Saturday, October 24th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence NB: Live only event – no recording will be made! One of the most celebrated exhibitions of this year in Italy, is “Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The exhibition celebrates Peggy Guggenheim’s years in the UK and her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, which operated in London before WWII, between 1938 and 1939. The

Saturday, October 10th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence When people think of Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), his paintings and architecture in Florence and Rome and, above all, his groundbreaking artist biographies in the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550, 1568) typically come to mind. This talk explores a lesser-known aspect of Vasari’s artistic and architectural production, his renovation of the prestigio

Saturday, October 3rd Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence NB: Live only event – no recording will be made! Step into Andrea Mantegna’s extraordinary Camera degli Sposi, or Camera picta, in Mantua’s Palazzo Ducale, and look up. Painted between 1465 and 1474, Mantegna’s astonishing trompe-l’œil fresco appears to dissolve the ceiling itself, opening the room to the sky as playful figures peer down over a painted marble balustrade—an illusion

Saturday, September 26th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Princess of Urbino and Grand Duchess of Tuscany Maria Vittoria Leonora Feltria della Rovere (1622-1694) passed much of her life in the company of women, with many of whom she developed long-lasting friendships and relationships. This talk will explore the grand duchess's female networks and her cultural patronage in Baroque Florence as well as the connections she established with

Saturday, September 12th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence What can a handprint on a cave wall tell us about being human? And what connects the earliest images made tens of thousands of years ago to the art of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci? In this special conversation, bestselling author and former FBI agent Joe Navarro joins Paola to explore an unexpected idea: that art has always helped prepare us for life. Beginning with the ast

Saturday, September 5th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence To open the new season of Studiolo, please join me for a personal journey through five paintings by one of my favorite artists, Domenico Ghirlandaio. Few painters bring Renaissance Florence to life quite like Ghirlandaio. His frescoes and portraits are filled with exquisitely dressed Florentines, magnificent interiors, familiar streets, intimate gestures, and wonderfully observe

Saturday, June 6th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Leon Battista Alberti, the prodigy poet, playwright, architect, painter, and humanist savant, was the author of De pictura ( “On Painting” ), a treatise composed first in Latin in 1435, then published in 1450. It is one of his three treatises on art; the other two are De statua and De re aedificatoria – the three would form the Renaissance concept for the fine arts: painting, sculp

Saturday, April 25th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence A very specila session of the Spring Season of Paola’s Studiolo will be dedicated to Titian’s 1535 masterpiece, the Venus of Urbino, a painting whose spell still holds firm in the present day. My guest will be professor Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, who will investigate the myths and stories surrounding this timeless painting, from the time of its creation to the later critiques by such writ

Saturday, April 11th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Professor Brown tells a true story of vendetta and intrigue, triumph and tragedy, exile, and repatriation in her 2021 book, The Venetian Bride: Bloodlines and Blood Feuds in Venice and its Empire . It chronicles the 16 th century marriage of Giulia Bembo and Girolamo Della Torre and reveals the complexities of the Venetian Empire, family life, and power struggles. In her Studiolo

Saturday, April 4th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Painter and portraitist Nicholas Todhunter returns to Paola’s Studiolo to discuss the work of Jacopo Tintoretto (1518–1594), described as Venice’s most dramatic painter—a whirlwind of speed, shadow, and swagger. Nicknamed Il Furioso for his wild energy, he painted saints like stage actors, miracles like lightning strikes, and ceilings as if gravity were optional. Tintoretto worked

Saturday, March 28th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence During his all-too-brief career, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (1483-1520), frequently benefited from the patronage of women and painted works intended for female viewers ranging from nuns to noblewomen. Raphael’s women patrons and viewers came from different social classes and were often linked via bonds of kinship, marriage, and friendship. This conversation w

Saturday, March 21st Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Professor Elizabeth Lev will discuss the astonishing life of Caterina Riario Sforza (1463 –1509), one of the most prominent women of Renaissance Italy, who was a wife, mother, leader, and warrior, fierce enough to make Machiavelli himself wince. In her biography, Elizabeth Lev examines Caterina's extraordinary life and accomplishments. Raised in the court of Milan and wed at the age

Saturday, March 14th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Pope Leo XIV proclaimed 2026 a “Special Year of Saint Francis,” and to reflect on this honor, we have the pleasure to hear from Professor Bill Cook, the ultimate expert on the life of this beloved saint. He said, “If history is to be useful and not just entertaining for our time, we must first get the facts and contexts right for the subject, and then we need to think creatively abo

Saturday, March 7th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence During the Renaissance, a Florentine orphanage opened and began admitting children in 1445, ultimately rescuing thousands of children and revolutionizing childhood foster care and education amid the splendor of exceptional Renaissance art and architecture. Florence’s Ospedale degli Innocenti/Hospital of the Innocents was Europe’s first orphanage for abandoned children. In an era wh

Saturday, February 21st Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence One might have trouble imagining a connection between the works of the master French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) and the art of ancient Egypt. However, Rodin was a great admirer of the art of antiquity and over the course of his life, he amassed a sizable collection of artifacts from Greece, Rome, and Egypt. In his final years, Egypt became a particular source of fascinat

Saturday, February 7th Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence Dive into the intimate history of cosmetics, and discover how, for centuries, women have turned to makeup as a rich source of creativity, community, and resistance. The Renaissance was an era obsessed with appearances. Beauty culture from the time has left traces that give us a window into an overlooked realm of history – revealing everything from 16 th century women's body anxi

Saturday, January 31st Live on Zoom 10am Los Angeles / 1pm New York / 6pm London / 7pm Florence What impact did ancient art have on Italian Renaissance artists? One key lesson, often overlooked, was how to express powerful emotions, especially suffering. We see this in the transformation of Filippino Lippi's (1457–1504) art after he left his native Florence, lived in Rome (1489–93), and enriched his visual vocabulary. When Filippino returned home to Florence, he painted an

Saturday, December 13 th Live on Zoom 6pm London, 7pm Florence, 10am Los Angeles, 1pm New York The pièce de résistance of the artworks in the Santa Trinità church in Florence is without doubt one of the finest and most complete remaining Renaissance chapels – the Capella Sassetti, and those frescoes (1486) are among Domenico Ghirlandaio's finest work. The episodes of the life of St. Francis are embellished by contemporary Florentine settings and personalities. The altarpi

Saturday, December 6th Live on Zoom 6pm London, 7pm Florence, 10am Los Angeles, 1pm New York Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti lived an extraordinarily long and productive life in a period marked by peace and war, religious change, and political upheaval. In addition to his sculptures, paintings, drawings, architectural designs, and a vast and diverse collection of letters, personal notes, documents, and contracts, the artist left behi

Saturday, November 22nd Live on Zoom 7pm Florence, 10am Los Angeles, 1pm New York Roger Thomas , an internationally influential interior designer, is the visionary behind iconic Las Vegas properties for Wynn Hotels and Resorts as well as the company’s emeritus Executive Vice President of Design and Development and Founder of The Roger Thomas Collection. Adding flourishes of beauty and opulence to interiors around the world, he has a beautiful home on the Grand Canal in Venic