Reverse Engineering and Digital Imaging: Early Modern Venetian Lacquer From Cultural Heritage to Material Culture

Welcome to "Reverse Engineering and Digital Imaging: Early Modern Venetian Lacquer From Cultural Heritage to Material Culture," a pioneering platform within the EUTOPIA network dedicated to bridging the historic with the futuristic. Our community seeks to decipher the enigmatic narratives of our collective past through innovative research and experiential learning in material culture. By employing state-of-the-art technologies like high-resolution 3D imaging, we aim to revitalise the conservation of cultural artefacts while fostering an inclusive educational atmosphere. Our initiatives span collaborative workshops, thematic project weeks, and research-based learning modules, drawing insights from a rich fusion of art history, conservation science, and modern tech. Join us as we redefine the boundaries between academia and society, paving sustainable pathways for preserving our global heritage. Whether you're an aspiring student, seasoned expert, or curious policy-maker, our Connected Community eagerly awaits your involvement!

Upcoming Activities 

Coming soon

Past Activities

How to get involved 

Contacts

Lead: Prof. Walter Cupperi (walter.cupperi@unive.it)
Local Facilitator: Laura Cappellesso (eutopia@unive.it)

Connected Community Members 

Lead: Prof. Walter Cupperi (UNIVE). Email: walter.cupperi@unive.it

Walter Cupperi is associate professor in the history and theory of objects, the history of art techniques, the history of collecting and museology.

He holds a Ph.D. in art history from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and was research fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max-Planck-Institut Rom (2007), the Ministère de la Communauté Française of Belgium (2003), the Italian Academy at Columbia University, New York (2009), the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (2009-13) and the Museo Nacional del Prado (2016-17).

His research addresses issues of historiography and material culture from a postnational perspective. He is the author of the book Culture di scambio: medaglie e medaglisti italiani tra Milano, Bruxelles e Madrid (1535-1571), Pisa 2020, the editor of Multiples in Pre-Modern Art, Berlin-Zurich 2014, and the co-editor of Beyond “Art Collections”: Owning and Accumulating Objects from Greek Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Berlin-Munich 2020.

Partner: Prof. Miriam De Rosa (UNIVE). Email: miriam.derosa@unive.it 

Miriam De Rosa researches and teaches film, visual cultures and media archaeology at Ca' Foscari, University of Venice, where she is associate professor in film and media.

She is the author and editor of several publications on these topics, amongst which Cinema e postmedia (postmediabooks 2013), Post-what? Post-when? (2016), Gesture (2019), Film and Domestic space (2020) and the forthcoming Grosse Fatigue (Mimesis 2024). She is sitting in the steering committee of NECS, the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies and is the general coordinator of IMACS.

Partner: Prof. Francesca Caterina Izzo (UNIVE). Email: fra.izzo@unive.it

Francesca Caterina Izzo (Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics) is Associate Professor in Chemistry for the Environment and Cultural Heritage, and Coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Conservation Science and Technology for Cultural Heritage

Partner: Prof. Sabrina Rastelli (UNIVE). Email: rastelli@unive.it

Sabrina Rastelli is Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, where she has been teaching since 1999. She received her PhD from SOAS, University of London. She regularly carries out research in China, where she has also participated in archaeological work at the Yaozhou and Jun kilns. She has taught courses at Peking University (2014) and Hanoi University (2017) and in Autumn 2023 she was a fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has been consultant and coordinator for the Treccani Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Art for the China area (PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan), Korea and South-East Asia.

Her research interests include the development of Chinese ceramics, Song dynasty culture, funerary art and contemporary art. She has organised important exhibitions on ancient China: Cina. Nascita di un Impero in 2006; China at the Court of the Emperors. Unknown Masterpieces from Han Tradition to Tang Elegance (25-907) in 2008; I Due Imperi: l’Aquila e il Dragone in 2010; Vivid Transparencies. Yaozhou Wares from the Shang Shan Tang Collection in 2022; and on a contemporary Korean artist Yeesookyung Whisper Only to You in 2020. 

She has written extensively on Chinese ceramics and ancient Chinese art: she is the author of The Yaozhou kilns: A Re-evaluation (2008) and Chinese Art: from the Origins to the Tang Dynasty (2016, in Italian, first of two volumes), and she is the editor of exhibition catalogues. She is chief editor of the book series Marco Polo Studies in Global Europe-Asia Connections.

Partner: Prof. Matej Klemenčič (UL). Email: matej.klemencic@ff.uni-lj.si

Matej Klemenčič is professor at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He published and lectured on various aspects of Baroque art and architecture in Central Europe, Venice, and the Veneto. His other research interests include Late Gothic architecture in Central Europe and the historiography of art history and architectural history.

Partner: Prof. Renata Novak Klemenčič (UL). Email: Renata.NovakKlemencic@ff.uni-lj.si

Renata Novak Klemenčič works as a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her research is primarily devoted to the art and architecture of Dubrovnik, Koper/Capodistria and the Adriatic coast, patronage and artistic exchanges, and the urban history of the late Middle Ages and early modern age in the Adriatic region.

Partner: Prof. Marta Ajmar (UW). Email: Marta.Ajmar@warwick.ac.uk

Dr Marta Ajmar is Associate Professor in History of Art and Director of Research at the University of Warwick. As a historian of craft, design and material culture, she works on making and regenerative design, reverse engineering and material mimesis, transcultural artisanal epistemologies and the historicity of materials, focussing both on the Renaissance/Early Modern period and on the present. 

Before joining the University of Warwick, she led the V&A/RCA Postgraduate Programme in the History of Design and was Deputy Director of the V&A Research Institute (supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), where she developed interdisciplinary research projects and higher education programmes. This included the project Encounters on the Shop Floor, a transdisciplinary collaboration between makers, designers, artists, academics and museum professionals exploring making as an embodied way of knowing and modelling multimodal pedagogies. The resulting co-edited volume is forthcoming with UCL Press/V&A.

She is currently working on the monograph Material Mimesis: Local and Global Connections in the Arts of the Italian Renaissance (supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship), exploring transcultural artefacts and the circulation of artisanal skill and technological knowledge between Europe and Asia. 

Between 2002 and 2006 she was lead scholar and co-curator for the major V&A research-led exhibition At Home in Renaissance Italy, supported by the Getty Foundation and the AHRC. Her edited/co-edited publications include Approaching the Italian Renaissance Interior: Sources, Methodologies, Debates (Oxford, 2007); At Home in Renaissance Italy (London, 2006); and Approaches to Renaissance Consumption (Oxford, 2002).

She has received funding from many bodies including the Getty Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the AHRC, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.

Partner: Prof. Giorgio Tagliaferro (UW). Email: G.Tagliaferro@warwick.ac.uk

Giorgio Tagliaferro (PhD, Università Ca' Foscari, Venice) is Reader in History of Art at the University of Warwick, where he is currently Head of the History of Art Department. A former scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute (2012), the recipient of a British Academy Small Grant (2015-16) and of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2016-17), he specialises in Renaissance and early modern European art, with a focus on Venice.

He has published widely on artists such as Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, and on various other subjects, including: the self-representation of the Venetian Republic; painting and its viewers; religious visual culture; painters’ workshops and creative processes. He is the main author of Le botteghe di Tiziano (2009), a seminal book on Titian and his collaborators. Most recently, he co-edited the volume Tintoretto: Identity, Practice and Meaning (2022) and published articles in the Getty Research Journal (2020) and Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana (2024).

Partner: Prof. Mark Williams (UW). Email: M.A.Williams.1@warwick.ac.uk

Professor Mark Williams is head of the Metrology and Visualisation research group at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at The University of Warwick and Principal Investigator of the High-Resolution X-ray CT scanning work.

Prof Williams is an international expert in measurement systems and 3D scanning technology and has published over 150 technical papers in peer-reviewed research Journals and has presented at numerous international conferences. He holds an honours degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Masters in Manufacturing Technology and a PhD from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). Professor Williams has been elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng). He is also a Chartered Engineer with the UK Engineering Council with over 20 years experience working in the Automotive, Aerospace, Defence and Healthcare sectors, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (FIMechE), a professional Member (MCSFS) of The Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences (CSFS), and an associate member of the British Association in Forensic Medicine (BAFM). He has worked on over 400 police investigations and received a Chief Constable award from West Midlands Police in February 2017 for the application of “ground breaking 3D printing and scanning technology”. In April 2016 he also received an achievement medal for the application of Engineering principles within Forensic Science from the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET).