Medieval Art Research

CFP: ‘Performing Communities: Regular Canons Between History, Art, and Liturgy (11th–15th Centuries)’, International Medieval Congress, Leeds 2027 (deadline 14 September 2026)

Regular canons played a central, yet still insufficiently recognised, role in the religious and institutional history of the Latin Middle Ages. They did not constitute a homogeneous body, but a constellation of communities, networks, and congregations, from the Mortarians and Portuensians to the canons of the Great St Bernard, the Premonstratensians, and the later Congregations of the Lateran Canons and Windesheim, united by the common life but distinguished by their customs, institutional structures, pastoral vocations, and patterns of settlement.

In connection with “Communities,” the special thematic focus of the 2027 International Medieval Congress, these sessions will explore how communities of regular canons constructed, negotiated, performed, and transmitted their identities between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Particular attention will be paid to the circulation of rules, ordines, customs, individuals, liturgical practices, architectural models, and works of art across networks of affiliation extending beyond individual foundations.

Bringing together history, liturgical studies, anthropology, art history, and musicology, the sessions will examine canonical life in its historical, social, and material dimensions. They will consider institutions and relationships with wider society alongside the liturgical, spatial, architectural, and artistic forms through which canonical communities organised themselves and made their identities visible.

Proposals may address Italy or any other area of the medieval West between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Comparative studies and contributions combining documentary, normative, and liturgical sources with the analysis of buildings, spaces, and works of art will be especially welcome.

Proposals addressing the following themes will be particularly welcome:

Rules, customs, statutes, and their role in defining communal affiliation;
Identities, differences, relationships, and processes of reform within canonical networks and congregations;
Relationships with ecclesiastical and political institutions and with urban and territorial communities;
Pastoral care, hospitality, charitable provision, and relationships with lay society;
Liturgy, spatial organisation, and the articulation of the common life as instruments of communal identity;
Architecture and art as means of constructing affiliation, distinction, and memory;
Patronage, artistic production, and the circulation of individuals, texts, works of art, models, and practices;
Communities of female canons and comparisons between different forms of canonical life.

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, together with a short CV and the information requested by the IMC, by 14 September 2026, to Cristina Andenna (cristina.andenna@uni-saarland.de) and Fabio Massaccesi (fabio.massaccesi3@unibo.it).

New Publication: ‘Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Sculpture: Works, Artists, Questions’, ed. Michele Tomasi, Thomas Flum, Jean-Marie Guillouët, and Sophie Jugie

Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Sculpture: Works, Artists, Questions, ed. Michele Tomasi, Thomas Flum, Jean-Marie Guillouët, Sophie Jugie, Rome, Viella, 2026; 1 vol., 360 pp. (Études lausannoises d’histoire de l’art, 35). ISBN: 979-1-25469-754-2. €48.00

Fifteenth-century Burgundian sculpture occupies a central place in the canon of art history and has been at the heart of research interest since the late 19th century.

From the 1990s onwards, its study has been profoundly renewed. In keeping with this movement, this work offers new insights into this rich universe, dealing with sculptors and lesser-known works alongside the most famous, highlighting recent restorations, relying on sources as well as technical and material analyses, and giving ample space to the influence of Burgundian models and their reception as far as Aragon and Hungary or in American museums.

Thus, through fifteen different dossiers addressing the functions and iconographies of sculptures, the paths and working methods of image-makers, the circulation of artists and models, it offers a state of our knowledge on one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of medieval European art.

Call for Papers: The Middle Ages in Modern Games @ Leeds IMC 2027 (Deadline: 13 September 2026)

The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research at the University of Winchester is pleased to sponsor The Middle Ages in Modern Games strand at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, 5 to 8 July 2027. This strand examines the use of social groups, hierarchies, and other themes related to the congress theme of “Communities” in the design, representation, reception, and discussion of the Middle Ages in modern games.

