Emma C. de Jong

Emma is the current AFC Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, having commenced on September 1, 2023. She is finishing her PhD on the use of personification in Dutch and Flemish allegorical prints and plays at Emory University and the University of Groningen. She received her M.A. in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture at the Warburg Institute, London, and her B.A. from the University of York, UK. Emma was an Associated Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) and prior to that served as the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for Art Historical Research at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. She is a citizen of both the United States and The Netherlands.

The primary focus of her fellowship will be the print collection amassed by Carlo Firmian (1716-1782), an Austrian nobleman who served as the Habsburg ambassador to Naples for several years and then took up the same position in Milan. Firmian’s print collection survives largely intact, consisting of 123 albums and 104 richly illustrated books. Emma will research several aspects of Firmian’s collecting interests and aid in the digitization of the collection.

In addition, Emma is contributing to the catalog of a monumental traveling exhibition to the United States in early 2024. Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries focuses on Capodimont’s Battle of Pavia tapestries series designed by Flemish painter and draftsman, Bernard van Orley (ca 1487-1541). 

The Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow can be contacted at fellow@americanfriendsofcapodimonte.info.

The ACF fellowships are largely supported by the donations of Nancy and Michael Vespoli

Previous AFC fellows

Dr Caroline Paganussi

Caroline was the AFC Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow from 2021 to 2023. The American Friends of Capodimonte Fellowship 2022-2023 was also supported by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation Interpretive Fellowship program and by Michael and Nancy Vespoli. Caroline assumed her two year appointment on September 1, 2021. Hailing from northern Virginia, she trained at the University of Maryland, College Park (PhD, 2021), University College London (MA, 2012) and Cornell University (BA, 2011).  A scholar of early modern Italian and Spanish art, Caroline's forthcoming essays on the sculptor Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714−1774) and the painter Prospero Fontana (1512−1597) reflect her specialization in Bolognese sculpture and painting.

Prior to becoming the AFC Fellow, Caroline worked at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. She has also interned at the Mall Galleries (London), the Uffizi Gallery (Florence), the Museo Civico Medievale (Bologna), the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, NY), and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC).

Caroline looks forward to contributing to Capodimonte's curatorial and programmatic initiatives, including a reimagination of the Farnese wunderkammer, the museum's core collection of decorative arts and rare objects and the sixteenth-century collection.  She will also build on the momentum generated by the first fellow, Dr. James Anno, by producing English- and Italian-language didactics, supporting the institution's robust exhibitions schedule, and continuing the museum's collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.

Dr Claire Van Cleave

Claire served as the AFC’s first Senior Fellow and started her one year appointment at the Museum in the Department of Prints and Drawings in September 2020. The American Friends of Capodimonte Senior Fellowship year was also supported from Michael and Nancy Vespoli. An expert on the Italian Renaissance, Claire is a native of Chicago who trained at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (MA, 1988) and the University of Oxford (D.Phil, 1995) where her doctoral dissertation was on Luca Signorelli as a Draughtsman. She is a specialist in works on paper from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and has written essays and books on Italian drawings including prestigious publications for the British Museum and the Princeton University Art Museum and curated the drawings galleries for the exhibition devoted to Luca Signorelli held at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia in 2012.

Claire’s project for the AFC Senior Fellowship is to catalogue the drawings in the Capodimonte collection with a Farnese provenance that were inherited by Charles of Bourbon from his mother, Elisabetta Farnese. This group of approximately fifty drawings has never been comprehensively digitally photographed and catalogued for an online database. It is hoped that Claire’s work will also create a template for future digital cataloguing of the Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampe of the Capodimonte Museum.

Dr James P. Anno

James was the inaugural AFC Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow and worked at the Museum from September 2017 through August 2019. Director Bellenger appointed James to spearhead multiple museum-wide programs including Capodimonte’s collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, the Apple Foundation Program and the didactics initiative within the museum. 

With his team, James created Capodimonte’s Google Arts & Culture platform that includes 18 360˚ virtual “Street View” tours of the Museum and Royal Park, 16 online exhibitions, over 300 object essays, and more than 250 mega-high definition Art Camera photographs. He increased the museum’s digital catalogue by over 1,000 images making Capodimonte one of the most robust digital platforms in Italy on the Google Arts & Culture site. 

Working with the Museum’s chief IT officer, James concluded contractual negotiations with Apple and brought their Foundation Program to train young developers in computer coding into Capodimonte’s classrooms. This program represents a central facet of Director Bellenger’s ambition to energize the neighborhoods of Naples surrounding the museum.

James initiated and led Capodimonte’s creation of more than 400 wall labels and texts for the permanent collections, including the Farnese Collection, the Neapolitan Baroque paintings as well as the permanent exhibition in the Ottocento Privato (19th century royal apartments). All didactics are presented in Italian and English, marking a critical step towards Capodimonte’s outreach and accessibility to an international audience. 

James served as co-curator of the Farnese collection and made significant contributions to the exhibition Caravaggio Napoli (2019), curating an interactive space within the exhibition in partnership with Google. James contributed scholarly essays on Artemisia Gentileschi, Simon Vouet and Francesco Guarino to the Pushkin Museum, Moscow’s exhibition Artemisia Gentileschi & Her Contemporaries (2019-2020) and he co-authored with Christopher Bakke the exhibition catalogue Flesh and Blood (2019). To catch up on James’s recent research that stems from his time in Naples, click here to see his March 2021 seminar for the O’Donnell Institute at La Capraia.

James received his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. He currently serves as Associate Curator of European Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.