An international panel of academics from Italian, French, and English universities awarded Martina Bollini, born in San Marino in 1986, a Doctorate in Historical Sciences with top honors last Thursday. Her thesis, titled "Clement VII's Last Commission: The Sistine Chapel's 'Last Judgment'," analyzes the period leading up to the completion of the work commissioned by the Pope to Michelangelo Buonarroti in the sixteenth century. Bollini reconstructed the circumstances that led to the creation of the Sistine Chapel fresco and considered, among other things, the consequences of the political upheavals underway in Florence that strained the relationship between the artist and the Pope, in which the painter Sebastiano del Piombo acted as intermediary.
This interdisciplinary study reflects the expertise of the members of the commission, which included Adriano Prosperi, head of Bollini's research project and a professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Giovanni Careri of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Ambra Moroncini of the University of Sussex, England, Laura Barletta of the School of Historical Sciences of the University of San Marino, and its scientific director, Paulo Butti de Lima, who, in addition to his work on Mount Titan, also teaches at the University of Bari.
"The journey undertaken over these three years," explains Bollini, the only San Marino native in the eleventh cycle of the Doctorate in Historical Sciences, "has greatly enriched my education, both professionally and personally. The doctoral lectures allow for direct contact with leading internationally renowned scholars. Equally stimulating has been the dialogue with my fellow students, who hail from across Europe and are at different stages of their academic careers. The School of Historical Sciences is a center of excellence of which San Marino can only be proud."