Associate Professor of Philology of Italian Literature (L-FIL-LET/13) He obtained the National Scientific Qualification for the role of full-time university professor in the Competition Sector 10/F3 - ITALIAN LINGUISTICS AND PHILOLOGY (Directorate Decree No. 553/2021 as amended by Directorate Decree No. 589/2021).
Leonardo Quaquarelli graduated in Classical Literature at the University of Bologna in 1986. He obtained the Diploma of Paleography, Archivistics and Diplomatics at the School of the State Archives of Modena (1987).
Since 1987, he has carried out research at the Bolognese Renaissance Humanistic Archive (ARUB) focusing on historical writings, working on the census of Bolognese chronicles (Memoria urbis. Censimento delle cronache Bolognesi del Medioevo e del Rinascimento, Bologna, Regione Emilia-Romagna, 1993) and the critical and commented edition of the libro di famiglia by humanist Cesare Nappi (CESARE NAPPI, Memoriale mei. Ricordi de mi, con l'appendice del Memoriale secondo, Bologna, EdG, 1997).
In 1998 he obtained his PhD in Italian Studies (Humanities) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.
In 1999 he was awarded a two-year post-PhD at the Department of Italian Studies of the University of Bologna.
Since 1 October 2002 he has been a researcher in Philology of Italian Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Bologna. In November 2005 he was confirmed in his role.
Since 15 October 2014 he has been Associate Professor of Philology of Italian Literature at the same Faculty.
He delivers courses for the three-year and master's degree courses and, more specifically, he teaches Italian Literature and Philology of Italian Literature. He is director of the journal «Schede Umanistiche».
His research interest focus on the Bolognese manuscript and printed book production between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with the design and implementation of computer procedures for the analysis of characters (Verifiche su Baldassarre Azzoguidi: un tratto di storia incunabolistica rivisitato da bibliologia, filologia e informatica', in 'Sul libro bolognese del Rinascimento, edited by L. Balsamo and L. Quaquarelli, Bologna, CLUEB, 1994), the census of Bolognese fifteenth-century copyists, the Bolognese Renaissance binding.
A critical panorama of the literature in Bologna in the age of Humanism can be read in Per singulare memoria. Retoriche a margine e identità municipale nel Quattrocento bolognese (Bologna, Clueb, 2001).
He has studied humanistic epigraphy between Ciriaco d'Ancona and Felice Feliciano (Felice Feliciano e Francesco Scalamonti (junior?), in Ciriaco d'Ancona e la cultura antiquaria dell'Umanesimo, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 1998; Felice Feliciano letterato nel suo epistolario, in L'“antiquario” Felice Feliciano veronese tra epigrafia antica, letteratura e arti del libro, Padova, Antenore, 1995; Ciriaco d'Ancona e il viaggio umanistico, in Custodi della tradizione e avanguardie del nuovo sulle sponde dell'Adriatico, Bologna, Clueb, 2006)
In collaboration with Zita Zanardi, he has edited the volume Pichiana. Bibliografia delle edizioni e degli studi (Firenze, Olschki, 2005).
He has traced an analysis of fifteenth-century motifs of Bolognese nineteenth-century painting in Lettura ottocentesca del Quattrocento bolognese: ricerca erudita ed evocazione pittorica, in Municipio, Nazione ed Europa fra l'età di Mazzini e l'età di Carducci. Scrittura ed immagine nella ricognizione della memoria storica come identità (Bologna, I libri di Emil, 2008).
In 2008, the Proceedings of the international conference Testi agronomici d'area emiliana e Rinascimento europeo. La cultura agraria fra letteratura e scienza da Pier de' Crescenzi a Filippo Re, (Bologna, 31 May-1 June 2007), edited with L. Avellini and R. Finzi were published. They contain L. Quaquarelli’s contribution «Che non è minga un dire de fola»: l'altra agronomia medievale bolognese.
In 2009 he published the essay Per un profilo aggiornato di Pietro da Moglio («SCHEDE UMANISTICHE», 2010, XXIII (2009), pp. 33 - 55), which constitutes an initial assessment of the investigations on the philological culture of our full fourteenth century. For the same author he built the entry of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome, Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, 2011, 75, pp. 267-273).
In 2010, he participated in the Pio Rajna Center project Gli Autografi dei Letterati italiani. Il Cinquecento (eds. M. Motolese, P. Procaccioli and E. Russo: L. Quaquarelli signs the dossier on Carlo Sigonio's autographs); in the volume Il Quattrocento. I Quaquarelli edited the entry on Ciriaco d'Ancona.
