David Franz Hobelleitner
Dr David Franz Hobelleitner
Research Fellow
Unipark Nonntal, Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1, Room 2.427, 5020 Salzburg
Tel.: +43 (0)662 8044 4604
E-Mail:
Research Focus
- Visual arts of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, especially Medieval wall painting in Italy
- Theological and art-historical discourses on images
- Iconographic and iconological interpretation (especially papal iconography, papal portrait series, and holy popes)
- Art in ceremonial and liturgical contexts
- Object studies, mediality, and materiality
- (Artistic) exchange between Eastern and Latin Christianity
Biography
David Hobelleitner studied Art History and Philosophy as well as Vocal Performance in Graz. He completed a bachelor’s thesis on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Rosary Madonna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and wrote his master’s thesis on Joseph Adam Mölk and the Baroque fresco decoration of the Cistercian Abbey Church of Rein in Styria. As a student assistant, he first worked at the Institute of Art History at the University of Graz, where he was involved in the Slovenian-Austrian research project Patrons as Bearers of Regional Identity: Art in Styria from the Middle Ages to 1918. In 2015, he took part in a study course on Roman art of the Dugento at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome.
His research focuses on the visual arts of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, particularly Italian art. At the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, he was a member of the DSP College ‘Interdisciplinary Research into Historical Cultures‘ at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. In 2023, he completed his doctorate with a dissertation entitled “indubitanter efficitur sanctus.” Saintly Popes in Pictorial Programs of Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Rome. The dissertation received the 2023 Romanesque Research Prize of the Romanesque Research Prize of the European Romanesque Center Merseburg and has just been published by Schnell & Steiner in Regensburg.
From 2018 to 2024, David Hobelleitner was a research associate at the University of Salzburg. He also held a position at the University of Siegen during the winter semester of 2024/2025. In March 2025, he returned to the University of Salzburg. His current research project (working title: Heavenly Signs, Worldly Benefit. Visual Strategies and Performative Practice of Liturgical Fans) explores the performativity and materiality of flabelli and rhipidia.
Publications
Petrus, Clemens und Silvester. Heilige Päpste in römischen Bildprogrammen des Hochmittelalters, Regensburg 2025 (zugl. Univ. Diss. Salzburg 2023).
Oussama am Strand von Zarzis, in: Weiß, Matthias; Michalsky, Tanja (Hg.): Blick Richtung Europa? Dreißig „außereuropäische“ Objekte geben Antwort (Römische Studien der Bibliotheca Hertziana 52), München 2024, S. 322–333.
Santo subito? Popes as ‚New Saints‘ in the Age of Eleventh-Century Reform, in: Il Capitale Culturale 21, 2020, S. 61–85.
Papstreihen als visualisierte Vergangenheit, in: Augustyn, Wolfgang; Worm, Andrea (Hg.): Vergangenheit visualisieren. Geschichtskonzepte im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, München 2020, S. 113–136.
»…auf dem abteylichen Chor ein Altar Coenae Domini.« Der Abendmahlsaltar in der Peterskirche des Benediktinerstifts Sankt Lambrecht und seine Auftraggeber, in: Hobelleitner, David Franz; Lein, Edgar (Hg.): Auftraggeber als Träger der Landesidentität. Kunst in der Steiermark vom Mittelalter bis 1918, Graz 2016, S. 85–98.
