Bredekamp studied art history, archeology, philosophy and sociology in Kiel, Munich, Berlin and Marburg. In 1974 he received his doctorate at the Philipps-Universität Marburg with a thesis on art as a medium of social conflicts, especially the "Bilderkämpfe" of late antiquity to the Hussite revolution. He worked first as a volunteer at the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main, from 1976 as assistant in the division of Art History at the University of Hamburg.
In 1982 he was appointed professor of art history at the University of Hamburg, in 1993 he moved to the Humboldt University Berlin. Since 2003 he has been a Permanent Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, in 2005 the Gadamer-endowed chair.[1] Bredekamp visited the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1991), Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (1992), Getty Center, Los Angeles (1995 and 1998) and the Collegium Budapest (1999).
The research foci of Horst Bredekamp are Iconoclastic Fury, sculpture of the Romanesque, art of the Renaissance and Mannerism, political iconography, art and technology, new media. In 2000 he founded the project "The Technical Image" at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Centre for Cultural Techniques (HZK) of the Humboldt University Berlin, which developed under his leadership visually critical methods, a theory of pictorial knowledge in the fields of science and technology and medical visualizations. Since 2008 Bredekamp has directed the newly established DFG-Kolleg research group "Picture Act and embodiment" at the Humboldt University Berlin.
In 2007 appeared Horst Bredekamp's in German newspapers much celebrated monograph "Galilei der Künstler" ("Galilei the artist", see below) which was based on a sensational discovery of an edition of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius including unknown Galileo attributed ink drawings. After a thorough inspection including material technical studies this issue was found to be genuine by Horst Bredekamp et al.[2][3] In 2012 art historian Nick Wilding discovered, that this proved copy was a complete forgery which had been brought by the Italian antiquarian Marino Massimo De Caro in the U.S. antique trade.[4][5]
Bredekamp is a member of the board of the Schering Foundation and member of Foundation for Sports History Museums.
