Costantino Moretti

Costantino Moretti's research interests revolve around the history and philology of Medieval Chinese Buddhism through the study of textual and iconographic primary sources. He is particularly interested in the role of apocrypha in the spread of Buddhism to China and the part that non-canonical scriptures produced in China played in the evolution, that is to say in the "sinification", of this religious system.

He also studies representations of Buddhist scriptures in Dunhuang mural paintings to gain a better understanding of the relationship between images, cartouche inscriptions, and original textual sources and to further explore how the conceptual and symbolic ornamental program of Dunhuang caves may have been planned and how this symbolism shapes the religious space in Buddhist cave art.