Online Conference: ‘Royal Nunneries at the Center of Medieval Europe. Art, Architecture, & Aesthetics’, 1-3 July 2021

This conference is dedicated to the art, architecture and material culture of female monasteries patronized by the ruling dynasties in medieval Europe between the 11^th and the 14^th centuries. This subset has been studied mostly within national academic schools resulting in separate parallel narratives of phenomena which in most cases were, in fact, related on a trans-regional scale thanks to dynastic and diplomatic connections, and also to female networks based on ties of faith and blood.

The meeting gathers scholars interested in both testing and transcending these historiographic borders and in challenging the interpretative scheme of a top-down oriented power structures in favour of a network perspective. The final aim is to detect and discuss artistic, architectural, and aesthetic discourses acting on a synchronic and diachronic scale across late medieval Europe.

Find out more here.

Scientific Organization:

• Klára Benešovská – Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Tanja Michalski, Elisabetta Scirocco – Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome
• Daniela Rywiková – Faculty of Arts, Vivarium, University of Ostrava

This event takes place online on Zoom. Please register.

Conference Programme

1 July 2021

Chair: Elisabetta Scirocco (Rome)

14:30 – Welcome

14:45 – Introduction

• Tanja Michalsky & Elisabetta Scirocco (Rome)
  Introduction

15:00

Klára Benešovská & Daniela Rywiková (Prague – Ostrava)
Royal Nunneries in the Czech Lands: Old and New Questions and Approaches

15:30 – NETWORKING AND COMMUNICATION

Chair: Cristina Andenna (Graz)

• Dragoş Gh. Năstăsoiu (Moscow)
  A Holy Abbess between Byzantium and the West: St. Euphrosyne of Polotsk as Monastic Founder and Saint

• Michaela Zöschg (London)
  Beyond Naples. Fourteenth-Century Queens and their Clarissan Foundations in a Transregional Perspective

• Eszter Konrád (Budapest)
  “Helisabet filia Stephani regis ungarorum illustris”: The Image of a Saintly Nun from the Arpad Dynasty as Reflected in the Dominican Sources (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century)

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2 July 2021

14:30 – ARCHITECTURE: SPACES AND FUNCTIONS

Chair: Marius Winzeler (Prague)

• Jakub Adamski & Piotr Pajor (Warsaw – Cracow)
  The Architecture of the Dynastic Nunnery of Poor Clares in Stary Sącz and the Artistic Relations between Lesser Poland and Upper Rhine in the Early Fourteenth Century

• Angelica Federici (Rome)
  Rome, Barons and Nunneries: Art, Architecture and Aesthetics in Convents in Medieval Latium

• Jennifer S. Vlček Schurr (Glasgow)
  Function and Faith: Revisiting the Roles of Hospital, Church, Chapel and Oratory in the Convent of St. Francis, Prague

Break

16:30 – LITURGY, SPIRITUALITY, MEDITATION, DEVOTION

Chair: Daniela Rywiková (Ostrava)

• Kristina Potuckova (New Haven)
  Fanning the Faith: Hohenburg Flabellum and the Visual Environment of Medieval Nunneries

• Agnieszka Patała (Wrocław)
  “Congratulamini mihi omnes qui diligitis Dominum…” – The Monastery of Poor Clares in Wrocław and its Medieval Furnishing

• Teresa D’urso (Naples)
  Book Patronage and Spiritual Agendas in Angevin Naples: The Painted Breviaries of Two Poor Clares from the Corpus Domini Monastery

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3 July 2021

14:30 – MEMORY, IDENTITY AND REPRESENTATION

Chair: Alexandra Gajewski (London)

• Avital Heyman (Tel Aviv)
  A Duel in the Abbey: Abbess Agnès and her Façade in the Abbaye aux Dames at Saintes

• Susan Marti (Bern)
  Agnes from Habsburg (ca. 1281–1364) and Her Franciscan Double Monastery in Königsfelden

• Giulia Rossi Vairo (Lisbon)
  Seeing Double in Odivelas: Nuns and Monks in the Monastery of St Denis, a Royal Pantheon in Medieval Portugal

Break

16:30 – FINAL ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

Chair: TANJA MICHALSKY (Rome)