanations rather than settling for a single, fixed story. It reminds us that history is not a closed narrative but one continually shaped by new evidence and fresh perspectives. In that sense, the research models a way of thinking—careful, flexible and attentive—that is valuable in everyday life as much as in the study of art. It’s exactly what I encourage my students to do every semester: put away the electronic devices, slow down, focus and remain open to the wonder of learning.
About The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
The University of Texas at Arlington is a growing public research university in the heart of Dallas-Fort Worth. With a student body of over 42,700, UTA is the second-largest institution in the University of Texas System, offering more than 180 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Recognized as a Carnegie R-1 university, UTA stands among the nation’s top 5% of institutions for research activity. UTA and its 280,000 alumni generate an annual economic impact of $28.8 billion for the state. The University has received the Innovation and Economic Prosperity designation from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and has earned recognition for its focus on student access and success, considered key drivers to economic growth and social progress for North Texas and beyond.