About us
UniPD
Federica Toniolo
Federica Toniolo teaches History of Medieval Art and History of Illuminated Manuscripts at the University of Padua. She is currently coordinator of PhD Course in History, Critics and Conservation of Cultural Heritage and vice dean of the Galileiana School of the University of Padua.
Federica Toniolo’s research interests focus on the History of Illuminated Manuscripts, in particular in Medieval and Renaissance exemplars, mainly considering the relationship between book illustration and monumental painting and the relationship between text and image in religious and secular manuscripts. She dedicated numerous researches to the production of illuminated
manuscripts made for the courts of the Italian Renaissance, focusing above all on the libraries of the Estense family in Ferrara and of the Montefeltro in Urbino.
Other research interests concern the illustration of Choir Books and the phenomenon of collecting detached miniatures, a topic she dealt with in the catalogs of important collections such as that of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice and that of T. Robert Burke and Katherine State Burke in storage at Stanford University.
In her studies a particular attention has been devoted to the materiality of the codices and the revivals of the classical heritage, particularly concerning the revival of purple manuscripts in the Veneto Renaissance. Recently, her research interests have widened to include the revival of manuscript painting in the 19th century.
She has curated or co-curated art history exhibitions looking to bring book illustrations into dialogue with other works of figurative art by reconstructing their cultural context. She is a member of numerous scientific committees of scientific journals including “”Rivista di Storia della Miniatura””, “”Authenticity Studies. International Journal of Archaeology and Art” and she is an associate of the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, and of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti.
Since 2022 she is Principal Investigator of the PURPLE project.
Chiara Ponchia
Chiara Ponchia is Associate Professor at the University of Padua, where she teaches Medieval Art History and History of Illuminated Manuscripts.
Her research turns to the illuminated codex as a key to medieval culture, which in manuscripts is revealed in the text-image relationship and in the stylistic and iconographic analysis of the illuminations.
She received her PhD degree from the University of Padua with a thesis on the illustration of the Divine Comedy in early examples from the Po Valley area, further developed in a monograph published in 2015, Frammenti dell’Aldilà. Miniature trecentesche della Divina Commedia. In subsequent studies, she has extended her research also to the fifteenth-century manuscripts of the poem. In 2017, she collaborated in the organization and edited the catalog of the exhibition La bellezza nei libri. Cultura e devozione nei manoscritti miniati della Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova. Among her most recent works, she co-curated with Federica Toniolo the catalog of the illuminated choir books of the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice (2020).
Vittorio Frighetto
Vittorio Frighetto obtained a BA in Visual and Performing Arts (2018) and a MA in Art History (2022) at the Università degli Studi di Padova. From October 2022 is Ph. D candidate of the project ERC-Starting Grant 2020 SenSArt at the Università degli Studi di Padova. His research interests are focused on the production and decoration of Flemish and Dutch medieval manuscripts, especially books for private devotion and their reception during the 14th-15th century. He collaborated on the PRIN 2020 project “PURPLE – PURple Parchment Legacy” by studying and cataloguing a selection of purplish manuscripts.
Sofia Bazzoni
Sofia Bazzoni, born and raised in Montepulciano, after graduating from high school, continued her studies at the University of Padua, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Tourism Management (2019) and later a master’s degree in Art History (2022) with a thesis on the history of illuminated manuscripts titled “The Illustrations of Bartolomeo Breda in the Notarial Documents of Giovanni Maria Mersi (Padua, Biblioteca Antica del Seminario Vescovile, Cod. 8)” with the aid of Professor Federica Toniolo and co-advisor Franco Benucci. Since 2021 she has collaborated with Institute for the Enhancement of the Historical Abbeys of Tuscany, focusing mainly on the Politian church of Santa Maria dei Servi. In 2022 she contributed to the project PRIN 2020 “PURPLE – PURple Parchment Legacy” with the study and cataloguing of some purple manuscripts.
