Call for Applications: Mary Jaharis Center Grants 2026–2027, deadline 1 February 2026

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce its 2026–2027 grant competition.

Mary Jaharis Center Co-Funding Grants promote Byzantine studies in North America. These grants provide co-funding to organize scholarly gatherings (e.g., workshops, seminars, small conferences) in North America that advance scholarship in Byzantine studies broadly conceived. We are particularly interested in supporting convenings that build diverse professional networks that cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines, propose creative approaches to fundamental topics in Byzantine studies, or explore new areas of research or methodologies.

Mary Jaharis Center Dissertation Grants are awarded to advanced graduate students working on Ph.D. dissertations in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. These grants are meant to help defray the costs of research-related expenses, e.g., travel, photography/digital images, microfilm.

Mary Jaharis Center Publication Grants support book-length publications or major articles in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. Grants are aimed at early career academics. Preference will be given to postdocs and assistant professors, though applications from non-tenure track faculty and associate and full professors will be considered. We encourage the submission of first-book projects.

Mary Jaharis Center Project Grants support discrete and highly focused professional projects aimed at the conservation, preservation, and documentation of Byzantine archaeological sites and monuments dated from 300 CE to 1500 CE primarily in Greece and Turkey. Projects may be small stand-alone projects or discrete components of larger projects. Eligible projects might include archeological investigation, excavation, or survey; documentation, recovery, and analysis of at risk materials (e.g., architecture, mosaics, paintings in situ); and preservation (i.e., preventive measures, e.g., shelters, fences, walkways, water management) or conservation (i.e., physical hands-on treatments) of sites, buildings, or objects.

The application deadline for all grants is February 1, 2026. For further information, please visit the Mary Jaharis Center website: https://maryjahariscenter.org/grants.

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center, with any questions.

Student scholarships: British Archaeological Association’s Toulouse Romanesque Conference, deadline 31 January 2026

The British Archaeological Association are excited to announce that they have a number of Student scholarships for those wishing to attend the ninth biennial International Romanesque Conference.

This conference focuses on Transmission, Reception, and Imitation in Romanesque art and architecture and will be held at the Hôtel d’Assézat in Toulouse from 13-15 April 2026. This is followed by a two-day programme of visits to sites such as Moissac and monuments in Toulouse on 16-17 April 2026.

Scholarships will only be awarded to those who can attend the conference in its entirety. The scholarship covers lectures and site visits, accommodation for two nights, entrance fees and all included meals, refreshments and receptions. Travel to the conference is not included. 

Scholarships are given to those studying at postgraduate level and those who have been awarded research degrees in these areas within the last two years. The scholarships are funded by the generosity of those attending and the number awarded varies according to the funds available. Successful applicants are expected to join the BAA if not already members. For up-to-date details about the conference, keep an eye on the conference webpage.

How to apply

Send the following to rplant62@hotmail.com by 31st January 2026:

  • A short CV
  • Brief statement on the reasons for wanting to attend the conference and how it might relate to your own research
  • Either:
    • Academic reference
    • Or the name and contact details of one referee (they must submit references by the deadline)

Please note that it is the applicant’s responsibility to either include the academic reference with the application or ensure their nominated referee sends it in. The BAA will not chase references.

Successful applicants will be informed by 14th February 2026. 

Murray Seminar: ‘Like himself and no other: The Story of Morgante Nano at the Florentine Court of Cosimo I de’ Medici’ with Sarah McBryde, 9 December 2025, Birkbeck, 17:00—18:30 (GMT)

Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, Keynes Library and Online, 17:00 — 18:30 GMT

People with dwarfism were frequently employed as attendants in courts across Europe from the Medieval period until the eighteenth century and their presence is recorded in contemporary artworks and written sources. Despite their popularity, traditional academic approaches tended to marginalise court dwarfs and, until recently, little consideration was given to the possibility that they could have made any significant contribution to court life. This seminar takes a fresh look at the court dwarf tradition in sixteenth-century Florence by investigating the pictorial and archival evidence regarding Morgante, a notable figure in the ducal household of Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Spanish-Neapolitan consort Eleonora di Toledo. Morgante is the most famous of the Medici’s dwarf attendants due to his prominence in the historical record. He was the subject of numerous portraits by the pre-eminent court artists of the time, including Agnolo Bronzino, Valerio Cioli and Giambologna, and was also immortalised by the Florentine academician Antonfrancesco Grazzini in two satirical poems. The seminar assesses biographical information from archival and other written sources, along with analyses of Morgante’s surviving portraits, in order to provide new perspectives on his life, both inside and outside the court, and examine his role as jester-entertainer to the Medici grand dukes.

