Dante Scholar To Lead Harvard Center in Italy

After serving as a Harvard professor for almost 15 years, renowned Dante scholar Lino Pertile will assume the directorship of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy, next summer, the University announced Wednesday.

“I’m looking forward to sharing my life with the fellows and staff of Villa I Tatti, working with these people and taking advantage of the extraordinary sources that the Villa offers in Renaissance studies,” Pertile said in an interview with The Crimson.

Pertile announced in November that he and his wife would step down as Eliot House Masters in June, but he said that decision was unrelated to this newest appointment.

Pertile will be the center’s seventh director, succeeding History of Art and Architecture professor Joseph J. Connors, who has served as director of I Tatti since 2002.

“[Pertile] will extend warmth of welcome not only to the new fellows each year, but to the many scholars who come back from past years, and others who come to work in the library,” Connors wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson from Italy. “He will be a natural bridge between American and Italian scholarship, as hehas been for his whole career up to now.”

Pertile grew up in a small village in Northeastern Italy and taught in the United Kingdom before coming to Harvard. In the 41 years since he last lived in Italy, he has been known as a Dante scholar, professor, House Master, and even “the Godfather.”

“To some extent, the role does color and shape the life and the style of the person,” Pertile said. “To that extent, I’m changing, but I’m always changing the role itself. The role is somewhat fixed, but it requires the color and the personality of the person who happens to be invested in that role [to change it].”

The I Tatti center was bequeathed to Harvard in 1959 by art critic and connoisseur Bernard Berenson ’1887, according to Connors. Villa I Tatti offers fellowships to scholars in the “early phase of their careers” for up to about a decade after they earn their doctoral degrees to allow them to pursue independent research.

I Tatti is an academic community of roughly 30 scholars that includes full-year fellows, three-month fellows, visiting professors, and “readers in the Renaissance,” according to Graziella Macchetta, development associate for the center’s Cambridge office.

Pertile said that what he is looking forward to most in the move to Florence is being able to work with the postdoctoral fellows at the Center.

“I’ll be mixing with young people who are that the peak of their intellectual activity, and so I will [gain] a lot of intellectual energy from them, as well as giving them anything I can give them,” Pertile said. “It’s a marvelous prospect.”

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.