Laura Zabeo
Laura Zabeo received her Master’s degree at the University of Padua and her PhD in Art History at the University of Florence with a research on illuminated manuscripts made in Rome in the 15th century, with special regard to the papal patronage from Niccolò V to Sisto IV and to the reconstruction of the ecclesiastical book collections of the period.
She is interested in the study of humanistic and liturgical Renaissance manuscripts and in the phenomenon of the revival of antiquity. As a researcher for the University of Florence and the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” she investigated the manuscript and cuttings collection of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello di Firenze, specializing also in the illustration of early Italian literature, especially of the 14th century vulgarizations, of Dante’s Divina Commedia and of Boccaccio’s works, collaborating with IDP – Illuminated Dante Project and with the Ente Nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio.
UPO
Maurizio Aceto
Maurizio Aceto had a degree in Chemistry in 1988 from the Università degli Studi di Torino and a PhD in Chemical Sciences at the same university in 1993. Since 2017 he is Associate Professor at the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, where he teaches courses in the field of Analytical Chemistry. He is currently affiliated with the Dipartimento per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile e la Transizione Ecologica in Vercelli. His main field of research deals with the characterisation of materials of artistic and archaeological interest by means of non-destructive and non-invasive spectroscopic techniques, with particular reference to the identification of pigments and dyes of paintings for authentication, dating, conservation and restoration and determination of origin purposes; in this field he has developed partnerships with Italian and European cultural institutions, among which the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milano, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.
Saverio Lomartire
Saverio Lomartire eaches Medieval Art History at the Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Eastern Piedmont, Vercelli campus.
He was Conservator of the Civic Museums of the Visconti Castle in Pavia until 2001.
His interests are mainly focused on the study of architecture and art from the early Middle Ages to the 12th century, but without excluding investigations also for the 13th and 14th centuries. His interests have also extended to medieval epigraphic production between the 8th and 13th centuries in monastic contexts, cathedral churches and public buildings.
He has published studies on architecture, sculpture and painting especially in Northern Italy between the 8th and 14th centuries. In particular, he has devoted himself to early medieval sculpture, medieval painting, architecture and Romanesque sculpture in the Lombardy and Emilia areas. He has dedicated a series of studies to the activity of the masters of the Lombard lakes area who worked in different geographical areas (Bergamo, Monza, Parma, Modena, Trento) and the operating methods of the relevant sites. He also conducted research on miniature, goldsmithing and metal arts from the early Middle Ages to the Romanesque period.
He directed, until December 2022, an interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Eastern Piedmont specialising in the diagnostics of cultural heritage, with ongoing projects on manuscripts and metals (CenISCo).
He is on the editorial board of several journals in the art-historical field and is co-director of the open-access online journal “Medioevo Europeo”.
IFAC – CNR
Marcello Picollo
Marcello Picollo, PhD in Photonics from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), Faculty of Science and Forestry, Joensuu (Finland) and graduated in geology from the University of Florence, is a senior researcher at the Institute of Applied Physics “Nello Carrara” of the National Research Council of Italy (IFAC-CNR), Florence. He has been working on spectroscopic investigations of works of art since 1991 and his main research focus is on artists’ material characterization using non-invasive spectroscopic and imaging techniques.
UNIVANVITELLI
Teresa D’Urso
Teresa D’Urso is Associate professor of Medieval Art History and History of Illuminated Manuscripts at the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. She is a specialist in manuscript illumination in Italy and its relation to monumental painting. Her scholarly work explores the artistic exchanges between Italy and France during the Renaissance, book patronage, the history of Medieval and Renaissance libraries, and the collecting of illuminated manuscripts in the 19th century.
Her ongoing investigations deal with purple codices produced in the 15th and 16th centuries, illuminated breviaries in Angevin Naples, and the reconstruction of the library of Andrea Matteo III Acquaviva, Duke of Atri.
Diana Sainz Camayd
Diana Sainz Camayd holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage from the University of L’Aquila and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. Her research interests include manuscript illumination in Abruzzo and Southern Italy from the Gothic Period to the Early Renaissance, with particular regard to liturgical chant manuscripts and Books of Hours, as well as historiography on illumination, collections and exhibitions of illuminated manuscripts in Italy between the 19th and 20th centuries.
