Ella Campbell winner of the Ted Meijer Prize 2026

The Ted Meijer Prize 2026 has been awarded to Ella Campbell for her highly original MA thesis Ovid on Stone. Searching for New Meaning in Antonio Tempesta’s Painted Mythologies on Lapis Lazuli.

In this clearly argued and carefully structured study, she examines a remarkable group of early seventeenth-century artworks: mythological paintings executed on stone. Through a contextualised analysis of Antonio Tempesta’s double-sided painting Perseus and Andromeda / Venus and Adonis (1617), painted on lapis lazuli and now in the Galleria Borghese, and its pendant, Ella proposes a new interpretation of these works as a pictorial group. By reconstructing their original display based on inventories and floor plans, and by comparing them with contemporary collections in Prague and Florence, the thesis offers a nuanced reading that balances close attention to the material qualities of the objects with a reconstruction of their historical and cultural context.

The prize recognises both the quality of the thesis and Ella’s promising research plans on the reception of Antiquity in eighteenth-century Italian porcelain, in which she will once again approach understudied objects through a combination of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives. She will continue developing this research during a 10-week research stay at the KNIR, starting in April.

The Ted Meijer Prize is an award established to honour the legacy of this former director of our Institute. It is awarded once a year for the best (R)MA thesis or PhD thesis in the humanities, submitted at one of our participating universities. Ella Campbell wrote her thesis at the University of Amsterdam MA programme 'Curating Arts and Cultures', supervised by Dr Machtelt Brüggen Israëls.