"Pope painter" Triegel receives honorary doctorate from Leipzig University

The Leipzig painter Michael Triegel (56) has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig University. This is in recognition of his outstanding artistic interpretation of Christian-religious motifs, the university announced. The honorary doctorate is to be awarded next Tuesday (April 29).

Triegel is a representative of the "New Leipzig School" of painting. He specializes in religious and ecclesiastical themes. In 2010, he was commissioned by the Regensburg diocese to paint a portrait of the then Pope Benedict XVI.

In Naumburg Cathedral, the so-called Cranach-Triegel altar recently caused discussion. Triegel had added a missing centerpiece to an altar by Lucas Cranach the Elder. There was criticism due to its location in the west choir.

Triegel was born in Erfurt in 1968. In the early 1990s, he studied painting at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. He was baptized a Catholic in 2014.