Dr Sarah McBryde is an Independent Scholar. She completed her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2022, further to a master’s degree and graduate certificate, also at Birkbeck. She currently serves as Assistant Editor for the monograph series Elements in the Renaissance, published by Cambridge University Press. McBryde’s publications include ‘“Per mano della Maria Nana”: A Female Dwarf in the Retinue of Eleonora di Toledo’, in Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350–1750: Real, Imagined, Metaphorical (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), and ‘Rethinking the Life of Court Dwarfs in Early Modern Florence: The Case of Pietro Barbino at the Medici Court’, Renaissance Studies (online, Oct 2024; vol. 39.5, Nov 2025). Her research on Morgante will be included in the forthcoming conference proceedings volume Playing Fools, published by Brepols in association with the recent Louvre exhibition Figures du Fou, Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques (2024–25).

Book your place. Find out more on the Murray Seminar website.

Online Lecture: ‘Learning Late Antiquity: The Quarry Church at Deir al-Ganadla and the Lost Timber Nave’, with Mikael Muehlbauer, 9 December 2025, 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

December 9, 2025 | Zoom | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

The Quarry Church at Deir al-Ganadla (Asyut, Middle Egypt) and the Lost Timber Nave
Mikael Muehlbauer, Columbia University

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtot Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2025–2026 East of Byzantium lecture series.

This presentation presents the little-known Quarry church of Mary at Deir al-Ganadla (near Asyut) as a tool for students of Late Antiquity to visualize lost timber-roofed basilicas in Egypt as well as the Mediterranean more broadly. The church’s value lies in its mural program, which orders the Pharaonic mine from which it was consecrated into a fictive freestanding basilica. These paintings depict painted timber ephemera from circa 500 that are largely lost to us. By fully documenting this largely unknown church and its decorative schema we may reconstruct elements of freestanding basilicas in Egypt and the wider Mediterranean which lack extant naves. Although modest, Ganadla’s import should not be understated, as it is the most in-tact Late Antique church in Egypt known.

Mikael Muehlbauer is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. He is a specialist in the architecture of Medieval Ethiopia, Egypt and the textile arts of the Western Indian Ocean world.

Advance registration required. Register on the East of Byzantium website. 


Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Online Lecture: ‘Worshipping the Mother Goddess: An Underground Cult Complex in Late Antique Aphrodisias’ with Ine Jacobs, 2 December 2025, 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

December 2, 2025 | Zoom | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)
Worshipping the Mother Goddess: An Underground Cult Complex in Late Antique Aphrodisias, Ine Jacobs, University of Oxford

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in their 2025–2026 lecture series.

Excavations in a suburban neighborhood of Aphrodisias have revealed a remarkably well-preserved underground cult complex dedicated to the Anatolian mother goddess Kybele. Concealed within the basement level of a large late antique private mansion—strategically positioned between the residence’s public quarters and an east–west street—the complex consists of a spacious central cult chamber, several smaller subsidiary rooms, a long subterranean corridor, and a lightwell that, in its final phase, was sealed and adapted for communal dining. To date, the sanctuary has been traced over an area of 26 by 15 meters, though it almost certainly extended further.

Originally established in the imperial period, the complex underwent several renovations in Late Antiquity, including a near-total rebuilding in the later 5th century. The sanctuary in this form remained active into the early 7th century, until the mansion that housed it was abruptly destroyed by fire in 617. Excavations have yielded a rich assemblage of cult equipment, including four statuettes of Kybele, effigies of other deities, three enigmatic “mountain busts,” amulets, numerous ceramic incense burners, ceramic and copper-alloy lamps, and copper-alloy tableware.

This presentation examines the architectural setting of the complex, structural features, cultic imagery, associated material culture, and the broader social and religious conditions at Aphrodisias that allowed pagan worship to endure into the 7th century.