In May 2010 he entered the PRIN research program (project of the Bologna unit coordinated by L. Avellini) presented by the units of Bologna, Siena and Urbino with the title Generi di scrittura nella Repubblica dei letterati italiana ed europea fra Rinascimento e Barocco: indagine a campione su biografie, carteggi, accademie.
Since 2011 he has been one of the editors of the online journal TransPostCross. Letterature culture (http://www.transpostcross.it).
He investigated the history of philological studies in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century, the first results of which he exhibited in the report explicit Filologia esplicita: dagli Studi di Filologia Italiana a Italia Medioevale e Umanistica at the conference Le discipline letterarie e linguistiche in Italia fra università e nazione 1861-2011 (Bologna, 1-2 dicembre 2011), appeared in "Literary experiences", 37/4, 2012, pp. 155-166.
He has published the monograph Il Quattrocento dei copisti. Bologna, Bologna, I libri di Emil, 2012, which includes the results of a twenty-year survey on the complex and articulated book production of Bologna between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the first decade of the sixteenth century.
In 2013 the profiles of humanist Cesare Nappi and of the main architect of the architectural renewal of Bologna of the Bentivolesque age Gaspare Nadi appeared, both published on the website of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (www.treccani.it).
In November 2012, he organized the Bologna conference La storia del libro a stampa nello studio dell’Umanesimo: scambio di idee fra riviste d’area (ARUB/Carisbo Foundation, November 22-23).
In 2013 appears Autografi dei Letterati italiani. Il Quattrocento vol.I ed. by F. Bausi et al. in which he edited the entry Ciriaco d'Ancona (pp. 112-121),
In 2014 the entry Pandolfi, Girolamo in volume LXXX of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Then the second augmented and revised edition of the volume Il Quattrocento dei copisti. Bologna was published, with 72 plates (Bologna, I libri di Emil).
At the Nonantola conference (2014, "The Twelfth Centenary of the Death of Charlemagne"), he presented La figura di Carlo nelle fonti cronachistiche, storiografiche, agiografiche e letterarie fra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna.
At the International Seminar (Bergamo, December 11-12, 2014) Archilet Reti epistolari read the paper Alle origini della figura del mercante d'arte: Girolamo Casio, published in the Proceedings of 2016, presented at a Bologna study day recorded in "Schede Umanistiche" 29.
In the following five years, he addressed the nineteenth-century problem of the census and reorganization of the Olindo Guerrini Collection in Bologna made available by the Heirs, becoming scientific director of the Laboratorio Guerrini Study Center of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies: (3 contributions, in the 2017 and 2018 issues of "Antichi e Moderni," collected in 2020 with 2 unpublished essays in the monograph Mercutio reviewer of Carducci and other Guerrini essays).
In 2017 (Naples-Ischia, May 2-6), invited to the conference Donne, terme e bellezza a Ischia nel Rinascimentohe presented Narrare la villeggiatura termale e la bellezza delle donne: il caso delle Porretane di Sabadino degli Arienti.
On a similar topic, he published Il «Giuoco del Bagno» di Scipione Bargagli: malattie d’amore e cure termali nella memoria delle Veglie di Siena, GRISELDAONLINE 17, 2018.
In 2018 he presents Ciriaco d’Ancona e Rimini at the Rimini conference Gli antichi alla corte dei Malatesta.
In 2019, in "Schede Umanistiche" 32 and 33, he highlighted the evocative figure of a court lady with espionage duties in Polissena Malvezzi's correspondence (conference Dai margini al centro: indagine storico-culturale e di genere sulle scritture femminili fra Quattro e Cinquecento, November 19-20).
A member of the Doctoral School of Literary and Philological Cultures and supervisor of a thesis on the critical edition of Federico Tozzi's "Gli egoisti," he has been a member of the scientific Board of the National Edition of Tozzi's works since 2017. Since 2021, he has been involved in the National Edition of the works of Ulisse Aldrovandi.
In January 2020, as scientific director of the Guerrini Center, he obtained funding from the Carisbo Foundation for a project in collaboration with the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna for the restoration, cataloging, and organization of an exhibition of Olindo Guerrini's photographic plates donated to the BUB by his heirs. (Inauguration April 9, 2022). In the catalog ll fondo fotografico “Olindo Guerrini” alla Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna he wrote Prove fotografiche di autobiografia: una città e due case di Olindo Guerrini.
