Federica Caneparo is an historian of literature and art. She earned her Ph.D. at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, where she focused on Italian literature and Early Modern art history. She also received a “diploma di specializzazione” (Italian post-graduate program) in Medieval and Early Modern art history from the University of Pisa. Her monograph "Di molte figure adornato. L’Orlando furioso nei cicli pittorici tra Cinque e Seicento" (Officina Libraria, Milano 2015 Di molte figure adornato. L'Orlando furioso nei cicli pittorici tra Cinque e Seicento - Federica Caneparo (officinalibraria.net)) investigates frescoes inspired to Ludovico Ariosto’s poem Orlando furioso, by offering a close reading of every cycle, and analyzing their role in the process of its canonization as a new classic.
Federica’s research interests include the history of the book, the culture of Italian Renaissance, art and politics, and the relation between visual arts and literature, especially Ariosto's Orlando furioso, Dante’s Commedia, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Erasmus' Adagia. Before moving to Chicago, Federica taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and has carried out her research at Princeton University. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the École Normale Supérieure, the Warburg Institute, and the Houghton Library, and she has collaborated in organizing various exhibitions in Italy. Currently, she is investigating the role of the visual arts in the construction of the Italian literary canon.