Online Lecture: Anachronic Empire: The Heraldic Columns of Diogo Cão as Colonial Monuments, Medieval and Modern, Dr Jessica Barker, 28th April 2021, 2.30-4.00pm (BST)

UEA World Art Research Seminar 2021

A black and white photograph shows four men standing around a column on a rocky outcrop, one in clerical dress, one in military uniform, and two more dressed in suits. The monument comprises a pitted stone column surmounted by a metal shield with the coat of arms of the king of Portugal and a metal cross inscribed with the name “Dom João” and the date “1485”. This column, known in Portuguese as a padrão, is a nineteenth-century replica of a fifteenth-century monument, shipped from the port of Belém in Lisbon in 1485 and erected on the Cabo Negro on the coast of modern-day Angola, only to be sent back from Angola to Lisbon in 1892. The original was (and still is) displayed in the ethnographic museum of the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa alongside the remains or reconstructions of four other early padrões. The replica shown in this photograph was destroyed in 1975 by the independence movement in Angola, an episode of iconoclasm that is testament to the enduring association of this monument with colonial oppression. This paper explores the forelives and afterlives of the padrões, with particular attention on the shifting significance of their inscriptions and heraldic insignia.

Chaired by Simon Dell

Organised by Dr. Ed Krčma

To attend this lecture, please click here for the Teams link.

Online Lecture: Salvation and the Apocalypse in Santa Caterina, Galatina – eschatological narratives and Greek identity in the Salento, Maria Harvey, 26th April, 18.00–19.30 (CET)

This event will take place via Zoom and requires advance registration. Please click here to reserve your place.

As she returned to the Salento in 1415/6, dowager queen of Naples and Countess of Lecce Maria d’Enghien commissioned an extensive fresco cycle in the Franciscan church of Santa Caterina, founded by her first husband three decades earlier in Galatina (Lecce). A translation of Angevin iconography, the murals include a remarkable cycle of the Book of Revelation closely drawn from Neapolitan apocalypses found on panels, murals and manuscripts. These images will be the focus of the talk, which aims to re-centre the experience of the local Greek community in the reception of Santa Caterina’s frescoes. 

In the Quattrocento, the Salento (the heel of the Italian boot) was characterised by the presence of both Greek and Latin communities, and Galatina was included in a list of bilingual towns where mass was celebrated in both rites as late as 1577/80. However, these Greek individuals are virtually absent from the secondary literature on Santa Caterina, which has predominantly focused on the aristocratic patrons and the friars. An overly militant interpretation of the foundation bull – it speaks of providing mass in Latin for those who did not speak Greek, not of latinisation -, has also contributed to this omission. My work readdresses this imbalance and argues that, although the Greeks were not involved in the creation of the images, their interpretation of the frescoes is worthy of study as a creative, productive process. To do this, I will place the Apocalypse in communication with the rest of the cycle, and foreground Greek ideas about salvation and eschatology, morality and ritual in my analysis of Santa Caterina’s remarkable frescoes. 

Maria Harvey is Rome Fellow 2020-21 at the British School at Rome. After reading History of Art at the University of Cambridge, she completed an MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art on the arts of the medieval Mediterranean, where she became fascinated with southern Italy. Her thesis, at the University of Cambridge, was a monographic study of the church of Santa Caterina at Galatina, in the Salento, with a focus on the relationship between the Greek and the Latin communities. Maria was an Affiliated Lecturer at Cambridge in 2019-20, after having spent a year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow. In New York, she worked on the museum’s Byzantine micromosaic icon of the Virgin Eleousa, and developed a second project on Simone Martini and Filippo Sangineto, lord of Altomonte in Calabria. Maria is interested in questions about the relationship between art and identity, broadly understood, including the ‘Questione Meridionale’, the meaning of visual languages and how engagement with art is central to the articulation and production of (personal, communal, confessional, etc) identity.

Exhibition: Thomas Becket – Murder and the Making of a Saint, British Museum, 20th May 2021 – 22nd Aug 2021

  • First ever major UK exhibition on Thomas Becket to open at the British Museum
  • Centrepiece will be an extraordinary first time loan of a complete stained-glass window from Canterbury Cathedral, one of the Cathedral’s greatest treasures
  • New research means window will be shown at British Museum in its original arrangement for the first time in 350 years 
  • Exhibition tells the story of the most shocking act of sacrilege in English history

In May 2021, the British Museum will host the first ever major UK exhibition on the life, death and legacy of Thomas Becket, whose brutal murder inside Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 shook the Middle Ages.

Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint (20 May – 22 August 2021) will chart over 500 years of history, from Thomas Becket’s remarkable rise from ordinary beginnings to one of the most powerful figures in England, through to his enduring but divisive legacy in the centuries after his death. The story will be told through an array of over 100 stunning objects brought together for the first time, including rare loans from across the UK and Europe.

Originally due to open in October 2020 but delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, the exhibition marks 850 years since the former Archbishop of Canterbury was killed on 29 December 1170 in his own cathedral. The murder was possibly on the orders of his bitter rival and former friend King Henry II. News of Becket’s gruesome death sent shockwaves across Europe and is considered one of the most scandalous acts of sacrilege in English history. Within days, miracles were being attributed to Becket, many connected to the healing power of his spilt blood, which lead to his canonisation as a saint by the Pope. His martyrdom had a profound impact on the power dynamics between Church and State for hundreds of years, culminating in King Henry VIII ordering the obliteration of Becket’s legacy in 1538, calling him a traitor to the crown. Becket’s role as a key figure in major moments of European history will be traced throughout the show.

The exhibition’s centrepiece will be the extraordinary loan of an entire medieval stained-glass window from Canterbury Cathedral. It is one of the surviving famed Miracle Windows which were made in the early 1200s to surround Becket’s now-lost shrine in the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel. This is the first time one of these windows has ever been lent, and the first time the glass has ever left the Cathedral, since their creation 800 years ago. 

The Miracle Windows, of which 7 survive from an original series of 12, tell several of the evocative stories of miracles attributed to Becket in the three years following his death. They demonstrate his remarkable transformation from a London-born merchant’s son into the renowned miracle worker known as St Thomas of Canterbury, who is still revered by Christians today. The windows are the only known depictions of Becket’s miracle stories in any media.

The window coming to the British Museum, the fifth in the 12-part series, is a masterclass in medieval artistry and measures over six meters in height. The miracle stories it depicts include the healing of eyesight and the replacement of lost genitals, with the latter being the earliest known depiction of castration in medieval art. New research, recently carried out due to its removal for study prior to the exhibition, has revealed that some of the panels have been in the wrong order for centuries. They were probably mixed up during a hasty rearrangement in the 1660s and the errors were discovered after close inspection of individual pieces under a microscope. When the window is shown at the British Museum, it will be rearranged in the correct narrative order, and this will be the first time in over 350 years that visitors will be able to view these panels as they were made to be seen. It will also be the very first time the window can be seen up-close at eye-level. 

Leonie Seliger, Director of Stained Glass Conservation at Canterbury Cathedral, said: “The Miracle Windows are medieval versions of graphic novels illustrating the experiences of ordinary people. They greeted the pilgrims at the culmination of their journey to Becket’s shrine with images that would be reassuring and uplifting. The window that will be shown at the British Museum is only one of seven that remain, and they are one of Canterbury Cathedral’s greatest treasures.”

Becket’s story will also be brought to life through an array of objects including precious reliquaries, jewellery, pilgrims’ badges and sculpture from the British Museum collection. Spectacular loans (which make up almost half of the objects on display) include objects which may have been owned by Becket himself, such as manuscripts from Trinity College and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge that he is thought to have commissioned or was given. There will also be a single surviving wax impression made from Becket’s personal seal matrix – lent by the National Archives – providing a tantalising glimpse of his personality. An illustrated manuscript containing John of Salisbury’s Life of St Thomas Becket from the British Library, will show visitors one of the earliest known representations of the murder.

Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum, said: “Thomas Becket is one of Europe’s most enduring and controversial figures even today, yet his story has never been told on this scale in a UK exhibition before. The British Museum holds some of the world’s greatest medieval objects and so we’re uniquely placed to tell this shocking chapter in history. We are grateful to those who are contributing loans, including Canterbury Cathedral whose loan of a Miracle Window will be the stunning centrepiece. The exhibition would not be possible without the generosity of the Museum’s long-term supporters the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation, the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts and Jack Ryan and Zemen Paulos.” 

Lloyd de Beer, co-curator of Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint, said “The violent death of Thomas Becket is the ultimate true crime story. It’s a real-life tale as dramatic as Game of Thrones and we’re going to lead visitors through every twist and turn of this remarkable plot. There’s drama, fame, royalty, power, envy, retribution, and ultimately a brutal murder that shocked Europe.”

Tickets will go on sale soon. Check the exhibition’s webpage and sign up to the British Museum newsletter for updates. Check the show’s website for updates.

Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint is co-curated by Lloyd de Beer, Curator: Medieval Britain and Europe and Naomi Speakman, Curator: Late Medieval Europe, alongside Sophie Kelly, Project Curator. 

For the British Museum’s exhibition blog, please click here.

Follow this link to book your tickets!

Publication

To coincide with the exhibition, a richly illustrated catalogue, Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint,written by Lloyd de Beer and Naomi Speakman, is published by the British Museum Press in April 2021. Hardback, £35, ISBN 9780714128382.

To get your copy of the exhibition catalogue, you can shop online here.

Access:

A hearing loop accompanies the installation ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. The hearing loop symbol will highlight where this is available. A link to this film will be sent in an email after your visit.

There are a few benches where you can sit down in the exhibition. A limited number of folding stools are available at the Main entrance on Great Russell Street. Please drop these off as you exit the Museum on Montague Place.

Supported by :
The Hintze Family Charitable Foundation

The Ruddock Foundation for the Arts

Jack Ryan and Zemen Paulos

Credit: Alabaster panel showing the murder of Thomas Becket. England,
around 1425-50. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Info: This sculpture was made for an altarpiece in a church. It would probably have
formed part of a sequence of sculptures showing scenes from Becket’s life and death.

Online Lecture: The Ship in the Shop – A Brief Art History of Late Medieval Ships in Miniature, Achim Timmerman, Murray Seminars at Birkbeck, 6th May 2021, 4.45pm for 5pm (BST)

This paper newly outlines an art history of late medieval ship models and their contexts of use. Focusing on the mid-thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries in Europe, an age of rapid maritime expansion, it investigates the design and role of miniature vessels at the intersection between devotional practices, courtly culture, modes of patronage, and technological change. It explores three categories of ship models in particular: ex-voto ships that were presented to a specific shrine after a miraculous rescue at sea or naval victory; nefs, which served as princely table decorations and containers of commodities such as salt and spices; and nefs that, subsequent to their use as banqueting props, were repurposed as devotional vessels that either contained relics or possibly functioned as ex-votos.

Achim Timmermann is Professor of the History of Art and Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A specialist in the art and architecture of the late Middle Ages, he is author of Real Presence: Sacrament Houses and the Body of Christ, c. 1270-1600 (2009) and Memory and Redemption: Public Monuments and the Making of Late Medieval Landscape (2017), as well as over fifty journal articles.

Book your place here.

Online Lecture: St David’s Cathedral: Teiliau Tyddewi – The Tiles of St Davids, Martin Crampin, 10th June 2021, 7pm (BST)

The patterns found on the late medieval ceramic tiles at St David’s Cathedral were the starting point for a series of new works by artist Martin Crampin. Sections of an initial piece of work was exhibited in local churches as part of the annual ‘Art on the Faith Trail’ event and subsequently brought together in an exhibition at the cathedral with additional images based on the tiles.

This talk will examine the pattern and imagery of the tiles, which were made in around 1500, and consider their rearrangement in the nineteenth century and the copies made for the restored interior. Just as the Gothic Revival was caught between an authenticity to medieval form and its reinvention, this new work also occupies a creative tension between reproduction and abstraction, while drawing attention to aspects of late medieval decorative arts that have often been overlooked.

Martin Crampin has worked on a series of research projects researching different aspects of the visual culture of Wales while based at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. His primary interests have been aspects of ecclesiastical art and medievalism, and this also forms the primary focus of his artistic practice, which is inspired by the patterns and images found in medieval decorative arts. He also works as a designer and photographer, specialising in the production of books and guides to stained glass.

To book your tickets for this exciting events, please click here.

CFP: Aural Architectures of the Divine – Sacred Spaces, Sound and Rites in Transcultural Perspectives (Florence, 24-26 Feb 22), Deadline: June 30th 2021

An interdisciplinary conference to be held in Florence in February 2022 will focus on the complex interrelation of sacred space, sound and rites in transcultural perspectives from ancient to premodern times. The research project “CANTORIA – Music and Sacred Architecture” (University of Mainz) and the “Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo” (University of Florence) invite all interested researchers to submit proposals.

Since ancient times, religious practices and the perception of the divine have been determined by the intersection of rite, sound and sacred space. Temples, churches and other sacred buildings not only define a holy place as a physical and symbolic expression of a specific faith, but establish the setting for performative and multisensorial religious ceremonies in which music and other sonic manifestations play an important role. The structure, decoration and furnishing of sacred buildings create specific acoustics which influence the soundscape of sacred spaces, consisting of chants, music of rites or art music, prayers, recitations and religious sonic utterances. Performative rites such as services, processions, sacred plays or other liturgical ceremonies use the potentials of these environments in specific ways. Vice versa, architecture reacts to ritual and musical developments by modifying venerable sanctuaries or in designing and constructing new buildings. In addition to established architectural-, music- and religious-historical methods and new trends of anthropology and sound studies, digital technologies contribute to the understanding of the architecture-sound nexus in producing virtual and aural spaces. Through acoustic measurements and digital reconstructions of ancient monuments archaeoacoustics help to explore aural architectures of times past.

