Marcello Simonetta was born in Pavia, Italy, in 1968. In 1993, he earned a Laurea in Lettere e Filosofia (magna cum laude) from the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2001, he received a PhD in Italian literature from Yale University. He has published three books: Rinascimento segreto: il mondo del Segretario da Petrarca a Machiavelli, Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004; The Montefeltro Conspiracy. A Renaissance Mystery Decoded, New York: Doubleday, 2008 (in Italian: L’enigma Montefeltro. Arte e intrighi dalla congiura dei Pazzi alla Cappella Sistina, Milan: Rizzoli, 2008); and Napoleon and the Rebel: A Story of Brotherhood, Passion and Power (co-authored with Noga Arikha), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. With the support of the IEA Fellowship, he is pursuing his research on a critical edition of Lucien Bonaparte’s unpublished Mémoires.
