Francesca Curti graduated in History of Art, in 2000, at Sapienza University of Rome.
At the same institution, in 2006, she obtained PhD in “Strumenti e metodi per la storia dell’arte”, XVIII ciclo, with a thesis on the collection of Cristiana Duglioli Angelelli, published in 2007 by Gangemi (Committenza, collezionismo e mercato dell’arte tra Roma e Bologna nel Seicento. La quadreria di Cristiana Duglioli Angelelli).
In 2005, she graduated in Archiving, Palaeography and Diplomacy at the Rome State Archive, where she had worked for almost ten years, dealing with the cataloging, study and publication of drawings of plants stored inside notarial archive volumes of Trenta Notai Capitolini.
In 2010, she worked for the same archive and provided her scientific advice for the exhibition Caravaggio a Roma. Una vita dal vero, by M. Di Sivo and O. Verdi.
In 2011, she worked for the Hertzian Library to research the history of Palazzo Zuccari. Along with Lothar Sickel, she published the results of those studies in the volume “Dokumente zur Geschichte des Palazzo Zuccari 1578 - 1904”, Hirmer, Munich 2013.

She also worked extensively with the CROMA (Centro Ateneo per lo Studio di Roma) at the Roma Tre University for the project “Atlante di Roma Moderna e Contemporanea”, dealing, among other things, research on the topographical area of Piazza Navona.
She is the author of monographs and articles on the art of the seventeenth century, with particular reference to Bolognese and Roman collections, Caravaggio and urban planning and topography.
In recent years, she focused on Velázquez and Caravaggio, to whom she devoted numerous studies.
Currently she is a member of the international project of art and historical studies "Copying pictórica en la monarquia Hispánica (siglos XVI-XVIII)".
Since 2015 she has been being research fellow at the University of Chieti and a member of the Project FIRB 2013 “Gli Orsini e i Savelli nella Roma dei Papi”, coordinated by Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralata.