Author Archives: Roisin Astell

Seminars: Uncovering the Parish Church’s Naughty Bits, talk by Dr Emma J. Wells, The Churches Conservation Trust seminar series, Thursday 23 July at 1pm

Gazing at the inside or outside of an historic church, your eyes are likely to encounter strange beasts, frolicking figures and twisted foliage staring back at you from doorways, windows, friezes, corbel tables, roof bosses and stained glass – although plenty are just hidden enough to fool the eye. What are these strange images? HiddenContinue reading “Seminars: Uncovering the Parish Church’s Naughty Bits, talk by Dr Emma J. Wells, The Churches Conservation Trust seminar series, Thursday 23 July at 1pm”

New Publication: Visualizing Justice in Burgundian Prose Romance: Text and Image in Manuscripts of the Wavrin Master (1450s-1460s), by Rosalind Brown-Grant

This book explores the textual and visual representation of justice in a corpus of chivalric romances produced in the mid-15th century for noble patrons at the court of Burgundy. This is the first monograph devoted to manuscripts illuminated by the mid-fifteenth-century artist known as the Wavrin Master, so-called after his chief patron, Jean de Wavrin, chronicler and councillor at the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy.

CFP: Identity and Status in Byzantine Material Culture, International Congress on Medieval Studies (13-15 May 2021), deadline 15 September 2020

In addition to written sources like letters, Byzantine material culture provides evidence for identity and status. Coins and seals, textiles and jewelry, and inscriptions and art objects — these objects provide a window on the ways in which individuals and groups at all levels understood and presented themselves and their place in society. Although focusing on objects from Byzantium this panel welcomes speakers working on materials from a comparative perspective.

New Publication: The Notion of Liminality and the Medieval Sacred Space, edited by Ivan Foletti & Katarína Kravčíková

The thematic frame of this issue is the anthropological notion of liminality, applied both to physical as well as imaginary places of transition in medieval art. The volume is thus dedicated to the phenomenon of the limen, the threshold in medieval culture, understood mainly as a spatial, ritual and temporal category. The structure of the book follows the virtual path of any medieval visitor entering the sacred space.

Conference recording: Secret Spaces: Medieval Sacristies, Vestries, Treasure Rooms and their Contents, Society of Antiquaries of London, 25 February 2019

On the 25th February 2019, the Society of Antiquaries of London hosted a one-day conference on Secret Spaces: Medieval Sacristies, Vestries, Treasure Rooms and their Contents. The aim of this conference is to introduce the subject of ecclesiastical treasure houses to both the academic world and the wider public. You can now watch the entire conference from your very own sofa – scroll down for all the recordings.

Resource: Writing about Art with Art Critic Tabish Khan, Association for Art History

How do you write about art? On Wednesday 24 June we launched a new series of short online talks about writing about art. We started the series finding out how to write about art and exhibitions with art critic, Tabish Khan. Tabish has been visual arts editor at Londonist since 2013 and writes extensively aboutContinue reading “Resource: Writing about Art with Art Critic Tabish Khan, Association for Art History”

Online Seminar: Medieval French Online Seminar, 22 July 2020 at 5pm BST

We hope you can join us for the next meeting on 22 July 2020 at 5pm BST. We will have two papers – Bex Courtier (Cambridge): “Towards a Migrant Consciousness: Reading Saladin and Chamoiseau’s Frères migrants” and Charlotte Spencer (Durham): “The Face in the Fountain: Reading, Reflection, and Representation on French Fourteenth-century Ivory Mirror Cases”

New Publication: Venetian and Ottoman Heritage in the Aegean: The Bailo House in Chalcis, Greece, edited by Nikos Kontogiannis & Stefania Skartsis

This book tells the astonishing story of a secular building and its inhabitants over six centuries and four successive civilizations. The Bailo House was constructed as a public loggia in the 14th century by Venetian officials in their Aegean colony of Negroponte on the Byzantine island of Euripos. Italian designs were followed and copied in the style of the lagoon’s palaces, digging the foundations through the earlier Byzantine layers.

CFP: Modernity and Lateness in Medieval Architecture, International Congress on Medieval Studies (13-15 May 2021), deadline 15 September 2020

This panel challenges Eurocentric progress models of stylistic change that presuppose a nascent, fully- realized, and late style in architecture. The panel aims to (re)situate the eclectic visual vocabularies of secular and religious buildings from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries that are indebted to medieval building practices and designs within the larger and more established narratives of art and architectural history.