On January 20, the six graduate students who recently arrived at our campus for their year-long residency in Florence, all members of the 2026 cohort of master’s degree candidates in Italian Renaissance Art, attended a special lecture at the Villa Rossa by Alison Fleming, professor of art history at Winston-Salem State University.
In her lecture, “Saints and the Power of Images in Early Modern Catholic Florence,” professor Fleming explored the fascinating and often competing roles that images, economic history, and social levers played in the complex path to canonization for three Florentine saints in the 17th century: Sant’Andrea Corsini, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, and San Filippo Benizi.
The lecture, which was also attended by a number of Villa Rossa faculty members, included a lively discussion between the graduate students and professor Fleming, who is herself an alumna of our MA program, followed by a collegial pizza dinner in piazza Savonarola.