Online Lecture: The Drawing Compass as a Tool of Creation in Premodern Europe, The Warburg Institute, 10th-11th June 2021, 5:30-7pm (BST)

 ‘Circular Thinking’ is an online lecture, short papers and panel discussion devoted to the drawing compass, an essential tool of premodern makers that came to represent divine Creation. Although now associated primarily with architecture, the compass was a transmedial instrument, integral to a range of artisanal operations, yet evidence of its use is relatively thin. Called circinus in Latin for the action of ‘going round’, circles and arcs were rarely its final output, but intermediary guides often lost in the making process or intentionally erased. Compass work can thus be classed as ‘invisible labour’— work that contributes to the making of an object, but remains difficult to detect in its finished form. It is also dynamic labour that defies easy description in traditional print media, a problem compounded by a general lack of familiarity with the tool today. Through discussion and the close study of historical evidence, ‘Circular Thinking’ seeks to impart a more precise understanding of the compass’s varied uses—in the measurement, scaling, copying, the generation of diverse shapes in two and three dimensions—and, with this, its symbolic force. 

This event is hosted by the Warburg Institute and made possible by generous funding by the Leverhulme Trust. Programme details below. 

To book go to: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/event/24358

‘CIRCULAR THINKING’ LECTURE (online)
Thursday, 10 June 5:30–7:00pm BST

Professor Robert Bork, University of Iowa
Circles Below the Surface: The Role of the Compass in Premodern Creativity

Circular forms appear overtly in many famous works of art and architecture, from the age of Stonehenge onward, but these visible circles are hardly the only ones that mattered to premodern artists, craftsmen and designers. The drawing compass was one of their most valuable and frequently employed tools since its use in combination with the straightedge permitted the establishment of precise geometrical order without any need for carefully calibrated rulers or measuring rods. The layout and proportions of many premodern artefacts—and even many modern ones—thus become comprehensible only when the role of the compass in the creative process is taken into account. This talk demonstrates this principle using diverse examples ranging in date from the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century, including several in London collections: the Lindisfarne Gospels, a design drawing for the great Gothic tower of Ulm Minster and a painting by the Renaissance artist Piero di Cosimo.

‘CIRCULAR THINKING’ SHORT PAPERS & PANEL DISCUSSION (online)
Friday, 11 June, 5:30–7:00pm BST

Panelists will each present a case study of compass use in premodern Europe. These short presentations will be followed by discussion and general Q&A.

Speakers
Dr. Sarah Griffin, Winchester College
Constructing the Calendars in the Diagrams of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c. 1352)

Professor Jean-Marie Guillouët, University of Burgundy, Dijon 
Testimony of Construction Practices in Some Late Medieval Compass Traceries

Dr. Stephen Johnston, History of Science Museum, University of Oxford
Drawing and the Design Process in Mathew Baker’s Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry

Professor Robert Bork will join the group for discussion and Q&A

Moderator
Dr. Megan C. McNamee, University of Edinburgh

New Journal Issue: Religion and the Arts, Volume 25-1-2 (2021)

Launched by Boston College in late 1996, Religion and the Arts has rapidly developed into a major international journal in this important interdisciplinary field. Religion and the Arts promotes the development of discourses for exploring the religious dimensions of the verbal, visual and performing arts. The journal has attracted international acclaim for its approach and its excellent quality and range of interest. 

Religion and the Arts publishes: 
● interpretations that develop new approaches to the religious and spiritual aspects of works of art 
● discussions on the role of religion in cultural studies 
● critical overviews of the state of scholarship in particular areas 
● reviews, interviews, comment, debate, and surveys of recent developments 

For more information on Boston College and the journal Religion and the Arts, please click here. 

Conference: (In)sights regarding Medieval Art. A tribute to Herbert L. Kessler, Aguilar de Campoo (Spain) and Online, October 21st – 23rd 2021

For the last eleven years, we have organised the international colloquium Ars Mediaevalis in Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia, Castile, Spain), the headquarters of the Fundación Santa María la Real. Each edition has proposed a cross-cutting argument that, in accordance with current methodological approaches, has allowed us to analyse and understand relevant aspects of Medieval Art. The results of these colloquia are published year after year – once the mandatory peer-reviews are received- in the journal Codex Aqvilarensis. Revista de Arte Medieval, whose contents are open-access in full. 

