The Italian Art Society recently named Kelly Whitford, MA ’11, its annual Dissertation Grant Recipient for her project “Embodying Belief: Crossing the Ponte Sant’Angelo with Bernini’s Angels.” Whitford earned her degree at Oregon in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture and is currently a PhD candidate at Brown University.

Whitford’s research focuses on work by seventeenth century sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini at the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome. The bridge was a venue for religious processions, fireworks, and public executions.

“In the broadest of terms, this is a project about what moves people,” Whitford wrote in her dissertation abstract. “My project investigates how the expectations of those crossing the Ponte Sant’Angelo—about angels, sacred art, public executions, and performance practices—intersected with the space itself and the presence of the marble sculptures to transform their experience of the bridge,” Whitford says.

Her dissertation joins two larger trends in art and architectural history that more recently have taken up the question of the body and the study of early modern angelology. The grant will allow her to travel to Rome next January for further research.

Read more on the Italian Art Society website.

Above: Kelly Whitford is studying bridges and sculptures in Rome for her dissertation on angelology. Photos by Kelly Whitford.