EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “The Pope’s Daughter: Felice della Rovere and the Art of Power at the Castle of Bracciano” 
Presented by Dr. Paolo Alei
with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Felice della Rovere’s life may be understood as a remarkable act of self-fashioning, in which identity was not passively inherited but consciously forged at the unstable intersection of lineage, gender, dynastic ambition, and representation. As the daughter of Giuliano della Rovere, the future Pope Julius II, she was born into one of the most formidable familial constellations of Renaissance Italy; yet what makes her so compelling is not merely the distinction of her origins, but the intelligence with which she transformed that inheritance into a visible and enduring form of authority. Through marriage, motherhood, widowhood, and the careful management of property, memory, and prestige, Felice emerges as a woman of unusual political acuity, capable not only of inhabiting the roles assigned to her, but of subtly reshaping them from within. She did not simply occupy a place within the structures of power that surrounded her; she fashioned a presence that was at once aristocratic, dynastic, and profoundly self-aware. It is in Bracciano, however, that this process becomes most palpable and most moving. The castle was not merely the place where she lived, first as the wife of Gian Giordano Orsini and later as a widow, but the privileged space in which her identity assumed architectural and artistic form. Here patronage became a mode of self-inscription: through spaces, images, dynastic emblems, and devotional expression, Felice shaped the Castello Orsini-Odescalchi into a living statement of rank, piety, continuity, and memory. Bracciano thus preserves more than the trace of her residence.

The webinar will include a 45-minute lecture followed by 15-minutes of Q&A.

Please note:

• Your participation is confirmed once you have purchased your ticket. You will receive the Zoom Link to join the presentation circa 30 minutes before the start time.
• VIDEO RECORDING of the webinar will be available for unlimited streaming at your convenience for 7 days after the event.

Paolo Alei is an art historian from Rome. He is Professor of art history at the University of California (the UCEAP academic program in Italy) and Curator of the Museum of the Castle of Bracciano near Rome. He has a Master from Columbia University where he specialized on Venetian Renaissance Painting and a PhD from Oxford University where he completed a dissertation on the influence of the Natural History by Pliny the Elder on Italian Renaissance art. He has published several essays on Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, and a book on the history of the Venice Carnival. Recently, he coedited a monumental book about the patronage of the Orsini family in Central Italy. He is co-organizer of EMR (Early Modern Rome), one of the greatest conferences about Renaissance and Baroque culture.