Games of all varieties engage communities in some way or another. In its most fundamental state, communities are social structures which organize people according to shared characteristics. Within medievalist games, these structures organize characters–both playable and non-playable–around shared identities, ideologies and practices. In-game communities are encounterable as interactive systems that players can dynamically influence through mechanics of cooperation, governance, reputation, trade, conflict, and beyond. As an interactive media, relationships with in-game communities can directly influence player choices and narrative outcomes, making player-community interactions an integral way to sort and categorize player behavior. The influence of these community structures extend beyond the games in which they appear: as reflections of medieval and modern perceptions of society, they can reflexively shape public understandings of communities within the historic medieval past. Furthermore, beyond games, players self-sort into communities such as guilds and clans, often reflecting medieval ways of social organization.

We welcome pieces dealing with any region of the globe, and within a broad definition of ‘medieval’—including the fantasy genre. We invite papers and sessions (of 3-4 papers) addressing any aspects of the medieval period or medievalism in any forms of digital or tabletop games, but we particularly welcome any submissions which engage with ‘Communities’ broadly defined.

Topics may include (but are not restricted to):

Teaching Medieval Communities through Games
Membership and inclusion within communities; “the Other”
Religious groups within medievalist games
Migration and mobile communities
Race, ethnicity, and cultural identity-based communities
Gender, sexuality, and queer communities
Chosen families and alternative kinship structures
Colonialism, indigeneity, and community representation
Assimilation, hybridity, and multicultural communities
Community lines along social class and/or castes
Enclaves, splinter cells, and secession
Communities of violence and disruptive communities
Cooperation and obligation within medievalist games
Relationship and favorability mechanics in medievalist games
Guild systems in massive multiplayer online games (MMOs)
Language and visual signifiers of communities
Player communities of medievalist games
Positive and negative community exchanges

We encourage submissions from medievalists or games and media scholars and professionals at any point in their career—Postgraduate Students, Early Career Researchers, Independent Scholars and members of any groups under-represented within the academy are particularly welcome.

The strand will be submitted to the International Medieval Congress at Leeds and participation will be subject to the terms and conditions of the Congress. As in previous years, the conference will be fully hybrid and will allow for in-person or virtual participation.

Inquiries should be directed to midagesmodgames@gmail.com. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words, accompanied by brief biographies, as Word attachments by Sunday 13 September 2026.

Visit https://middleagesinmoderngames.net/ for more information.

Announcement: Medieval Southern Italy Working Group

We are delighted to announce that Maria Harvey and the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia,” launch the Medieval Southern Italy Working Group, dedicated to fostering exchange and collaboration among art historians of medieval southern Italy and those curious about venturing south.

We plan on workshopping talks, syllabi, publications, thesis chapters, and other academic endeavors, in Italian or in English, and to meet two or three times a semester online and once a year in person in Naples.

We would be very glad to hear from art historians (including graduate students), curators, and conservators interested in joining this working group. Please send name, e-mail, and institutional affiliation (if applicable), and brief details of particular areas of interest to harveymx@jmu.edu

“Il gruppo di lavoro sull’Italia meridionale medievale”.

Siamo liete di annunciare che Maria Harvey e il Centro di Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali “La Capraia” hanno fondato il Medieval Southern Italy Working Group, dedicato a promuovere lo scambio e la collaborazione tra gli storici e le storiche dell’arte dell’Italia meridionale medievale e tra coloro che sono curiosi di avventurarsi nel Sud.

Abbiamo intenzione di lavorare insieme su conferenze, giornate di studio, pubblicazioni, capitoli di tesi e altre iniziative accademiche, in italiano o in inglese, e di incontrarci due o tre volte a semestre online e una volta all’anno di persona a Napoli.

Saremmo molto liete di ricevere segnalazioni da parte di storici dell’arte (compresi giovani laureati), curatori e restauratori interessati a partecipare a questo gruppo di lavoro. Vi preghiamo di inviare nome, e-mail e affiliazione istituzionale (se applicabile), oltre a brevi dettagli sulle vostre aree di interesse specifico, all’indirizzo harveymx@jmu.edu

New Publication: ‘Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs: An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches’, edited by Angelo Passuello and Michalis Olympios

Passuello, A., & Olympios, M. (Eds.). (2026). Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs: An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches. Roma–Bristol: «L’Erma» di Bretschneider.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48255/9788891334329

ISBN: 978-88-913-3430-5

The volume investigates the roofing systems of Italian churches from the Middle Ages to the early modern period through a multidisciplinary approach combining architectural history, art history, archaeology, archaeometry, and conservation studies. Despite the fundamental role played by timber roofs, vaults, and domes in shaping medieval sacred architecture, these structures have received relatively limited scholarly attention, particularly within the Italian context.

Bringing together contributions from specialists working across the Italian peninsula, the book offers the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of medieval roofing systems at a national scale. It explores both well-known and lesser-known case studies, highlighting the technological, artistic, and symbolic dimensions of these complex structures while also proposing future directions for their study, protection, and valorisation.

The publication forms part of the CaMeRoofs (Cataloguing Medieval Roofs) project, coordinated by the University of Cyprus and funded by the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (Grant Agreement No. 101104788).

The publisher’s page is available here: https://www.lerma.it/libro/9788891334305

As the volume derives from a HORIZON project funded by the European Commission, it is also freely available in Open Access through ZENODO: https://zenodo.org/records/18742052

New Publication: ‘Textiles in Manuscripts: A Local and Global History of the Book’, edited by Melissa Moreton and Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Preserved between the covers of books, textiles offer a remarkable glimpse into how the local production of books was connected to vibrant global trade networks from late antiquity through the early modern period. Textiles appear in manuscripts in many forms: as a delicate overlay used to adorn or protect a precious painted illumination; as silk robes wrapping sacred texts; as the sturdy fabric that supports an intricately sewn binding; as a repurposed bit of cloth, taken from a liturgical vestment, concealed within the volume to convey sacrality. This volume brings together a range of experts to unpack the vivid and surprising history of textiles in manuscripts, ranging from practical uses to the ornamental and beyond. The historical account they offer is both local and global: local, in that each chapter is tightly focused on a single tradition, or even a single book; global, in that together these chapters illuminate the rich web of interconnections that link the cultural and craft centers of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

New research on Syriac, Armenian, Byzantine, Ethiopian, Chinese, Mongolian, Islamic, and Hebrew manuscripts from late antiquity through the early modern period
Production, trade, and exchange of books in a global perspective
With contributions of book historians, textile scholars, conservators, art historians, and codicologists

Contributing authors: Hagos Abrha Abay, Carolina Almenara-Melis, Katherine Beaty, Jody Beenk, Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia, Rachel Bissonnette, Georgios Boudalis, Joy Boutrup, Aaron M. Butts, James Canary, Rosemary Crill, Eyob Derillo, Sarah Fee, Michael Gervers, Paul Hepworth, River Hobel, Bryan C. Keene, Hrair Hawk Khatcherian, Sylvie L. Merian, Alison Ohta, Kristen Pearson, Karin Scheper, Noam Sienna, Thelma K. Thomas, Nancy K. Turner, Michelle C. Wang

Author / Editor information

Melissa Moreton is a codicologist and scholar of the history of the book, who is particularly interested in material culture and the development and exchange of manuscript technologies across Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. She has published on a range of book history topics relating to medieval scribal practice, codicology, and traditional care practices for books. Moreton is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and works on projects relating to global book history (1000–1700) and Indigenous language and cultural revitalization.

Suzanne Conklin Akbari is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). Her books are on optics and allegory (Seeing Through the Veil), European views of Islam (Idols in the East), travel literature (Marco Polo), Mediterranean Studies (A Sea of Languages), and somatic history (The Ends of the Body), plus How We Write and How We Read. She recently co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer and Practices of Commentary: Medieval Traditions and Transmissions.

Find out more about this new publication on the De Gruyter Brill website.

Call for submissions: Metropolitan Museum Journal, deadline 15 September 2026

The Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed Metropolitan Museum Journal invites submissions of original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection.

The  Journal publishes  articles and research notes that contain original research on works of art in The Met’s collection.

Works of art from The Met collection should be central to the discussion.

Articles contribute extensive and thoroughly argued scholarship—art historical, technical, and scientific—whereas Research Notes are narrower in scope, focusing on a specific aspect of new research or presenting a significant finding from technical analysis, for example. The maximum length for articles is 8,000 words (including endnotes) and 10–12 images, and for research notes 4,000 words (including endnotes) and 4–6 images.

The process of peer review is double-anonymous. Manuscripts are reviewed by the Journal Editorial Board, composed of members of the curatorial, conservation, and scientific departments, as well as scholars from the broader academic community.

Articles and Research Notes in the Journal appear in print and online, and are accessible in JStor on the University of Chicago Press website.

The deadline for submissions for Volume 62 (published in December 2027) is September 15, 2026.

Editorial board

Alexis Belis, Associate Curator, Greek and Roman Art

Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, Asian Art
Federico Carò, Research Scientist, Department of Scientific Research
Adam Eaker, Associate Curator, European Paintings
Stefan Krause, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Curator in Charge, Department of Arms and Armor
Laura Filloy Nadal, Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas, Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
Lauren Rosati, Associate Curator and Research Projects Manager, Modern and Contemporary Art

Submission guidelines: www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/met/instruct

Please send materials to: journalsubmissions@metmuseum.org

Questions? Write to Elizabeth.Block@metmuseum.org

Inspiration from the Collection: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection

View the Journal: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/loi/met

New Publication: ‘Collezioni del Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino’

The catalogue of the Museo Civico’s illuminated manuscripts and cuttings has been realised thanks to a joint project between Palazzo Madama and Turin University, named “Miniature Rivelate”. The project started in 2020 and lasted five years, bringing together art historians, incunabula scholars, paleographers, liturgy specialists, chemists, photographers. This rich collaboration is reflected in the volume, which has contributions of 33 authors.

The collection counts twenty manuscripts and eighty-four fragments (almost all unpublished), dated between 1270 and 1510, seven illuminated incunabula and three pastiches. Among them, there are works by well known Italian illuminators, such as Nicolò di Giacomo, the Master of the Book of Hours of Modena (Tomasino da Vimercate), Francesco Marmitta; and, by French and Flemish artists (Antoine de Lonhy, Jean d’Ypres). But the collection also retains the only surviving manuscript by Jan van Eyck, the so called Heures de Turin-Milan: a collective masterwork, that combines illuminations by Jean d’Orléans, Jan van Eyck and his followers. Moreover, within the cuttings’ collection it has been possible to discover medieval fragments realised in Italian regions generally less well known to studies, such as Friuli, Genoa, and the Abruzzo.

The book also dwells on the theme of the “fortuna dei primitivi” in the XIXth century, between Italy and Europe. As is known, at the end of the nineteenth century the interest in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, evident in many artistic and cultural fields, also invested illuminated books. Following the Napoleonic suppression of the religious orders (1810), all the ancient volumes, until then preserved in monastic libraries, were alienated and often dismembered. The illuminations, cut out and placed on the antiques market, were in fact sought after by many collectors. It was precisely in this period that the manuscripts and fragments illustrated in the catalogue entered the Museo Civico of Turin, almost all acquired between 1863 and 1897.

For these acquisitions, the museum did not follow stylistic criteria or artistic geography, but judged the illuminations – according to the positivist approach typical of the art and industry’s museums of the time –, as precious evidence of Medieval and Renaissance book art and possible useful models for contemporary graphic designers, illustrators and publishers. This explains the heterogeneity of the collection, formed by manuscripts and cuttings of many geographical provenances and chronologies. Given this course, it is more understandable that, once faded the utopia of influencing the modern craftsmanship, the Museum totally dropped the interest in book illumination, insomuch that – apart from a few exceptions – no acquisitions are recorded after 1897, and only in very recent years- since 2000 – a few books have again made their entrance into the collection.

The catalogue, counting 545 pages and lavishly illustrated, also has an appendix discussing the results of the non-invasive analyses carried out on all the illuminations. Both the diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry (FORS) and the X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) techniques, have allowed to analyze inks and gildings and, above all, to learn the composition of the pigments and dyes employed by the artists, thus giving extra clues about the prestige of certain miniatures.

The book can be ordered from Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/01J4pCiE or through this website: https://lartisticasavigliano.it/lartistica-editrice/ (ISBN 978-88-7320-493-0)

New Publication: ‘Tributes to T.A. Heslop: From Miniature to Monumental: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture’, edited by Lloyd de Beer, Helen Lunnon, and Zachary Stewart

From Miniature to Monumental: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture honours the scholarly career of T.A. Heslop, Emeritus Professor of Visual Culture at the University of East Anglia, whose incisive analyses of works ranging from cathedrals and illuminated manuscripts to castles and seal matrices have greatly enriched the field of medieval art history. Inspired by Sandy’s longstanding commitment to situating such objects in their various political, social, and historiographical contexts, these twenty-three essays explore the entanglement of people, things, and ideas across time and space, providing a kaleidoscopic view of current research on the material cultures of medieval Britain (and beyond).

