About the Participants

Edina Adam, J. Paul Getty Museum

Edina Adam is the Assistant Curator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. She holds a PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, where she wrote her dissertation on notions of foreignness and migrant artists in Florence ca. 1600. At the Getty, her projects have included ‘Michelangelo: Mind of the Master’ and ‘Artists on the Move.’ As a curator, Edina is dedicated to extricating untold stories through interdisciplinary and collaborative research. 

Emily Rose Anderson, University of Southern California

Emily R. Anderson recently graduated from University of Southern California with her PhD in Art History. Her research interests include the history of printing, printed books, works on paper, and the intersections of media and technology in early modern Europe. Her dissertation, ‘The Bespoke Book: Experimental Printing in Early Modern Italy,’ examined the varied, anomalous, and unique printing techniques – ranging from printing in gold and printing on blue paper – used in book printing between 1450-1600. Emily is currently the Associate Director of the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life at USC and serves Lecturer in the Art History Department.

Maria Aresin, Thyssen Fellow, Centro Tedesco Venice

Maria Aresin studied art history and philosophy in Leipzig, Heidelberg, Siena and Frankfurt Main and specialized in Venetian art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 2020 she completed her PhD project on the ‘Iconography of the Four Ages of Man’ at the University of Frankfurt Main. Her book on the topic was published in April 2021. During her PhD she was first graduate assistant and then Gerda Henkel Fellow based at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. She received various grants supporting her ongoing post-doctoral project on Palma il Giovane’s drawings (DAAD, Bella Maniera, RSA Kress, KHI, Fritz Thyssen). Until May 2021 she was an assistant curator at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, where she contributed to the catalogue project on the Venetian drawings and prints of the Munich collection (exhibition February 2022). At the moment she is Fritz Thyssen Postdoc-Fellow at the Centro Tedesco in Venice where she is completing her project about Palma il Giovane’s drawings.

Luca Baroni, Scuola Normale Superiore

Luca Baroni is PhD candidate at the Scuola Normale Superiore (class of Art History). His research focuses on the relations between drawing, painting and printmaking which he has deepened, among others, in the cases of Raphael, Barocci, Cantarini and the German Renaissance printmakers. In 2017 he was entrusted with Andrea Emiliani’s research archive on Federico Barocci, artist of which he is currently redacting the catalogue raisonné (paintings, drawings and prints).

Linda Borean, Full Professor of History of Art in Early Modern Age at the University of Udine in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage (DIUM)

Linda Borean is Full Professor of History of Art in Early Modern Age at the University of Udine in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage (DIUM). Her research interests focus on patronage, art collecting, painting and drawing in Renaissance and Baroque Venice. She has co-curated the project and the editorial series Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia dalle origini all’Ottocento, supported by the Fondazione di Venezia, and published monographs and essays in international journals (A rank). She has been co-curator of the following exhibitions: ‘Il colore della seduzione. Giambattista Tiepolo and Paolo Veronese; (Udine, Musei Civici 2012); ;Rebus Caravaggio’ (Udine, Musei Civici 2014); ‘Rencontres à Venise. Étrangers et Vénitiens dans l’art du XVII siècle’ (Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux Arts, Ajaccio 2018). She has been appointed member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and member of Review College-Research Foundation Flanders. Her research has been supported by several grants, awarded her by Getty Museum (2017), Metropolitan Museum (2012), The Royal Society of Edinburgh (2016), Getty Research Institute (2004), Francis Haskell Memorial Fund (2003). Borean has been invited to lecture in seminars and international conferences, as well as to give talks in many universities and international museums. Her most recent book is La Galleria Manfrin. L’ultima collezione d’arte della Serenissima (2018).

Click here to view Professor Borean’s CV.

Iris Brahms, Independent Art Historian

Iris Brahms is an independent scholar currently teaching at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include the technique and theory of drawing and the history of paper. The methodological interaction of theory and history shapes Iris Brahms’ research. As postdoctoral fellow at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich she set up an international conference on Marginal drawing techniques as an aesthetic strategy in the Early Modern Period in 2018 (publication forthcoming). As research associate at the Freie Universität Berlin from 2013–2018 she motivated students to participate in a publication entitled Farbe aufs Papier! Synergie und Divergenz in Zeichnungen der Frühen Neuzeit (2020) as well as organized an international conference on Drawn Evidence on colored papers in the Early Modern Period (publication forthcoming). The latter is related to her PhD thesis on colored ground drawings North of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer (2016).

