News

Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow 2020 appointed

The MINIARE team is happy to announce the appointment of Miss Flavia Fiorillo as the Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow for the year 2020.

Flavia holds a Master’s degree in Science for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the University of Bologna (Italy) and is just about to complete a PhD in Studies for Cultural Heritage at the same institution. As part of her doctoral research, in 2018 she spent four months as a visiting scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, undertaking scientific characterisation of 16th- and 17th-century English portrait miniatures. She has also previously been an intern in the Ion Beam Physics Lab at ETH Zurich and in the Department of Physics and Surface Science at the University of Liverpool. During the past fifteen years, Flavia has gained significant experience in the scientific analysis of painted artworks, dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. We very much look forward to making good use of her skills here at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation supports, encourages and develops top research in the fields of engineering and environmental sciences as well as of all medieval disciplines. This is the fifth time that the Foundation is supporting the MINIARE project by sponsoring a joint Fellowship for early career researchers.

New Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow appointed

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Ms Mila Crippa as the next Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow. Mila holds a Master’s Degree in Technologies for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the University of Genoa (Italy), where she defended a thesis on the production methods of artistic patinas on modern bronze sculpture in 2017. Earlier this year, Mila was awarded a fully-funded postgraduate internship in the Paintings Laboratory of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, where she examined modern and contemporary paintings using a combination of micro-invasive and non-invasive analytical methods. Mila looks forward to working with the MINIARE research team, especially because, as she says: ‘a museum offers a holistic approach to looking at artworks, combining scientific analysis with art-historical research, to define suitable methods for the investigation and long-term preservation of historic objects.’

The Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation supports, encourages and develops top research in the fields of engineering and environmental sciences as well as of all medieval disciplines. This is the fourth time that the Foundation is supporting the MINIARE project by sponsoring a joint Fellowship for early career researchers.

New Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow appointed

We are happy to announce the appointment of Dr Anna Mazzinghi as the next Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow. Anna was selected from an unprecedented pool of 84 extremely well-qualified applicants and will join our research team for twelve months starting in January 2018. She holds a PhD in Science for the conservation of Cultural Heritage from the University of Florence (Italy), where she defended a thesis on the development of scanning XRF instrumentation for cultural heritage applications in February 2016. For the past two years, Anna has been a post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Florence, working in the Laboratory of Nuclear Techniques for Environmental and Cultural Heritage (LABEC). She specialises in the analysis of painting materials by XRF spectroscopy and has worked on a wide range of artefacts, from lapis lazuli Egyptian amulets to Japanese katanas, and including a large number of paintings by Italian Renaissance Masters such as Botticelli, Raffaello and Leonardo da Vinci.

The Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation supports, encourages and develops top research in the fields of engineering and environmental sciences as well as of all medieval disciplines. This is the third time that the Foundation is supporting the MINIARE project by sponsoring a joint Fellowship for early career researchers.

‘Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science’

8-10 December 2016
Cambridge, UK

An international conference organised by The Fitzwilliam Museum, in association with the Departments of Chemistry and History of Art, University of Cambridge (UK) with support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections.

The conference will accompany the Fitzwilliam Museum’s bicentenary exhibition ‘COLOUR: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts’ (30 July - 30 December 2016).

This interdisciplinary conference will aim to break new ground in integrating recent advances in the art historical and technical analyses of illuminated manuscripts with research in social and intellectual history. While Western illuminated manuscripts from the 6th to the 16th centuries will form a major focus of discussion, the conference will also include papers on Byzantine, Islamic and Pre-Columbian material.

For more information including the list of speakers and conference programme, and to register for the conference, please visit: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/colour/conference

Poster contributions are welcome. We particularly welcome abstracts submitted by students and early-career researchers.

Authors are requested to submit abstracts no later than 30 June 2016, using the template available on the conference webpage.

Please send your abstracts to mima-conference@fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk. Authors will be informed of the acceptance of their contribution by 15 September 2016.

Exhibition COLOUR: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts

The Fitzwilliam Museum, 30 July - 30 December 2016

The MINIARE and Cambridge Illuminations projects are the research platform of a major exhibition that celebrates the bicentenary of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s foundation in 2016. The exhibition displays over 100 of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s finest illuminated manuscripts representing the leading artistic centres of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Visitors are invited to examine in detail the artistic, intellectual and historic significance of the manuscripts. Digital displays allow them to leaf through multiple paintings within a manuscript; over-lay images of the same painting captured with different techniques; discover the pigments and techniques identified through cutting-edge, non-invasive scientific analyses; follow the trade routes that supplied artists’ materials across Asia and Europe; and explore the relationships between the individuals involved in the manuscripts’ production and early use.

The exhibition re-constructs the creative process, from the artists’ original ideas through their choice of pigments and technical expertise to the finished works. It demonstrates how artists strove to break the barrier between images and viewers by engaging the senses, stimulating the mind, and stirring up emotions. The catalogue, written by an international team of experts and illustrated in full colour, is available for purchase online at the Fitzwilliam Museum shop.

Find out more about the exhibition at www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/colour

Explore the digital resource at www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/illuminated

‘The Colourful Page’ - a short film about our research

This short experimental documentary directed by Alice Corner explores the research of conservation scientist Paola Ricciardi, one of the members of the MINIARE research project. The film was produced as part of the Cambridge Shorts initiative, which allows University of Cambridge researchers at an early stage of their career to work with artists and film makers using innovative ways to visualise research processes and outputs.

Watch the film on YouTube

New Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow appointed

We are happy to announce the appointment of the next Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow, who will join our research team for nine months starting in June 2015. Lucía Pereira-Pardo successfully managed to beat competition from 50 applicants from the UK, Europe, and as far as India and China. Lucía has just obtained a PhD in Environmental Studies applied to Natural and Cultural Heritage at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), with a thesis on risk assessment in view of the conservation of the 16th century wall paintings of A Ribeira Sacra, a breathtaking natural landscape riddled with medieval churches and monasteries, candidate to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2015.

The Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation (http://www.zenokarlschindler-foundation.ch/) supports, encourages and develops top research in the fields of engineering and environmental sciences as well as of all medieval disciplines. For the second year now, the Foundation is supporting the MINIARE project by sponsoring a joint Fellowship for early career researchers.

First Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow appointed

The MINIARE team has recently appointed its first Zeno Karl Schindler/MINIARE Fellow, who will join the research team for nine months starting in September 2014. Giulia Bertolotti was selected from a group of thirty-nine highly qualified applicants. Giulia is about to complete a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Trento, where she has been developing and validating innovative micro-analytical methodologies to characterise airborne inorganic pollutants.

The Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation (http://www.zenokarlschindler-foundation.ch/) supports, encourages and develops top research in the fields of engineering and environmental sciences as well as of all medieval disciplines. The Foundation is supporting the MINIARE project by sponsoring a joint Fellowship for early career researchers and the purchase of state-of-the-art analytical imaging equipment.