Research: The taste for furnishing noble residences: function, production, and the circulation of Roman Chimneypieces in the Eighteenth century
Romana Mastrella (Rome, 1995) obtained her BA in Historical-Artistic Studies in 2018 from Sapienza University of Rome, with a thesis in Early Modern Art History titled "Istoriated Ceramics in Seventeenth-Century Rome" (supervisor: Prof. Massimo Moretti). In 2021, she graduated with honors from the same university with an MA in Art History, presenting a thesis on the collection of pharmacy maiolica preserved in the Monumental Complex of Santo Spirito in Sassia (supervisor: Prof. Massimo Moretti; co-supervisor: Prof. Caterina Volpi).
Alongside her academic training, from 2018 to 2023 she worked at a prestigious antiquarian gallery in Rome. Combining historical research with experience in the art market, she identified a pair of previously unpublished istoriated maiolica amphorae by Pietro Papi, a seventeenth-century ceramist active in Urbania, now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the subject of her article published in The Burlington Magazine (August 2025).
In 2023, she worked as an external consultant at the Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm, contributing to the study and cataloguing of the museum’s maiolica collection. In the same year, she was awarded a fellowship from the C.M. Lerici Foundation for a project entitled "Italian Renaissance Maiolica in the Collection of the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm". Since 2023, she has been curating a research project at the Archivio Storico Capitolino in Rome, focused on the creation of a database of artists active in Rome between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in the field of decorative arts, based on systematic archival research.
In 2024, she held a fellowship at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, dedicated to the cataloguing of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s prints. She is currently a PhD candidate in Art History (39th cycle) at Sapienza University of Rome, with a research project titled "The taste for furnishing noble residences: function, production, and the circulation of Roman Chimneypieces in the Eighteenth century".