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 thesis on "Holy Script 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 joined the DFG Center for Advanced Studies „Imaginaria of Force“ in Hamburg as a Junior Fellow and was awarded the University of Hamburg's prize for the best master's thesis in art history.

Research Project

Traveling Alif: Early Modern Pseudo-Scripts from the Levant to Italy 

As part of my doctoral thesis, this project explores representations of script and its functions in early modern Italian sacred art with a special focus on the use of Arabic and Hebrew scripts. Through the lens of (il)legibility, the case studies examine inscriptions in paintings by artists such as Botticelli, Bellini, Mantegna, and Lippi. The focus on the depicted materiality – paper slips, cloth, architecture, and even halos – is crucial to understanding the painted scripts. Whether they resemble Mongolian, Arabic, or Hebrew script, the depiction of these writing supports is to be understood as a transcultural interaction and requires an interdisciplinary approach toward the objects. Within a selection of case studies, I aim to analyze how these scripts function, interact with the figures and viewers, and engage in a process of reception that oscillates 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.