Remembering Maria Calì: A Pillar of Art History and Academic Rigor

Maria Calì, even in the last months, remembered with great nostalgia the fruitful years spent at Suor Orsola, a context in which she found significant stimuli for her scientific production and worked profitably in forging a new generation of art historians who particularly appreciated her scientific and didactic rigor and her uncommon sense of justice and civil responsibility. Thus, on the social channels of the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, the Rector Lucio d'Alessandro remembers the art historian Maria Calì, born in 1930, with Sicilian origins and born in L'Aquila, Abruzzo, who passed away in Rome a few days ago. Professor of Modern Art History at the University of Salerno from 1988 to 2000 and lecturer in the same discipline in the degree course in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University from 1991 to 2011, Maria Calì distinguished herself authoritatively in the study of 16th-century painting in Italy, as evidenced by books and various contributions published in Italian and foreign journals focused in particular on the relationships between artists and the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. It is worth mentioning the splendid volume of 1980 'From Michelangelo to the Escorial. Moments of religious debate in the art of the sixteenth century', published among the Einaudi Essays, or the articles dedicated to some of the protagonists of that century, from Lorenzo Lotto to Pordenone, from Pellegrino Tibaldi to Daniele da Volterra, from Luca Cambiaso to El Greco. Exactly ten years ago, the Suor Orsola Benincasa University had organized a conference in her honor on the occasion of the presentation of the volume edited by Stefano De Mieri 'Confronto. Studies and researches of European art history. Art and history, studies for Maria Calì' (Paparo Editore).