Studied art history, classical archaeology, and musicology in Tübingen, Rome, and Berlin (FU and TU). 1994 master of arts (Magister Artium), 1999 doctorate, scholarships from the Gerda Henkel Foundation (1995–1997), the Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venedig (1996, 1999/2000), the research training group “Aesthetics – Architectural Research – Preservation of Historical Monuments” (TU Berlin, 1998–2001), the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max Planck Institute (2001–2003). Rewarded the Hans Janssen Prize for European art history by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2004. 2003–2010 assistant researcher in the field of early modern art history in the Department of Art History of the University of Basel. 2006/2007 additionally associate researcher at the Institute of Historic Building Research and Conservation at the ETH Zurich. 2010 habilitation with the monograph “Heinrich Ludwig und die ‘ästhetischen Ketzer’: Kulturpolitik, Kulturkritik, Kunstanschauung nach 1871.” 2011 interim professor of early modern art history in the Department of Art History of the Uni Basel. 2014/2015 visiting professor at the Leuphana University of Lüneberg. 2013-2019 Heisenberg scholarship from the German Research Foundation for work at the Institute for Art History, Art Theory, and Aesthetics of the Berlin University of the Arts.

• Venice and Veneto in the Renaissance and Baroque
• Early Photographic Reproductions in the History of Art
• Nineteenth-century History of Art History, esp. Italian
• "Deutsch-Römer" in Florence and Rome
• The Art Museum (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung) Basel in the Nineteenth Century