Dr Flavia Fiorillo

Research Associate, non-invasive analysis of paintings, books and manuscripts

Flavia Fiorillo is a Research Associate working in Scientific Research. Her research interests focus on the material choices made by artists and their changes across different historical periods and geographic regions, and the use of scientific methodologies to refine the corpus of artworks attributed to specific artists.

She holds a PhD in Cultural Heritage Studies (University of Bologna, Italy), a MSc in Science for the conservation and restoration of cultural heritage (University of Bologna) and BA in Science applied to cultural heritage (Sapienza University of Rome). From 2012 to 2019, she worked at the University of Bologna and did short internships at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), ETH (Zurich) and the University of Liverpool (UK).

She joined the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2020 as the ZKS/MINIARE Fellow, and she continues her research with a focus on non-invasive analyses of manuscripts, portrait miniatures, and printed books.

Pronouns: she/her

Publications

Rönnerstam C., Fiorillo F., Sandström T., Mårtensson M., “Rediscovering the colours of Elias Brenner’s pigment nomenclature from 1680”, npj Heritage Science, 13, 417, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-025-01987-2

Fiorillo F., Cheese E., Oberg Stradal S., Reynolds S., “The extraordinary universe of Peter Apian: technical investigation of five copies of a 16th-century astronomical book”, Heritage Science, 12:190, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-024-01306-1

Gameson R., Beeby A., Fiorillo F., Nicholson C., Reynolds S., Ricciardi P., “The Pigments of British Illuminators 600-1600: A Scientific and Cultural Study”, Archetype Publications, 2023.

Fiorillo F., Burgio L., Kimbriel C.S., Ricciardi P., “Non-invasive technical investigation of English portrait miniatures attributed to Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver”, Heritage, 4(3), 2021, 1165-1164.

Fiorillo F., Hendriks L., Hajdas I., Vandini M., Huysecom E. “The rediscovery of Jan Ruyscher and its consequence”, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 61(1), 2021, 55-63.

Fiorillo F., Fiorentino S., Montanari M., Roversi Monaco C., Del Bianco A., Vandini M., “Learning from the past, intervening in the present: the role of conservation science in the challenging restoration of the wall painting Marriage at Cana by Luca Longhi (Ravenna, Italy)”, Heritage Science, 8, 2020, 8-10.