Ine Jacobs is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Associate Professor of Byzantine Archaeology and Visual Culture at the University of Oxford.

Advance registration required. Register on the Mary Jaharis Center website. Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Lecture: ‘The Many Lives of the Asante Ewer’ with Lloyd de Beer, British Archaeological Association, 3 December 2025, online and Society of Antiquaries, 5.30pm (GMT) 

The British Museum’s medieval curator – Charles Hercules Read – was responsible for acquiring the Asante Ewer in the late 19th century. Read was the principal curator for ethnography, and was also responsible for acquiring and writing the first catalogue of the Benin Bronzes. This lecture will consider the Asante ewer, its 1896 looting from Kumasi, its subsequent acquisition and display history at the British Museum, and how that intersects with the broader theme of 19th/20th Century scholars’ approach to the global Middle Ages, refracted through a colonial/Imperial lens.

Location: The Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London

Time: Tea is served from 5 p.m. and the Chair is taken at 5.30 p.m. 

Watch this lecture live on YouTube.

Find out more on the British Archaeological Association website. 

Following this lecture, the British Archaeological Association warmly invites members and guests to a celebratory drinks reception following December’s Annual Lecture to mark the publication of a major new volume: From Miniature to Monumental: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, a Festschrift in honour of Professor Sandy Heslop.

Find out more about the book launch here.

Conference: ‘Art and Proof in the Ninth Century’, Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University, 5-6 December 2025

Art and Proof in the Ninth Century, Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University, December 5–6, 2025

The next Index of Medieval Art conference, ‘Art and Proof in the Ninth Century’, organised by Professors Beatrice Kitzinger and Charlie Barber in collaboration with the Index, and co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Archaeology, will take place on December 6. T

The conference will follow on the department’s 2025 Kurt Weitzmann Memorial Lecture by Francesca dell’Acqua (Università di Salerno) on December 5, which will double as the conference keynote.

The springing point of the conference is December 825, when the city of Paris witnessed a synod devoted to the discussion of the status of images in the Carolingian world. This meeting, convened in response to flare-ups of the “image question” in Constantinople and Rome, set forth a Latin Christian understanding of images that would remain dominant in early and high Medieval Europe. The dossier affirmed the value of images as mnemonics and devotional aids but ultimately re-asserted the primacy of verbal media in the religious sphere. However, as the conference speakers will show, artistic evidence itself suggests that ninth-century approaches to the role of images complicated and exceeded those prescribed for them by the bishops at Paris.

Prof. dell’Acqua’s lecture will directly address the Roman–Frankish context in which the Paris synod unfolded. The papers that follow will dramatically expand the lens through which we view the central questions by considering the notion of proof in the ninth century through a much wider lens, reaching from the British Isles to Japan and from Georgia to Egypt and representing a wide range of languages and religious communities. Key themes include: the terminology surrounding images and their uses; questions of representation, semiotics, authenticity and truth; propositions that need proving and their modes of proof; the functions and status of images in society, and how these are secured; how occasions for image discussion reflect on local circumstances and priorities; ways in which discussing the validity of images intersects with politics, diplomacy, or self-fashioning; whether the notion of proof in relation to images, which emerged from a specific Christian and European moment, resonates in other contexts; and whether a more global perspective provides different valences for the concept of “proof” through artwork.

Advance registration for the conference is free and appreciated. Find out more on the IMA website. 

Organisors

  • Charlie Barber, Professor, Princeton University
  • Beatrice Kitzinger, Associate Professor, Princeton University

To accommodate those unable to travel to Princeton, both the Weitzmann Lecture and the conference will be livestreamed. No registration is needed; simply navigate to https://mediacentrallive.princeton.edu/ at the time of the event.

Weitzmann Lecture: 

Friday, Dec. 5, 2025 at 5 pm, Aaron Burr Hall Room 219

  • Francesca Dell’Acqua, Associate Professor, Università di Salerno, Art as Proof. Statues and High Relief as Ideological Statements at the Time of the Image controversy, c.750–850?

Conference programme

Saturday, Dec. 6, 8:45 am to 7:30 pm, Louis A. Simpson Building, Room A71

8:45–9 am: Coffee and Pastries

9 am: Conference Welcome

9:15 am to 10:30: Session I

Antony Eastmond, Courtauld Institute of Art (moderator)

  • Erik Thunø, Professor, Rutgers University, True Light: The Holy Face at Telovani (Georgia)
  • Rachel Saunders, Assistant Professor, Princeton University, Star Mandalas and Buddhist Temporality in Medieval Japan

10:30–11:00: Coffee Break

11:00–12:15: Session II

Pamela A. Patton, Princeton University (moderator)

  • Nourane Ben Azzouna, Lecturer, Université de Strasbourg, The Mihna, the Inquisition of the Second Quarter of the 9th century, and Its Role in the Definition of the Status of the Image in Sunni Islam
  • Andrea Achi, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Proof in the Margins: Visual and Textual Authority in Coptic Manuscripts from The Monastery of St. Michael, Egypt

12:15–2 pm: Lunch for speakers and attendees

2-3:15 pm: Session III

Beatrice Kitzinger, Princeton University (moderator)

  • Anouk Busset, Lecturer, Université de Lausanne, Connecting Places in Early Christian Northwestern Europe: The Example of the Aberlemno Battle Scene
  • Dora C.Y. Ching, Executive Director, Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University, Art and Belief: The Tejaprabha Buddha from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China

3:15–3:45: Coffee Break

3:45–5:30: Session IV

Charles Barber, Princeton University (moderator)

  • Alexei Sivertsev, Professor, DePaul University, Image as a Witness: A Theme in Jewish Liturgical Poetry on the Eve of Iconoclasm
  • Anca Vasiliu, Director of Research, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Respondent.

5:30–7:30: Reception, Weickart Atrium

CFP: The Long Middle Ages (A New Seminar Series Hosted at the University of Leeds), deadline 28 November 2025

We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.

We welcome submissions of 20-30 minute papers from postgraduates and early career researchers working in any discipline and on any topic related to the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Papers will be followed by time for questions and further discussion.  

Seminars will commence in early 2026 and run on a regular basis until summer. If you are interested in presenting a seminar, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words as well as a short biography to the organisers at thelongmiddleages@gmail.com by Friday 28th November 2025. 

For a PDF of the Call for Papers, click here.

All seminars will take place at the University of Leeds in a hybrid format, with fully online formats available upon request. Please provide your preference in your submission. If you have any further questions, please do get in touch! 

CFP: ‘Tractive Forces’ Potentials of Art in the Trecento Workshop of the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Imaginaria of Force’, Warburg-Haus Hamburg (6-8 May 2026), deadline 15 December 2025

Workshop of the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies »Imaginaria of Force« May 6–8, 2026, Warburg-Haus Hamburg / lecture room at Gorch-Fock-Wall 3

More information can be found on the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Imaginaria of Force’ website. 

Organised by Wolf-Dietrich Löhr and Gerd Micheluzzi

Pull, draw, attract, and captivate. The question of ‘tractive forces’ in fourteenth-century Italian art has so far received only limited scholarly attention. Yet these forces illuminate qualities that allow us to examine production processes, materiality, and mediality, as well as motifs and their beholders, in their physical, metaphysical, technical, and aesthetic dimensions. It is not by chance, we hypothesise, that Francesco Petrarca speaks of a “force” (vis) in his Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul (De remediis utriusque fortunae, 1350–1366) to warn his readers of the power of art – its capacity to make beholders “cling” (inhaere) to paintings and even to “capture” (capere) their intellect.

The workshop takes such »tractive forces« in an expanded sense as its point of departure, bringing art-historical analyses into dialogue with approaches from the history of science, literature, and philosophy. How are ‘tractive forces’ modelled in Trecento works of art? Are they primarily derived from iconographic sources, or do they reveal a particular interest in tracing visible and invisible chains of effect? To what extent does this perspective allow us to consider works of art in relation to their reception? What visual strategies and technical procedures are adopted, refined, or developed to depict and generate pull and attraction? What roles do architectures, frames, and other devices (such as curtains, parapets, and grilles) play in the dynamics of attraction and distancing? Which literary, rhetorical, natural-philosophical, or moral-theological considerations underlie these dynamics?