Giulia Simeoni
Giulia Simeoni is a research fellow at the University of Campania ‘L. Vanvitelli’ where she is working on the study and cataloguing of purple manuscripts for the PRIN 2020 project ‘PurpLe – Purple Parchment Legacy’.
She graduated in Art History at the University of Padua, where she also obtained her PhD in History, Criticism and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (2020) with a thesis on the illustration of Livy’s Decades in the Middle Ages. She was a research fellow at the same University (2021) with a project on the cataloguing of Livy’s codices illuminated between the 14th and 15th centuries, part of which was included in the database ‘Totus Livius. Manoscritti liviani digitalizzati’ (Phaidra – Unipd).
Her research focuses mainly on the illustration of classical authors’ manuscripts, in particular Ovid and Livy, and on the reception and iconographic fortune of their works between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
She is the author of a monograph dedicated to Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated in vernacular by Arrigo Simintendi da Prato (ms. Panciatichi 63 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze) (2017).
Since 2021 she has been an editorial assistant of ‘Authenticity Studies. International Journal of Archaeology and Art’.
Michela Perrotta
Michela Perrotta graduated with a Master’s Degree in Archeology and Art History from Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. She is currently a PhD candidate at the same University, and her research involves the reconstruction of the Renaissance library owned by Antonello Petrucci (†1487), secretary of King Ferdinand I of Aragon, with a focus on the decoration of his manuscripts and incunabula, and the cultural context in which they were produced. Her research interests include illuminated legal texts and their iconography, digital humanities, and cataloguing ancient and modern book collections.
UNITO
Fabrizio Crivello
Fabrizio Crivello (1968) studied at the University of Turin and the Scuola Normale in Pisa. Since 2005, he has been teaching History of Mediaeval Art and History of Illuminated Manuscripts at the University of Turin. His scholarly work mainly concerns Early Mediaeval art, and namely Carolingian and Ottonian illumination. Other research interests include the figurative and sumptuary arts in the Romanesque period, connections and exchanges between Italy and artistic centres North of the Alps, relations with the classical and late antique tradition, the reception of Byzantine and Mediterranean models in the West.
Giampaolo Distefano
Giampaolo Distefano studied at the University of Catania, Siena and Turin where he obtained his PhD (2017) and where he is currently research fellow in Medieval Art since 2019. His research interests focus on the precious arts of the 12th-15th centuries, especially in Italy, France and in the Mediterranean area, from the perspective of artistic circulation and transfers, with particular attention to the study of the sources. He has contributed to the catalogues of Medieval art objects of the Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra, Galleria Sabauda and Palazzo Madama in Turin, the Bargello Museum in Florence and the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. In 2020 co-edited the Festschrift in honor of Danielle Gaborit-Chopin; in 2021 he published the monograph Esmaltis viridibus. Lo smalto de plique tra XIII e XIV secolo, dedicated to the study of Parisian plique enamels and the relations between Paris and the Europeans courts. His articles have appeared, among others, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Arte medievale, Convivium, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz. Since 2019 his is a member of the Société nationale des Antiquaires de France.
Alessia Marzo
Alessia Marzo is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Turin since 2021, where she graduated (2016) and obtained her PhD (2020).
Her research interests are mainly focused on illuminated manuscripts and fragments, from Romanesque to Late Gothic period, with particular attention to the transitional style north of the Alps and to Northern Italy. Her previous researches has also focused on Romanesque goldsmithery, fakes and forgeries of medieval artifacts, and the origin and the development of the technique of miniature under rock crystal in the European context between the 12th and the 15th centuries.
Her PhD Thesis concerning La miniatura sotto cristallo di rocca. Origine, diffusione e sviluppi (secoli XII-XV) was awarded with the “Forschungspreis Angewandte Kunst 2021” funded by The Association of Friends of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich.