Born in 1973, Rainer studied art history and ancient history at the University of Innsbruck and Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1998 to 2001 he completed a research stay at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and, in 2008, he received his PhD at the University of Innsbruck. From 2008 to 2018 he was a curator at the Bavarian Administration of Palaces, Gardens and Lakes in Munich, where he was responsible for temporary exhibitions and the World Heritage Margravial Opera House Bayreuth. From 2020 to 2024, he was a research fellow at the SNSF research project Textures of Sacred Scripture at the University of Zurich. There he coordinated the material analytical studies on dyes, pigments, and metal inks in Carolingian and Ottonian manuscripts of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Austrian National Library, the St. Gallen Abbey Library, the Bamberg State Library and the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel. Since October 2024, he is Managing Director and Program Coordinator of eikones. Rainer is author of numerous studies on Jewish and Christian book cultures in the early and late Middle Ages. He is currently completing a monograph on Carolingian and Ottonian purple manuscripts and is working on a new book project on the image of the codex and the scroll in Christian and Jewish art. 

• Praxeologies of the medieval book
• Materials and semantics of sacred scriptures and images
• Colour perception in the Middle Ages and material analyses of medieval dyes and pigments
• Techniques of surface refinement and polishing
• Transcultural exchange processes of Jewish and Christian book cultures
• Museology