‘Tractive forces’ (lat. trahere; ital. trarre, tirare, etc.) refer, in the Aristotelian sense, first of all to a physical movement compelled by direct external force – “motion from something else to oneself or to something else […].” (Physics 244a) As such, »tractive forces« appear in the Trecento across a wide range of motifs: the pulling of carts, the drawing out of nails, the gentle tug or violent tearing at garments or hair, and in the form of pulleys of all kinds. Giotto’s frescoes in the Cappella degli Scrovegni (c. 1303–1307), Altichiero’s Miracle of St Lucy and the Bulls (c. 1379–1384), or the two wooden forearms mounted on a crossbeam in the Sala del Mappamondo of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, by means of which lamps could be raised before Simone Martini’s Maestà, are by no means the only examples in which ‘tractive forces’, in differing variations and intensities, are brought prominently into view.

Beyond mechanical force, however, ‘tractive forces’ in the fourteenth century also encompass dynamics that manifest without direct contact between mover and moved. The key term here is ‘attraction’ (lat. attractio, allicere, etc.). As such, it has left traces not only in scholastic treatises on natural philosophy – appearing, for example, in discussions of magnetism, gravitation, optics, magic, and alchemy. It also recurs as a literary motif in various texts of the fourteenth century. For instance, in Purgatorio XXXII of the Divina Commedia (c. 1307–1321), Dante Alighieri recounts how Beatrice’s “holy smile” attracts (a sé traéli) the gaze of his alter ego so powerfully that turning away is possible only at the forceful call (con forza) of the Virtues: “Too fixedly!” (Troppo fiso!)

In Trecento art, ‘attraction’ can likewise be situated within the tension between admiration and moral-theological critique. At times condemned as “lust of the eyes”, at others praised as an expression of artistic discernment, the gaze – and with it the beholder – enters into a dialogue with the form and finish of the artwork, its materiality and scale, and ultimately with the artists and their technical capacities. In this context, the “ritratto” may be mentioned as a literal “drawing out” or “pulling forth” (lat. protrahere) from nature, from a model, or from memory. One might also think, among other things, of artistic details and small-scale formats that force beholders to move closer in order to engage with them.

The focus on ‘tractive forces’ opens up new ways of engaging with Trecento art and the phenomena underlying it across diverse thematic and disciplinary perspectives.

Contributions to the workshop should address one of the following topics:

  • Attractions: imaginaria of moving and being moved between natural philosophy and art
  • Immersions: intensifications of gaze between absorption and captivation
  • Suspensions: withdrawal of time and corporeality
  • Framings: arrangements of focusing and distancing
  • Thresholds: bridges to and disturbances of reception
  • Vanishing points: strategies of perspective
  • Directives: spatial configurations and structures of guidance
  • Scalings: modes of formatting and detailing
  • Contractions: entanglements through gesture and gaze
  • Materials: allure and irritation of material and surface qualities
  • Techniques: practices and theories of preparation and creation

Submissions for a paper may be in German or English; passive comprehension of both languages is expected. We particularly welcome contributions that adopt an inter- or transdisciplinary perspective on ‘tractive forces’ and their aesthetic articulations.

In addition to an opening evening lecture on 6 May at the Warburg-Haus Hamburg and the individual papers presented across several sections on 7 and 8 May in the seminar room of the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies »Imaginaria of Force«, the workshop will allow ample time for discussion and exchange, and – if desired – for collective reading sessions.

An excursion to the Bibliotheca Christianei is also planned, during which we will jointly examine an illustrated manuscript of the Divina Commedia (the so-called Codex Altonensis, c. 1360) and Boccaccio’s Filostrato (c. 1360).

Please send your proposals, including an abstract of no more than one page and the keyword ‘Tractive Forces’ in the subject line, by 15 December 2025 to: imaginarien.der.kraft@uni-hamburg.de

The cost of travel and accommodation can be covered by the organisers.

Contact:

Conference: ‘Sanguis Christi: Visual Culture / Visionary Culture (13th–18th Centuries)’, Université Catholique de Louvain, 3-5 December 2025

Salle Oleffe – Halles universitaires, Place de l’Université, 1, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgique

The conference will take place from December 3–5, 2025, at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve).

This symposium proposes to explore how devotion to the Holy Blood, in its multiple forms and manifestations (relics, sacrament, miracles), shaped and nourished the emergence of a visual culture in Europe from the Middle Ages to the 18th century .