In this decidedly interdisciplinary conference we focus on the complex interrelation of sacred space, sound and rites in transcultural perspectives from ancient to premodern times. The sacred space is understood as a historical product, which was determined by a religion’s theological, aesthetic and socio-cultural context and which – conversely – shaped the performative, sonic and aesthetic dimensions of the ritual activities. Guiding questions could be: Were sacred architectures intentionally designed to create specific spiritual soundscapes? Did architecture theory discuss acoustics considering spoken and sung word or instrumental music in sanctuaries? What are religious concepts of sound and space as manifestations of the metaphysical? To what extent did composers and performers react to the architectural and acoustic situation in sacred spaces? Were artistic decorations conceived to interact with the ritual, musical and sonic elements? How were the multisensorial performances experienced and perceived by the faithful? In what ways do aural architectures of different religions, historical or geographical settings differ or coincide? And finally: To what extent can digital technologies provide new insights into the spatial-sonic experiences of divine ceremonies of the past?

The interdisciplinary conference is aimed at scholars of architectural and art history, musicology, (archaeo-)acoustic and sound studies, religious studies, archaeology, anthropology and sensual culture studies. With its wide methodological ambitus and the broad historical and geo-cultural and religious outlook the conference seeks to provide a multifaceted investigation of the interconnection of rite, sound and sacred architecture in a transcultural perspective. The conference is organised by the research project “CANTORIA – Music and Sacred Architecture” (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) in cooperation with the Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento SAGAS.

Papers of 30 minutes will be accepted in English and Italian. Interested speakers are invited to submit an abstract of their proposed paper (max. 500 words) and a short CV (max. 300 words) by 30 June 2021 to: anmeldung-musikwissenschaft@uni-mainz.de

Contributions by junior researchers will receive special attention. Travel and accommodation expenses will be reimbursed subject to successful financing.

Further information: https://en.cantoria-mainz.de

Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia, Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo (SAGAS)

Concept: Prof. Dr. Klaus Pietschmann and Dr. Tobias C. Weißmann

Conference Committee: Prof. Dr. Mila De Santis, Prof. Dr. Antonella D’Ovidio, Prof. Dr. Klaus Pietschmann and Dr. Tobias C. Weißmann

Call for Papers: Conference, Communities and Networks in Late Medieval Europe (c. 1300–1500), St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, 9th-10th September 2021, Deadline: 7th June 2021

Historical research has witnessed a rapidly growing interest in ‘networks’ since the turn of the twenty-first century. This is due not only to the utility of networks in describing interrelations between historical actors, but also to the adoption of the concepts and methodologies associated with social network analysis (SNA). 

Our conference, which will take place at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in September 2021*, aims to build on and contribute to this expanding field of research by focusing on networks as a lens through which to investigate the internal and external dynamics of communities in the last two centuries of the European Middle Ages, a time of great cultural, socio-economic, and political change. ‘Community’ is defined as any form of interpersonal association, including urban, political, legal, cultural, intellectual, monastic, and friendship-based ones.

We are delighted to have a number of confirmed senior speakers from across Europe. Prof. Felicitas Schmieder (FernUniversität in Hagen) will deliver the keynote lecture, titled ‘Did Magdeburg Law create a network of culturally mixed urban communities across Europe?’. Prof. Wim Blockmans (Leiden University) will deliver the concluding remarks. Prof. Jan Dumolyn (Ghent University), Prof. Christina Lutter (University of Vienna), Dr Flávio Miranda (University of Porto), Dr Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz (University of Amsterdam) will also participate.

We are now inviting proposals, especially from junior researchers (doctoral and post-doctoral), for papers lasting 20–25 minutes. Indeed, we hope the conference to be an opportunity for discussion between researchers at different stages of their career. Papers might address, but are not limited to, the following themes: 


• Networks and the development of communities
• Networks in conflict and conflict resolution
• Oral and written communication networks
• The impact of key late medieval processes on networks and communities (e.g. literacy and bureaucratization, development of infrastructure, warfare)
• Possibilities and drawbacks of social network analysis as a conceptual and methodological approach to the study of medieval communities

Abstracts of max. 300 words, together with a short biography of the author, should be submitted to commsandnetworks21@gmail.com by 7 June 2021. The confirmation of accepted papers will be announced by 21 June.

