Olivier Bonfait

Clark Fellow

09/05/2022–12/31/2022

Olivier Bonfait is professor at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France, and the École du Louvre in Paris, and is also a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He earned his Ph.D. from the Sorbonne with a dissertation on art and society of Baroque Bologna. Bonfait has published extensively, in particular on Poussin and “Caravaggesque” painting. He also curated several exhibitions, spanning seventeenth- to nineteenth-century European art, when he was director of the art history department at the Villa Médicis—Académie de France in Rome. At the Clark, he will be researching the history of large-format painting and considering its important role in the formation of modern nation states.