Ruggero Longo, Ph.D.

Scientific Collaborator

Main Focus

  • Art and artistic cultures in the medieval Mediterranean
  • Mosaics and material culture in Norman South Italy
  • Scientific analyses and archaeometry on monuments and artifacts
  • Geometric ornament from Islam to Europe

Research Project

Mapping Sacred Spaces - The Digital Archive Project
The Digital Archive Project represents a fundamental step of the project Mapping Sacred Spaces. Forms, Functions, and Aesthetics in Medieval Southern Italy, directed by Tanja Michalsky, Elisabetta Scirocco, Ruggero Longo (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History) and Manuela Gianandrea (Università di Roma "La Sapienza"). This project aims to fully analyze the sacred space in the Middle Ages in Southern Italy between the tenth and fourteenth centuries.

Publications (Selection)

  • "Dallo spazio alla parola: Ripensare la Cappella Palatina, rileggere Filagato da Cerami", in From Words to Space: Textual Sources for Reconstructing and Understanding Medieval Sacred Spaces, ed. Elisabetta Scirocco and Sible de Blaauw, Rome 2023 (Quaderni della Bibliotheca Hertziana 11), pp. 131–167.
  • "Gleaming White: A Newly Discovered Medieval Artificial Lithotype and its Implications for Art Historical Research and Mosaic Conservation", in Repenser l'histoire de l'art médiéval en 2023: Recueil d'études offertes à Xavier Barral i Altet, ed. Miljenko Jurković, Elisabetta Scirocco and Arnaud Timbert, Zagreb 2023, pp. 373–380.
  • (together with Elisabetta Sciroppo) "Arredi liturgici, maestranze e tecniche nel regno Normanno tra Amalfi e la Sicilia", in Amalfi e la Sicilia nel Medioevo: Uomini, commerci, culture (conference proceedings, Amalfi 2019), ed. Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana, Amalfi 2022, pp. 159–258.
  • (together with Francesco Capitummino) '"Frammenti ruggeriani: il perduto spazio sacro della cattedrale di Cafalù", in Sotto lo sguardo di Ruggero: Un sovrano, un regno, una città del Mediterraneo medievale (conference proceedings, Cefalù 2020), ed. Francesco Paolo Tocco, Cefalù 2022, pp. 323–378.
  • "Per una filologia dei materiali delle tecniche dell'arredo liturgico tra Roma e il Sud Italia (X–XIII sec.): I veltri di Montecassino e altri frammenti in opus sectile e tessellatum", Hortus Artium Medievalium, 27 (2021), pp. 579–591. Doi:10.1484/J.HAM.5.131685 

Publications (OPAC research)

Curriculum Vitae

Ruggero Longo (Palermo 1976) lives in Rome and is currently co-responsible of the Mapping Sacred Spaces Project at Biblioteca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History.

His interest focuses on Norman art and architecture in Sicily, mosaics and marble decorations, aniconic art and ornament in the medieval Mediterranean. His current research deals with the relationships between texts and images within the creation and spreading of ornamental patterns in the Medieval Mediterranean visual language and aesthetics, exploring the episteme of geometrical forms in the Islamic culture up to their reception and use in the Latin West.

He is currently adjunct professor in Medieval Art History at Università degli Studi Roma 3, with a course titled Visual Arts and Ornament in the Medieval Mediterranean.

MA in Science of Cultural Heritage, Ph.D. in Art History at Università della Tuscia, Viterbo, specialized in archaeometry and diagnostic systems for cultural heritage, in 2012 he was awarded the Aga-Khan post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University for research on Marble decorations of Mamluk Cairo. Besides materials and matters, his interest also focuses on the Workshop dynamics in the Middle-Ages, a topic which he has dealt with during his research at the Bard Graduate Center in New York in 2015.

Between 2009 and 2015 he has worked on the UNESCO nomination of Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale (included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2015). As a consultant for UNESCO nominations, he is now the Scientific Coordinator for the nomination of the site Early Medieval Benedictine settlements in Italy.

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