The event website can be found here.

*The conference is currently planned as an in-person event (registration fee: £20), but we are open to the possibility of employing a hybrid or online format in order to cater for the changing global situation and for different personal circumstances.

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the support of the George Macaulay Trevelyan Fund (Faculty of History, University of Cambridge), the Researcher-led Events Scheme (University of Cambridge), and the Social History Society.

Online Lecture: Paradise found: Romanesque tombs in Western Europe, c. 1000- c. 1150, Dr Xavier Dectot – Director of the future Orientalist Museum in Doha, Qatar, 30th April 2021 6-7 pm (BST)

Although the study of mediaeval tomb sculpture has been a fairly active field in the past decades, it has nearly exclusively focused on the much richer (at least in numbers) Gothic era. Most forays in the Romanesque have been driven by a teleological drive to find the supposed precursors of the Gothic monuments.

This lecture will aim to shed a different light on Romanesque tombs which bear witness to a period of intense experimentation and exploration, reflecting both a new desire for visibility and a very fluid and ever changing theological conception of the afterlife.

Dr Xavier Dectot started his career at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, where he spent ten years as curator of Sculptures, before moving on to become the founding director of the Louvre Lens, a branch museum of the Louvre in Northern France, then keeper and Art and Design at
National Museums Scotland and, currently, director of the future Orientalist Museum in Doha, Qatar. An honorary reader at the University of St Andrews, he is the author of numerous articles and books, amongst which are Pierres tombales médiévales, sculptures de l’au-delà (Remparts, 2006) and Les Tombeaux des familles royales de la péninsule ibérique au
Moyen Âge (Brepols, 2009).

Speaker – Dr Xavier Dectot – Director of the future Orientalist Museum in Doha, Qatar 

Organised by – Dr Rose Walker – Honorary Research Fellow, The Courtauld

This is a live online event.  

Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before the event start time.  

If you have not received the log in details or have any further queries, please contact researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk. 

To register, click here.

New Issue: The Burlington Magazine, April 2021: Medieval Art and Architecture

This month’s edition of The Burlington Magazine is the first issue to be devoted to the Middle Ages for over thirty years encompasses a remarkable diversity of art and architecture. This issue has a wide variety of articles and book reviews for you to enjoy. We’ve teamed up with the Burlington Magazine team to offer our readers a special discount of 40% to be applied to the purchase of the current issue (use the code: ISSUE40) when ordering here.

Articles:

  • Gilded glass and English saints: a medieval reliquary at Douai Abbey, by Marian Campbell and Michaela Zoschg
  • An illuminated fifteenth-century Milanese manuscript of the ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’, by Lisandra S. Costiner
  • Architecture and liturgy in the east end of Saint-Urbain, Troyes, by Michalis Olypmpios
  • The drinking servant in depictions of the ‘Adoration of the Magi’. by Peter Megyši

Online Lecture: ‘A Team Effort’: Architectural Drawing and Multimediality in Late-Medieval Spain, Costanza Beltrami, University of Oxford, 28th April 2021, 5-6pm (BST)

The Museo del Prado houses one of the most remarkable drawings of late-medieval Europe: a fifteenth-century view of the east end of San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo. Attributed to the church’s designer, Juan Guas (active 1453–1496), the drawing is unique for its representation of an interior perspective, populated by a wide-ranging decorative programme in different media, notably an altarpiece and stained glass.

Almost thirty years ago, one scholar described such decorative ‘density’ as the ‘team effort’ of the various artists responsible for each element of the design. Yet the drawing itself raises additional questions: What was its function? Why include such disparate furnishings? What does this object tell us about architecture, design and collaboration in late-medieval Spain? Exploring the tensions between the work’s form and content, this lecture will sharpen our historical and contemporary perspectives on the drawing, which served as a dynamic rhetorical object rather than an accurate construction record.

Costanza Beltrami is Departmental Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Art History at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on Gothic architecture in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and on the coexistence, tension and transition between Gothic and Renaissance projects. She is particularly interested in the management and representation of buildings in accounts, letters, drawings, ornament prints and other media. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Networking the Gothic: Juan Guas in Fifteenth-Century Spain.

Organised by Dr Tom Nickson

This is a live online event.  To book your place, please follow this link.

Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before the event start time.  

If you have not received the log in details or have any further queries, please contact researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk.