Davide Ferri is an art historian based in Berlin, Germany. He studied art history, image theory and classical archaeology at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and at the University of Basel and graduated in 2015 under the supervision of Professor Horst Bredekamp and Professor Gerhard Wolf. He has worked in many cultural and research institutions in Germany and abroad, like the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Cluster of Excellence “Image Knowledge Gestaltung” and the “Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance”. Since 2017 he has been working as Student Research Assistant of the Director at the Humboldt Forum Foundation in Berlin, while completing an MA in Art and Visual History.

Davide’s research fields include the relationship between art and nature in early modern Italian and Mediterranean visual cultures, the history and theory of urban imagery, urban iconography and symbolism, and transdisciplinary methodologies across the fields of visual history, urban history and city planning. He is particularly interested in how iconic visual representations of cities actively shape the identity and the power structures of civic communities in the early modern period. His current MA research project “Phenomenology of the Urban Image. Depicting the City in Genoa, 1637–1660” focuses on form, iconology and visuality of early modern images of the city in painting and sculpture, taking the Genoese baroque visual culture as a case study.