Elisabetta was born in Viterbo on 13 July 1973. After completing her linguistic maturity spoken languages: English and French), she graduated from the International Academy of High Fashion KOEFIA in Rome, by undertaking the professional career of Fashion Product Manager from 1996 to 2012.

Elisabetta undertook a multi-year collaboration with the French engineer Pascal Cotte, inventor of the multi-spectral technology L.A.M. (Layer Amplification. Method) able to scan and return, through special calculations, images of eventual pre-existing elements and remakes present within the pictorial layers of the paintings. During this professional  collaboration  Elisabetta Gnignera, studied the  implications of Pascal Cotte's discoveries  in clothing as they emerged from the scanning of the famous paintings of La Dama with an Ermine and  the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, by  reconstructing the clothes depicted in the pre-existing portrait of a young woman  reconstituted  by the French engineer Pascal Cotte under the pictorial surface of the Mona Lisa  preserved in the Louvre.

Elisabetta currently works as an Independent researcher in the History of   Medieval and Renaissance Dress and Hairstyles (XIII-XVII centuries) by even holding historical consultations for the reconstruction and realization of  headgear and hairstyles of the XIII-XVII centuries.

Publications

- Vergini, spose vedove. Stati sociali e acconciature nell’ Italia del Quattrocento, Collana editoriale Velamen, Amazon editions, 2016.  [Trans. Virgins, brides, widows. Social states and hairstyles in fifteenth-century Italy].

- Leonardo. La Bella svelata, Bologna Scripta Maneant 2016 with Preface by Martin  J.Kemp:   an extensive monograph contextualizing the clothing and cosmetic details  as  depicted in the drawing on parchment known as La Bella Principessa currently attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by Professors Martin J. Kemp and Mina Gregori. 

- I Soperchi ornamenti. Copricapi e acconciature femminili nell’Italia del Quattrocento, Protagon, 2010. [Transl.: I Soperchi ornamenti. Women’s Headdresses and Hairstyles in fifteenth-century Italy].

Editing

Co-curator with Barbara Aniello of the volume: Lorenzo da Viterbo. Magister Pictor of the Italian Renaissance. 1469-2019, Rome, G&B Press, 2018.

Articles, Essays and Conferences

Elisabetta is author of numerous articles and essays about Dress history that have been  published in magazines and art catalogs. She holds  thematic conferences on Italian clothing from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Essays on the Tarot

She is the author of an unpublished essay on the clothing painted in the so-called Charles VI’s Tarot whose aim is to trace it back to its place of origin.