Rebecca Allen

Rebecca Allen is an art historian specializing in early modern European print and manuscript culture, with a focus on alchemical manuscripts and early printed books in German-speaking regions. She received her MA in art history from the University of California, Riverside, where her thesis examined the transformation of visual strategies of secrecy in the transition from manuscript to print through the case studies of Das Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (Konstanz, 1410–1419) and Pandora, das ist, die edelste Gab Gottes (Basel, 1582). Her research has been supported by the Françoise Forster-Hahn Travel Award, which enabled her primary source research on multiple copies of Heilige Dreifaltigkeit and Pandora at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. During her fellowship at the Beckman Center, she will build on this work through study of the Institute’s copy of the 1582 Basel printing of Pandora and related alchemical and Paracelsian materials, with particular attention to the relationship between print, image, and secrecy.