Welcome to STUDIOLO LCL

I am so happy you are here and have found my page. This is where you find everything around my practice as an art historian and illustrator. I recently went on a picture book retreat and had to introduce myself, so I made the map you see below.

I was born just outside Hamburg, Germany and moved to Italy when I was a teenager. After finishing school there, I headed to St. Andrews (yes, I did forget to include it on the map) to study and after a year decided to move to Berlin and study History of Art and German Literature at the Humboldt University.

My M.A. took me to London and that was truly a spectacular time. I studied History of Design - specializing in Renaissance and Early Modern Material Culture - at the Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum. The days then were spent in incredible museum galleries, libraries and reading and writing about 16th century objects. It is an interesting turn of events, that I did spend all my time at the museum rarely going to the RCA and appreciating everything creative that was going on there. But hey - hindsight!

At the time, my now husband was studying in the US and I went back and forth a lot, which led me to apply for an internship at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford (CT). It was the perfect time to intern there. They were renovating a huge part of their galleries and I got to be up close with the objects and experience what it is like when you have to rethink basically all of your museum displays.

While still in the States, I applied for a PhD-program at the University of Hamburg and got into a DFG-funded research group, investigating those instances where denominations (i.e. Catholic and Lutheran or Lutheran and Reformed) continued or shared religious practices throughout and after the Reformation. I was looking at Renaissance and Early Modern portraiture and the combination of rosaries and pomanders that were depicted on them. Pomanders were inherently fragrant object, so I also read and wrote a lot about the perception of smell and the senses as part of the Lutheran faith at the time.

This is also the time when Kubo, our lovely Welsh Corgi Cardigan, joined our family and I mention him here, because he is MY MUSE!

I finished my PhD and moved to Mannheim with my husband, who, at this point, was a professional ice hockey player. This was a time when I was still figuring out how to make wanting to work in a museum and hockey life work, but life had other plans. We were expecting our first daughter when the Corona pandemic hit and had our second daughter twoish years after. During the time of the kids being super small and having these extremely early morning wake-ups is where I found drawing.

I have always been a creative child, but never considered myself of to have any artistic talent (and I still maintain that I don’t have much talent, but instead am putting in the hours - this is a text for another time though). While trying to stay awake and present for my daughters at 4am, I started drawing and have not stopped since. I only later found out that ‘Illustration’ exists and is an actual job. I fell in love with the magic of drawing and started to study Illustration when we moved to the Black Forest, the gorgeous and magical place that the ice hockey life took us to. What a treat to be able to walk those woods every day and hope that one day a little fairy might jump on Kubo’s back and come home with us.

Photo by my incredible friend and fellow corgi mom Vivien Adrien.

It was in the Black Forest, where I started really diving into Illustration and figuring out where I wanted to go with it. I had fallen out of love with History of Art completely at this point and it turns out that the time off from museums, galleries and exhibition was a good thing. It gave me space to reflect on how I want to experience Art and engage with the discipline. How I would like my kids to experience museum spaces and through their questions I have learned so much about how to help them understand what they see.

Since moving back to Italy in the Spring of 2026 - my husband retired from professional hockey after playing the Winter Olympics 2026 in Milan and finishing off the season in Villingen-Schwenningen - I have been thinking a lot about where I would like to go with my Studiolo and how I can combine drawing and painting with my art historical background.

I have lots and lots of ideas and can’t wait to share them with you on here!

Welcome to Studiolo LCL.