Raphaèle Preisinger

Raphaèle Preisinger studied Art History, History, and Philosophy at the University of Bonn and received her Ph.D. degree in Art History and Media Theory from the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in 2012. She is currently Assistant Professor (UZH-Förderungsprofessur) and Principal Investigator of the research project GLOBECOSAL. Global Economies of Salvation. Art and the Negotiation of Sanctity in the Early Modern Period funded by the ERC (Starting Grant) and the SNSF (PRIMA Grant) at the University of Zurich. Her work has also been funded by the John Carter Brown Library, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), among others. While her current research centers on the global circulation of images and objects in the early modern period, she main­tains a major focus on image and piety in the Middle Ages. Her first book is titled ‘Lignum vitae’. Zum Verhältnis materieller Bilder und mentaler Bildpraxis im Mittelalter (Wilhelm Fink: 2014). She is the editor of the volume Medieval Art at the Intersection of Visuality and Material Culture. Studies in the ‘Semantics of Vision’ (Brepols: 2021). She is presently preparing a second book provisionally titled The Destruction of the Idols and the Emergence of the Christian Cult Image in New Spain: (Re)Framing Sacred Objects in the Age of Early European Expansion.

Research project