Thea Burns, Queens University

Thea Burns received a BA in Fine Arts, McGill University; an MAC in Art Conservation, Queen’s University; a certificate in Paper Conservation, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University and a PhD, Courtauld Institute, University of London. She taught paper conservation in the Art Conservation Program, Queen’s University (1987-2001) and has been an adjunct associate professor there since 2016; she served as Senior Paper Conservator, Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard University (2002-2008) and is presently an independent scholar and a member of the Blue Paper Research Consortium, Moulin du Verger, Puymoyen, France. She is the author of The Invention of Pastel Painting, Archetype (2007), The Luminous Trace: Drawing and Writing in Metalpoint, Archetype (2012), L’Art du pastel with Philippe Saunier, Citadelles & Mazenod (2014), translated into English as The Art of the Pastel, Abbeville (2015) and Compositiones variae: a late 8th-century craftsman’s technical treatise reconsidered, Archetype (2017). She has led workshops and contributed numerous lectures and papers to conferences, journals and other publications.

Laura Carnelos, Eton College Library

Laura Carnelos is Library Curator (Rare Books and Manuscripts) at Eton College. She is specialised in Library and Archival Studies (BA and MA degrees) with a PhD in Socio-Cultural History of Early Modern Italy. She previously worked at the Consortium of European Research Libraries as a Marie S. Curie Fellow, at the University of Reading as a Collections Research Assistant and at The British Museum as a Project Librarian of the Science and Conservation Library. She has published extensively especially on early modern popular books.  

Thomas Dalla Costa, Independent Art Historian and Curator

Thomas Dalla Costa was awarded his PhD from the University of Verona in 2012 with a thesis focussing on Paolo Veronese’s workshop. His research was key to the exhibition ‘Paolo Veronese. L’illusione della realtà,’ held in Verona in 2014. He has been Save Venice Research Fellow, working on Jacopo Tintoretto, between 2016 and 2018, and in 2017 he co-curated the exhibition ‘Venezia Rinascimento: Tiziano, Tintoretto, Veronese’ at the Pushkin Museum, in Moscow. Between 2019 and 2020 Thomas was the Harry M. Weinrebe Curatorial Fellow at the London National Gallery, and he currently is an independent scholar and curator. He was one of the convenors of the digital conference ‘Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers,’ held at The Warburg Institute in May 2021. He has a strong interest in the artist’s creative process and the pivotal role of drawings inside Venetian workshops during the 16th and 17th century. 

Luca Fiorentino, NIKI – ICG Research Fellow, Florence

Luca earned his PhD at the University of Siena with a dissertation on drawings by Claudio Francesco Beaumont (Torino 1694 -1766), painter for the Savoia court in Piedmont, published as a book enhanced with new findings and insights in 2016. In the same year, he founded Avere disegno, the editorial series (Edifir Firenze) dedicated to exploring drawing from every point of view (sources, techniques, style, conservation). The third volume of Avere disegno (July 2021) publishes the studies begun for the International Conference held at the Dutch Institute of Art History in Florence in 2019 dedicated to red chalk drawings. In collaboration with Universities and Italian institutions, Luca has published monographs and researches with various publishers and scientific journals on the fields of 16th-18th century drawing techniques, painting, sources, etchings and history of conservation.

His latest research focuses on 17th century red chalk drawings and Dutch sources on Italian painters.

Daryl Green, University of Edinburgh

Daryl Green FSA FSAScot is Head of Special Collections at the University of Edinburgh. He has worked professionally with manuscripts and early printed books for over a decade at York Minster Library, the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), the University of St Andrews, and Oxford. He has taught book history and descriptive bibliography at all levels, including masterclasses. His expertise is in the materiality of late medieval manuscripts and early printed books, including bindings, provenance, provincial printing, and the slow and disjointed transition of manuscript culture to the printed book markets. Daryl has curated and co-curated several exhibitions and workshops ranging in topics from the history of science to fine-press printing.

Brad Sabin Hill, Washington, D.C.

Brad Sabin Hill was Head of the Hebrew Section, The British Library, 1989-1996, and Librarian and Fellow in Hebrew Bibliography at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1996-2001.  He held the Fellowship in Wissenschaft des Judentums at the John Rylands Library in 2017 and was elected to the Simon Visiting Professorship at the University of Manchester in 2018.  His exhibit of ‘Carta Azzurra: Hebrew Printing on Blue Paper’ was mounted in the King’s Library within the British Museum in 1995, and his detailed study of ‘Hebrew Printing on Blue and Other Coloured Papers’ was published in 2011. 

