He also spent a year pursuing graduate work in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
His publications include: Images of Nepotism: The Painted Ceilings of Palazzo Barberini (Princeton, 1991) and Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (Chicago, 2003).
His interests include studies of Borromini, Guarini, Pietro da Cortona, Annibale Carracci, Bernini, the patronage of the Barberini family, and urbanism in early modern Turin.
Later in his career, patronage and audience begin to be of concern, but social history is still his dominant methodological bias.
The book, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin[3] was awarded the 2004 College Art Association Charles Rufus Morey Prize.