Elisa Goudriaan (1981), art historian, italianist and scientific researcher, started her studies at the University of Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands, in 2001. She graduated in Romance Languages and Cultures (2006) and in Art History (2008), both cum laude. During these studies she acquired the Italian language and specialized in Italian culture, art and literature between 1250 and 1700.
Her first Master thesis (2006) was on Dante Alighieri and his influence on representations of the Last Judgment (in particular: Hell) in Italian frescoes and mosaics between 1300 and 1600. Her second Research Master thesis (2008) was on the patronage strategies of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (1568-1647) and his activities as a social and cultural broker in early modern Italy. In 2004, Elisa studied a semester in Verona, at the Università degli Studi di Verona with an Erasmus scholarship.
After graduating, she spent eight months (in 2008 and 2009) at the Dutch Institutes in Florence and Rome, with scholarships of the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the GWO-fund (of the Foundation Friends of the Dutch Institute in Florence). In September 2009, she started her tenure as PhD candidate at Leiden University with an autonomous project (not related to any research group) on Florentine patricians. Each year during her research project at Leiden University, she stayed several months in Florence and Rome (mostly at the Dutch Institutes) working in libraries and archives all over these cities.
In April 2015, Elisa defended her PhD-dissertation about the contribution of Florentine patricians to the success of the Medici court and to Florentine culture in the seventeenth century, entitled The cultural importance of Florentine patricians. Cultural exchange, brokerage networks, and social representation in early modern Florence and Rome (1600-1660). This dissertation was awarded with the Ted Meijer Prize and will be published by the publishing house Brill in Leiden at the end of 2017, in the series Rulers & Elites. Among Elisa’s other publications are three journal articles, in Recercare (Journal for the study and practice of early music), in Incontri (Rivista europea di studi italiani) and in Historisch Tijdschrift Groniek (Historical Journal).
She has presented her work in English and Dutch at several conferences in the Netherlands, Germany and the United States.
