Specialising in the history of numismatic literature, his research focuses on Italian publications issued from the sixteenth century onwards, with the aim of critically reconstructing the process through which numismatics emerged and became established as a discipline within Italy’s intellectual and cultural landscape.
Conducted according to a systematic methodology, his research has brought to light contributions that had been forgotten or never adequately recognised, restoring scholarly attention to works published between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries that are essential to understanding the development of numismatic studies. The results of this research have been presented at national and international scholarly conferences.
Particular attention is devoted to manuscripts, correspondence between scholars, and documentary material preserved in public and private archives. Letters, often accompanied by drawings of coins, bibliographical notes, critical assessments, and personal reflections, offer a vivid and direct perspective on the formation of knowledge and on the relationships, sometimes marked by rivalry, at other times by mutual esteem, that fostered its circulation. Their examination makes it possible to reconstruct the intellectual networks within which numismatic debate developed and to restore a human and historical dimension to a discipline too often reduced to purely technical description. What emerges is a distinctive form of “antiquarian philology”, capable of tracing the development of the field in its most authentic dimension.
Alongside this principal area of research, his studies extend to the mints of southern Italy and Sicily from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, considered primarily from a historical and institutional perspective and in relation to patterns of monetary circulation. Further research concerns the coinage of the Kingdom of Italy and Bourbon medallic art, interpreted as expressions of power and as instruments in the construction of political and dynastic identity.