Gregor Meinecke, M.A.
Curriculum
With a focus on philosophy of religion, Gregor Meinecke studied philosophy, Hebrew and history in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Madrid and continued his studies in Hamburg in art history. At the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz, he assisted Professor Gerhard Wolf’s department from January to October 2021, where he began researching representations of scripts in the Italian Renaissance and giving talks on the topic. In a student project, he also explored the history of the Department of Art History at Hamburg University through the friendship between the expressionist artist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and the art historian Wilhelm Niemeyer. From October 2022 to March 2023, Gregor Meinecke will be Junior Fellow at the DFG CAS “Imaginaria of Force”.
Under the direction of Frank Fehrenbach, Gregor Meinecke’s dissertation project explores “Sacred Writing and its medium in the Image of the Italian Renaissance.” However, his research interests extend beyond the boundaries of the Italian Renaissance to explore the phenomenon of writing in the image. He recently researched the use of script images as political messages in protest and war in Russia and Ukraine to reveal the forms, functions, potentials, and forces of writing as image.
Publications (selection)
- “Heilige Schriften? Buch- und Schriftdarstellungen in der Malerei des Quattrocento”, Hamburg 2022 (master thesis, unpublished).
- “Wilhelm Niemeyer und das Problem der Generation”, in: Die Sichtbarkeit der Idee. Zur Übertragung soziopolitischer Konzepte in der Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaft, ed. by Iris Wenderholm, Nereida Gyllensvärd, and Robin Augenstein, Berlin (in preparation, in 2023).
- “Rembrandt. Gelehrter im Studium” and “Das Sigillum Dei von John Dee”, accompanying texts for the exhibition of the Hauptseminar "Natur im Diagramm" (Winter Term 2021/22), Zoologisches Museum Hamburg (forthcoming, in 2022).
- “Wassily Kandinsky / Franz Marc: Der Blaue Reiter” and “Alfred H. Barr: Cubism and Abstract Art”, exhibition texts for the main seminar “Genealogien der Moderne” (Winter Term 2019/20): online: https://www.kulturwissenschaften.uni-hamburg.de/ks/ueber-das-institut/ausstellungen.html#15141387.
- Exhibition texts for the Hauptseminar “Brücken Hamburgs” (Summer Term 2019): Posters on the Schwanenwik Bridge, the elevated railway viaducts, and the Landungsbrücken, permanent exhibition at the Department of Art History, University of Hamburg. (https://www.kulturwissenschaften.uni-hamburg.de/ks/ueber-das-institut/ausstellungen.html)
- “Göttertriade von Eduard Ruppel”, exhibition text for the seminar “Sammlung Divers. Neusichtung historischer Objekte”: Historisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main. (https://historisches-museum-frankfurt.de/de/fuehrungen/sammlungdivers)
Research project: Holy Writing and its Medium in the Image of the Italian Renaissance
As soon as writing enters the picture, a mixing of media takes place: the reception of the visible oscillates between the reading of intelligible content and the effect of the overall impression of the picture. This reflection on media clearly emerges in the art of the Italian Renaissance, which I explore in my dissertation with selected works. Based on the legibility or illegibility of the writing or pseudo-writing appearing in the picture, I subdivide the corpus and reconstruct the functions and reception conditions of the works. Based on the representatives, I explore in how far the depicted materiality of the writing media, such as a piece of paper or an open book, plays a role in its mostly sacred content. Thereby, the concept of the writing medium carries a multi-layered meaning: besides its material character it can designate a person who presents an open book to the viewer in order to refer to its authorship. However, a writing medium can also be seen in the viewer himself, who absorbs the words of a legible scripture and henceforth incorporates them. Writing media in the image therefore provide the basis for media reflection, which is reflected in the phenomenon of scripture in the image. The distinction between legible and illegible writings is intended to provide the space to also understand illegible writings as mediators of messages and the power that underlies them as a result.
Research results: Holy Writing and its Medium in the Image of the Italian Renaissance
The Fellowship of the DFG-CAS “Imaginaria of Force” (2022/23) gave me the opportunity to devote myself to various case studies of my dissertation “Sacred Scripture and its Bearers in the Image of the Italian Renaissance”. The common core of my research was to investigate the appearance and function of (il)legible scripts and to interpret them in connection with their bearers.
Two cases shed light on the painted oeuvre of two Italian Renaissance artists: Filippo Lippi and Andrea Mantegna, who masterfully deal with both the legibility of writing and the materiality of its carriers. Legible and illegible scripts are ostentatiously juxtaposed to create contrasts that also evoke theological thoughts. In this process, the writing supports (cartellini, books, textiles, nimbuses) are decisive for the interpretation, depending on how they interact with each other. Mantegna takes this to the extreme in his Ecce Homo (ca. 1500) by staging illegible writing on the forehead of a scribe in contrast to biblical quotations on cartellini and referring to the heretic crown of Jan Hus. In this respect, the work fits into a complex, anti-Semitic context of the Mantuan court at the end of the 15th century.
A literary excursus on Heinrich Seuse’s use of writing has shown that writing functions differently from the spoken word in terms of its apotropaic power, but also in terms of its value as a didactic medium and can even trump the spoken word.