Elsje van Kessel, University of St Andrews

Elsje van Kessel is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. She holds a PhD from Leiden University (2011). Her work focuses, broadly speaking, on the circulation, display, and reception of early modern art, especially in Venice and wider Italy, Portugal, and maritime Europe. She is the author of The Lives of Paintings: Presence, Agency, and Likeness in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth Century (De Gruyter, 2017). Further publications on Venetian art by her hand have appeared in Art History and Studiolo, in addition to numerous edited collections.

Stephen Parkin, The British Library

Stephen Parkin is a curator of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century printed books in the British Library, where he has worked since 1994.

Leila Sauvage, MA, MSc, Head lecturer in Book and Paper Conservation, University of Amsterdam; Conservation Scientist/Paper Conservator, Rijksmuseum; PhD Candidate in Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft

Leila Sauvage holds a Master’s degree in Book and Paper Conservation from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Since 2011, she has been a paper conservator and scientist at the Rijksmuseum. She has been involved in special projects, such as the technical analysis and conservation of 18th-century pastel paintings and the technical analysis of Rembrandt drawings. She also facilitates a papermaking workshop at the Moulin du Verger paper mill (France) and collaborates with Prof. Dr. Erdmann on the application of computer vision and AI tools for the study of historical papers. She is currently writing a PhD thesis on the prediction of cumulative damage on pastel paintings due to vibrations induced by handling and transport (in collaboration with the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency and TU Delft). In 2021, she has been appointed Head Lecturer in Book and Paper Conservation training program of the University of Amsterdam.

Anita Viola Sganzerla, Katrin Bellinger Collection

Dr. Anita Viola Sganzerla has an MA and PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is curator of the Katrin Bellinger Collection, and co-curated with Deanna Petherbridge the drawings exhibition ‘Artists at Work’ (The Courtauld Gallery, 2018). A specialist in early modern Italian art, Anita regularly lectures at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and previously held positions at The Courtauld Institute, The Courtauld Gallery, and the University of Kent. She is Project Manager for the Curating Prints Seminar, organised by Print Quarterly and funded by the Getty Paper Project: Prints and Drawings Curatorship in the 21st Century (The Getty Foundation). 

Stephanie Stillo, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

Stephanie Stillo serves as the Curator of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection and Aramont Library in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division (RBSCD) of the Library of Congress. Before joining the Library, Stephanie was the Mellon Fellow for Digital Humanities at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. She has lead multiple projects related to virtual exhibition and design and digital storytelling, and she is strong advocate of the use of science and technology in humanities research. Stephanie researches the intersection of text and the graphic arts as they relate to book illustration. She has written several blog posts and articles about the Library’s rare book collections and recently created an award winning story map about RBSCD’s fifteenth-century books, entitled INCUNABULA: The Art and History of Printing in Western Europe. Stillo is currently writing a book entitled From Wood, Metal, and Stone: 500 Years of Book Illustration in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection.

Michelle Sullivan, J. Paul Getty Museum

Michelle Sullivan is Associate Conservator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She holds an MS and certificate of advanced study in art conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation and a BA in art history and studio art from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her training has included graduate internships and fellowships at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Through her position at the Getty, Michelle prioritizes interdisciplinary research with curators and conservation scientists through technical examination and non-invasive analysis of the Museum’s drawings collection.

Genevieve Verdigel, Getty Paper Project Fellow, British Museum

Dr Genevieve Verdigel is currently The Getty Paper Project Fellow at the British Museum. Her current and recent projects include recataloguing the British Museum’s collections of drawings by Claude Lorrain, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck, contributions to the forthcoming Parmigianino exhibition at The Courtauld, and developments from the ‘Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers’ conference for which she was co-organiser. She was awarded her PhD from the Warburg Institute with her research focusing on the role of Disegno in the workshop of Bartolomeo Montagna, and the development of drawing and printmaking practices across the Veneto circa 1500. Her thesis was awarded the Wolfgang Ratjen Prize, and in Autumn 2021 she is in residence at the Zentralinsitut as the Ratjen Fellow where she will be working on the catalogue raisonée of Lorenzo Lotto’s drawings. She was previously the Kress Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Drawing Institute of The Morgan and the Bromberg Fellow at the British Museum. She holds a MA and BA from the Courtauld Institute.