Gregor Meinecke is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and the University of Hamburg, specializing in the representation of script in the sacred art of the Italian Renaissance, with a focus on the entanglements and projections to the Levant. He is an associate researcher at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (Max Planck Society). His project on "Holy Scripts and its bearers in the image of the Italian Renaissance" has produced an article on "Heretical Hebrew: On Pseudoscript and Christian Humanist "Truth" in Andrea Mantegna's Anti-Jewish Ecce Homo". He has received a grant from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and in 2023, he was awarded the University of Hamburg's prize for the best master's thesis in art history.
Research Project
Transcultural Bearers of Script: Representations and Functions in Early Modernity
The project explores transcultural representations of script and its functions in early modern Italian sacred art, focusing on the use of Arabic and Hebrew scripts. The case studies examine the legibility of painted inscriptions by artists such as Botticelli, Bellini, Mantegna, and Lippi, as well as pseudo-Arabic on halos. It analyzes how these inscriptions interact with figures, painted space, and the viewer, with the process of reception oscillating between reading and deciphering. In a second project at the Orient-Institut Beirut, Gregor Meinecke, together with Nils Weber, is developing a research network bridging European and Middle Eastern art history in the Mediterranean region.
