Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralata studied History of Art at the University of Rome „La Sapienza“. As Post-doc fellow as well as research assistant she cooperated for several years at the Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte. In the 2014 she has been licensed with the National Academic Qualification as Associate Professor in the History of Art. 2014-2017 she carried out as PI a research financed by MIUR (Firb 2013: The Orsini and Savelli in Papal Rome. Patronage and Arts of Ancient Families from Feudalism to the European Baroque Courts). In that context she was fixed term researcher and lecturer in the field of the History of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the University of Chieti-Pescara. Her main areas of research can be summarized in the cultural and artistic exchange between Italy and the German-speaking Countries, with special emphasis on the History of Collecting.

Luka Ručigaj, MA, has worked at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities since 2018. He is preparing his doctoral thesis on the activities of art patron Wolf Engelbert, Count of Auersperg (1610–1673). In 2017 he obtained his MA at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) with a thesis on the Fall of Phaeton, for which he won the Prešeren Prize, awarded to students at the Ljubljana Faculty of the Arts. Ručigaj had previously completed his BA in history and art history at the University of Ljubljana.

Katharina Leithner, MA, studied art history, English and comparative literature at the universities of Vienna and St Andrews. She is research assistant at the Liechtenstein Princely Collections.

Gernot Mayer MA, research fellow at the Department of Art History, University of Vienna, is preparing his doctoral thesis on the cultural policies and art collection of Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg (1711–1794)). He completed a fellowship at the Center for the History of Collecting at the Frick Collection in New York and has published several times on the history of the Kunsthistorisches Museum collection.

From 2010 to 2014 Matthias Bodenstein was a research fellow and project researcher at the Department of Art History, University of Vienna. In November 2017 he completed his doctorate with a thesis on “Kunst and Zeremoniell in Rom während des Pontifikats von Paul V. (1605-1621)”. Since August 2017 he has been collaborating on the project to research the Harrach Collection under the direction of Prof. Sebastian Schütze and Prof. Wolfgang Prohaska. His key research interests lie in the areas of art and ceremonial, and art in papal Rome.

Dr. Anna Frasca-Rath has been a research fellow at the Department of Art History, University of Vienna, since 2013. Her key research interests lie in the areas of 19th-century sculpture and painting, the social history of the artist, and art and cultural transfer (esp. between Italy and northern Europe).

Stefanie Linsboth, MA, studied art history and religious studies in Vienna and Münster. She is a research fellow at the Institute for History of Art and Musicology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Professor Sebastian Schütze has held the chair in Early Modern Art History at the University of Vienna since 2009. He is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a member of the academic advisory board of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples. His key research areas include: Italian art in the early modern period and its impact in Europe; art and art patronage in papal Rome; Naples as a center of art; Spanish art of the Siglo de Oro; the social history of the artist; the history of collecting and the art market; interrelations between art and literature from Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Marino to Nietzsche, George, Rilke and Hofmannsthal. In addition to monographic publications on the art patronage of Urban VIII, on Caravaggio, Massimo Stanzione and William Blake, he has curated major international exhibitions.