It is through the lens of the visual, whether visible or visionary, that the links between theological questions, the development and evolution of devotional culture—including its social and political dimensions—and their effects on modes of representation in iconography will be explored. By visual/visionary culture, this conference aims to give prominence to an approach that examines what is revealed of the Blood of Christ, exploring the articulation, even the tension, that emerges between what the miracle makes perceptible to the senses and what, by its very nature, eludes perception, thus opening the faithful to a spiritual and sacred dimension and to new ways of making the divine visible.

Organising Committee: Manon Chaidron (UCLouvain), Ralph Dekoninck (UCLouvain), Annick Delfosse (ULiège), Mathilde Marès (UCLouvain), Matthieu Somon (UCLouvain), and François Wallerich (UCLouvain).

If you are interested in attending, please contact Manon Chaidron (UCLouvain): <manon.chaidron@uclouvain.be>.

Find out more about the conference on the Université catholique de Louvain website. 

Conference programme:

Wednesday, 3 December 2025 : Genesis of a Visual and Devotional Culture

10:30 – 10:45 Opening remarks by the organisers

10:45 – 11:30 Keynote lecture – François Wallerich (UCLouvain), Voir l’hostie saigner. Une expérience visionnaire devenue fait de société au Moyen Âge central

Session 1 – Seeing the Blood, but How Far? Acts of Revealing and Concealing

Moderator: Nicolas Sarzeaud

  • 11:30 – 11:55 Renzo Chiovelli (Sapienza Università), Giulia Maria Palma (Università della Tuscia) and Rocchi Vania (C.I.S.Sa.S), The Worship of Christ’s Blood in the Saint Sepulcher of Acquapendente before and after the Eucharistic miracle of Bolsena
  • 11:55 – 12:20 Pierre Fournier (ENS de Lyon), Croire, voir. La problématique visuelle dans les polémiques de sanguine Christi
  • 12:20 – 13:00 Discussion

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

Session 2 – Writing, Imagining, and Staging the Precious Blood

Moderator: Stéphane Cabrol

  • 14:00 – 14:25 Camille Salatko (Université Rennes 2), Jouer avec le sang du miracle des Billettes (Paris/1290)
  • 14:25 – 14:50 Hadrien Amiel (Sorbonne Université / Université de Montréal), L’image et l’effroi. La présence du Précieux Sang dans les romans du Graal (XIIe–XIIIe siècles)
  • 14:50 – 15:15 Anne-Gaelle Cuif (Université de Strasbourg), Sanguis suavis. La douceur et la suavité du sang christique dans la poésie religieuse italienne du Duecento. De la symbolique à la mystique
  • 15:15 – 15:45 Discussion

Session 3 – Polymaterial Phenomena and Reconfigurations of the Visible: Blood in the Margins or Precious Blood = x

  • Moderator: François Wallerich
    15:45 – 16:10 Mitchell Merback (Johns Hopkins University), Streaming, Staining, Stilled. Polarities of Attention and Desire in Late Medieval Devotion to the Holy Blood
  • 16:10 – 16:35 Nicolas Sarzeaud (UCLouvain), Un tournant maculiste ? Remarques sur la preuve par la tache dans la dévotion chrétienne médiévale
  • 16:35 – 17:00 Julie Glodt (UCLouvain), Cruauté eucharistique. Modes de présence et visibilité du sang du Christ à l’autel autour de 1500

17:00 – 17:15 Break

17:15 – 18:30 Round table chaired by Paul Bertrand (UCLouvain)

Thursday, 4 December 2025: The Mimesis of Blood in the Visual Arts

Session 1 – From the Living Manuscript to the Fleshly Book: Bodies and Media of Devotion

Moderator: Janig Bégoc

  • 09:30 – 09:55 Marlene Hennessy (Hunter College), Sanguis Christi as Ink and Other Bibliophilic Metaphors in the Late Middle Age
  • 09:55 – 10:20 Juliette Bourdier (University of Charleston), De la chair du parchemin au Sang du Christ, théâtralisation d’une émotion et psyché du désir
  • 10:20 – 10:45 Discussion

10:45 – 11:00 Break

Session 2 – Performing Materiality in the Visual

Moderator: Ingrid Falque (UCLouvain)

