Her specialty is the visual and material culture of early modern (1400-1700) Italy, and, in particular, material culture in the domestic sphere and the visual construction of gender.
de Vries’s current research concentrates on Bologna, where she mines the state archive for inventories, account books, and other records of the images and objects that populated early modern domestic spaces. One project focuses on the collection strategies of Giovanni Fantuzzi, a nobleman with limited resources in early eighteenth-century Bologna, and the costs and valuations of his art over the century.