All information available and how to order the book can be found on the Brepols website.

Introduction: Publications by Thomas Alexander Heslop to 2022

Part I

Eric Fernie, The Anglo-Saxon Church of the Holy Trinity at Great Paxton, with Special Reference to Saint-Martin at Biesme
Brian Ayers, The Eleventh-Century Norwich Timber Church: A Reassessment within its Anglo-Scandinavian Context
H. F. Doherty, Ailsi the Burgess, Stephen the Protomartyr, and the Rebuilding of Launceston Minster
Robert Liddiard, Castles and Courtliness: Elite Landscapes in the Long Twelfth Century
Helen Lunnon, Some Thoughts on the Architectural Use of Worked Flint in Fourteenth-Century East Anglia

Part II

Agata A. Gomółka, Death of the Virgin in Romanesque Wrocław
Lloyd de Beer, The Foljambe Monument at All Saints, Bakewell, and the Alabaster Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket
Jessica Barker, A Queen’s Vision of Lancastrian Kingship: The Monument to Joan of Navarre and Henry IV at Canterbury Cathedral
John Mitchell, Preaching and Teaching: The Transformation of the Parish Church in Fifteenth-Century East Anglia
Nich Trend, The Wheeled Angels of Wighton and Little Walsingham
Sarah Cassell, Material Presence, Eternal Memory: Donors and Chancel Screens in Late Medieval East Anglia

Part III

Jill A. Franklin (†), The Diptych of King David and St Alban at the End of the ‘Markyate’ Psalter: What did Matthew Paris See?
Peter Kidd, Empty Spaces in an English Twelfth-Century Psalter-Hours (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 10433)
Rosie Chambers Mills-Helterban, From Monument to Manuscript: The Guthlac Roll and its Relationship to Stained Glass Re-examined
M. A. Michael, From Westminster to Bromholm: Searching for the Artist of the Dublin Apocalypse

Part IV

Jessica Berenbeim, Form and the ‘Gothic Charter’
Julian Luxford, A Lively Crucifix at St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury
Sarah Salih, John Lydgate’s Synaesthetics
Zachary Stewart, Processions Real and Imagined: Place, Space, and Time in Roger Martin’s Account of Long Melford

Part V

Matthew Sillence, Materiality and Agency in Medieval Seals and Sealing Practices
Nicholas Vincent, The Walmer Castle Address (1935) and the Cinque Port Seal Matrixes: Medieval Authority in Action
Jack Hartnell, The UEA Casts
Veronica Sekules, Aping Humanity

CFP: ‘The Art of the Choir in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean World’, deadline 30 September 2026

Hybrid International Conference, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 4–6 June 2027

The Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Cyprus invites submissions for the hybrid international conference The Art of the Choir in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean World, to be held in Nicosia and online on 4–6 June 2027.

The conference will explore the display, performance, and experience of art in choir spaces, with a particular interest in instances of transconfessional encounter across the Mediterranean, between c. 1000 and 1600. Aiming to bring together scholars of the Latin West and the Byzantine East, it encourages comparative perspectives on the ways the sacred space of the choir and its experience were shaped by liturgy, artistic expression, devotional practice, and cultural exchange.

The programme will feature keynote lectures by Prof. Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Sharon Gerstel (UCLA). Topics of interest include liturgical and paraliturgical uses of church choirs, choir furnishings and ritual, movement and access within choir precincts, the display of relics and images, pilgrimage, and digital approaches to the study of sacred space.

Abstracts of approximately 300 words for 20-minute papers in English should be submitted by 30 September 2026 to Michalis Olympios (olympios.michalis@ucy.ac.cy) and Maria Parani (parani.maria@ucy.ac.cy).

The conference will be held in a hybrid format. There is no registration fee. For full details, please consult the accompanying Call for Papers.

For more information on how to apply, please see the call for papers PDF below.

Medieval-Early Modern Choir_CFP Download