At the conference Scienza e arte a Bologna: forme di autorappresentazione tra Rinascimento e prima età modernahe he presents «Nebulo pessimus». Leonardo Fioravanti fra autobiografia e affabulazione (Proceedings, "Schede Umanistiche" 34).
He published the essay Discipline, ruoli sociali, professioni. Ripensare la disputa delle arti fra Quattro e Cinquecento in "Schede Umanistiche" (January 35, 2021), later presented in an expanded form with the title Dispute, ruoli sociali, professioni. Dai vecchi ai nuovi dibattiti at the conference organized in Venice (February 26, 2022) Le dispute delle arti nell’Italia del Cinquecento.
He organzed, with the "G. B. Della Porta" International Study Center, the Bologna conference (November 26, 2021) "The Relations of G. B. Della Porta in Northern Italy," at which he presented the paper "Cardinal Luigi d'Este, Patron of G. B. Della Porta." At the international conference "From Physiognomy to Semiotics: The Languages of the Body in Movement," November 9-11, 2023, Piano di Sorrento, organized by the G. B. Della Porta International Study Center, he will be presenting by invitation with the paper "The Dance-Game of Blind Man's Bluff" (Pastor Fido, Act III): A Hyperkinetic Theatrical Scene from Battista Guarini's Direction to the Autonomous Dramatic Genre," Proceedings in c. d. s.
He presents by invitation at the conference organized by the Società dei Filologi della Letteratura Italiana I vettori del testo. Manoscritti, stampe, Iconografie, Trento, October 3-5, 2024, with the paper Felice Feliciano fra Manoscritti e stampe, Proceedings in c. d. s.
He made a lecture entitled La filologia del copista, as part of the "Giuliano Tanturli" Philology Seminar on November 19, 2024, at the DILEF, University of Florence.
He is invited to participate in the international conference Fisiognomica e caricatura. Letteratura e arti figurative, November 28-30, 2024, in Piano di Sorrento, organized by the G. B. Della Porta International Study Center, with the relation Prima di Leonardo. Caricatura e caricaturale fra Burchiello e Feliciano," Proceedings Naples, 2025.
He is organizing the international conference La prosa dei Poeti a Bologna. Olindo Guerrini e Giosue Carducci, December 11-12, 2024, and presented the relation "Garibaldi nelle prose di Carducci e Guerrini," Proceedings edited by L. Quaquarelli, Bologna, DA University Books, 2025 ("Le maschere di Olindo Guerrini," 3).
He publishes the chapter "Felice Feliciano" in AUTOGRAFI DEI LETTERATI ITALIANI. Il QUATTROCENTO, VOLUME II, edited by F. BAUSI, M. CAMPANELLI, S. CARRAI, T. DE ROBERTIS, S. GENTILE, J. HANKINS, paleographical consultancy by T. De Robertis, Rome-Padua, Antenore, 2024, pp. 173-195.
At the international conference Renovatoi. Ciriaco d'Ancona and the Ancient World, Tivoli, January 9-10, 2025, he presented the paper La Tradizione delle carte di Ciriaco d'Ancona: Il caso di Felice Feliciano, Proceedings in c. d. s.
He published the essay Nel solco di Pozzi e Dionisotti. Spazi per la filologia d’autore sul Seicento, "Schede Umanistiche," XXXVIII/1, 2024, pp. 265-278.
Organization of the Seminar on February 3, 2025 dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the 3 volumes published in 2024 in the "Biblioteca del Rinascimento e del Barocco" series with the participation of V. Caputo, R. Ferro, M. Rak, U. Motta, R. Vetrugno; Editing of the papers and discussion published in «Schede Umanistiche» 39/1 of 2025.
Participates in the international conference Scienza, letteratura ed arti nelle Accademie italiane tra ’400 e ’700, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the “G.B. della Porta” Study Center (October 16-18, 2025, Villa Fondi, Piano di Sorrento), edited by Lorenza Gianfrancesco, Alfonso Paolella and Luca Vaccaro, Naples, LucianoEditore («La Minerva», 2), 2025, with the paper La seconda stagione dell’Accademia bolognese dei Gelati: il principato di Valerio Zani (1670), pp. 277-291.
He organizes the Seminar Poeti dei Pittori nella Bologna secentesca (27 January 2026, Bologna, Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies), Proceedings currently being printed in «Schede Umanistiche», XL/1, 2026.