  • 11:00 – 11:25 Elliott Wise (Brigham Young University), Albrecht Bouts’s Diptychs: Beholding the Man and Painting in Blood
  • 11:25 – 11:50 Arianna Favaretto Cortese (Università degli studi di Verona), Materialising Devotion. Techniques for Emphasizing Christ’s Blood in Venetian Woodcarving (15th–16th Centuries)
  • 11:50 – 12:15 Janig Bégoc (Université de Strasbourg), La fente saignante du Psautier de Bonne de Luxembourg (1348) : entre agentivité de l’image du Christ aux plaies et homoérotisme féminin
  • 12:15 – 12:40 Discussion

12:40 – 14:20 Break

Session 3 – Synesthetic Perception and Sensory Transports

Moderator: Julie Glodt

  • 14:20 – 14:45 Karol Skrzypczak (Université d’Orléans), Voir les plaies, entendre le sang. Précieux Sang, martyre et cruentation sous Charles V et Charles VI
  • 14:45 – 15:10 Pieter Mannaerts (Alamire Foundation), Civic, Canonic, Ecclesiastic. The Role of Music in the Holy Blood Procession of Bruges
  • 15:10 – 16:35 Leylim Erenel (Courtauld Institute of Art), Visualising Civic Identity and Materialising Sacred Presence. The Processional Candleholder of Bruges’ Confraternity of the Holy Blood
  • 16:35 – 16:50 Discussion

16:50 – 17:05 Break

Session 4 – Figures of Imitation: Representing Blood / Representing Martyrs

Moderator: Matthieu Somon (UCLouvain)

  • 17:05 – 17:30 Mathilde Marès (UCLouvain), Du sans lieu au sang lieu. Anatomie des martyrs dans l’œuvre de Vittore Carpaccio
  • 17:30 – 17:55 Ralph Dekoninck (UCLouvain), Le sang semence des martyrs. Ou les défis de la visualisation d’une métaphore absolue
  • 17:55 – 18:20 Pierre-Antoine Fabre (EHESS), Saint Sang et sang des saints. L’effusion des martyrs (XVIe–XVIIe siècles)
  • 18:20 Discussion

Friday, 5 December 2025: Precious Blood and the Testing of the Image / the Visual in the Age of Religious Controversies

Session 1 – Post-Tridentine Presences and Image Controversies: Seeing Too Much or Not Enough

Moderator: Alysée Le Druillenec

  • 09:30 – 09:55 Justyna Łukaszewska-Haberkowa (Princes Czartoryski Library), The Jesuits and the Eucharist. Transubstantiation, Devotion, and the Holy Blood in 16th-Century Poland
  • 09:55 – 10:20 Agathe Bonnin (Cergy Paris Université / Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Le Rouge et le Blanc. Pureté et sensualité du sang du Christ en peinture (Espagne, XVIIe s.)

10:20 – 10:45 Break

Moderator: Mathilde Marès

  • 10:45 – 11:10 Alysée Le Druillenec (UCLouvain / Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Voir sans toucher. Claude Mellan, la Résurrection sans plaie et la revanche de l’image sur la preuve
  • 11:10 – 11:35 Stéphane Cabrol (Montpellier III), Les ambivalences du signe. La visibilité du sang du Christ dans la spiritualité de Pierre de Bérulle
  • 11:35 – 12:00 Rosanna Gangemi (ULB et Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), Boire et se laver avec le Sang de la Croix. Étude iconographique d’une transcendance immanente

12:00 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 15:00 Round table chaired by Pierre-Antoine Fabre

Session 2 – Testing the Image and Bloody Phenomena: Historical Analogies

Moderator: Marta Battisti (UCLouvain)

  • 15:00 – 15:25 Manon Chaidron (UCLouvain), Les hosties poignardées de Bruxelles (1370). Image blessée et présence révélée
  • 15:25 – 15:50 Sunmin Cha (Columbia University), Beyond the Blood. Eucharistic Symbolism and Artistic Identity in Hendrick Goltzius’s Man of Sorrows with a Chalice
  • 15:50 – 16:15 Elise Poot (UCLouvain), Entre oppression et émancipation. Les représentations du Pressoir mystique dans la peinture de la Nouvelle-Espagne (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles)

16:15 – 16:40 Discussion

16:40 Conclusion