In organising the successive editions of Ars Mediaevalis, as well as in preparing the corresponding issue of Codex Aqvilarensis, we have been privileged to have the expertise and friendship of Herbert L. Kessler, who is acknowledged as one of the most eminent and inspiring scholars in the Historiography of Medieval Art in recent decades. This year 2021 Professor Kessler will be 80 years old. On this occasion, we would like to celebrate his anniversary with a tribute in the form of a special edition of the Ars Mediaevalis colloquium, with the participation of some relevant international scholars who have forged a long and fertile relationship with Professor Kessler. The holding of this academic meeting by Spanish academic institutions will be a unique opportunity, with an unquestionable relevance in the landscape of international medievalism.

For more information, please click here.

This conference will take place in person and online. The conference will be held at Aguilar de Campoo (Spain).

Online Lecture: Representing Dante’s Steps in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, Lucy Donkin, Murray Seminar at Birkbeck, 30th June 4.45pm for 5pm (BST)

In the Divine Comedy, at the entrance to Purgatory, Dante encounters three steps made from stone of different colours and textures. These have attracted attention since the earliest commentaries on the poem, and are often seen as alluding to interior states, especially associated with penance. This paper understands the steps and their interpretation to reflect the wider expressive potential of corporeal contact with the surface of the ground. Exploring how they were depicted in illuminated manuscripts, it draws comparisons with ecclesiastical pavement decoration and the treatment of the ground in rites of passage, as well as with the ground trodden by Christ, saints, and personifications of the virtues, as depicted in Italian art of the period. It also relates the steps to other passages in the Divine Comedy that reference church interiors and to the terrain walked by Dante elsewhere in the poem.

Lucy Donkin is a Senior Lecturer in History and History of Art at the University of Bristol. Her research explores medieval perceptions of place, especially the definition, decoration and depiction of holy ground, and the symbolic movement of soil. Her book Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages will be published by Cornell University Press later this year.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/representing-dantes-steps-in-illuminated-manuscripts-of-the-divine-comedy-tickets-151612457943?ref=eios

Online Symposium: Medieval Travel – Harlaxton Medieval Symposium 2021

Convenors: CAROLINE BARRON (c.barron@rhul.ac.uk) and MARTHA CARLIN (carlin@uwm.edu)

Register on Eventbrite here.

For a timetable of sessions, speakers, and papers, click here. 

Registration fee: £15 (students £10) for the five full days.

For registrants with a password from Eventbrite: click here for full conference information and materials.

For registrants with a password (which can be found in your confirmation email from Eventbrite), click here for full conference information and materials:  Medieval Travel registrants’ area

Provisional timetable:

Monday, 26 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 1A      Travel Writing 

Welcome:  Martha Carlin

Martha Driver:  Mandeville in the Twenty-First Century

Nicholas Orme: William Worcester: Traveller and Collector

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 1B       Images and Travel

Lynda Dennison: Travelling Artists and Travelling Books         

Nicholas Rogers: Visual Souvenirs of the Emperor Sigismund’s Visit to England in 1416

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 1C       Pamela Tudor-Craig Memorial Lecture

Julia Boffey: Richard Arnold’s Book

Tuesday, 27 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 2A      Maps

Alfred Hiatt: Maps and Travel

David Harrison: A Road Map of Medieval England

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 2B       Sources for Travel (panel)

Robert Swanson: Visitation and Church Court Records

Joel Rosenthal: Proofs of Age

Joanna Mattingly: Churchwardens’ Accounts

David Harrap: Travel Coffers 

Anthony Gross: Three Travel Objects

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 2C       Student posters I

Wednesday, 28 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 3A      Inns

Martha Carlin: Inns, Horses, and Stabling

Laura Wright: Inn Clusters in London in the Fifteenth Century

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 3B       Entertainment and Travel

Simon Polson: Travelling Minstrels 

Alexandra Johnston: Travelling Entertainers and Their Patrons: York, 1446-9

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 3C       Student posters II

Thursday, 29 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 4A      Travel and the Body

Carole Rawcliffe: ‘Do not stop at Famagusta’: Travel and Health in the Later Middle Ages

Kelcey Wilson-Lee: Travel and Childbirth

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 4B       Women Travellers

Anthony Bale: Margery Kempe and the Female Traveller in the Later Middle Ages

Bart Lambert and Josh Ravenhill: Travelled Women in the Capital: Opportunities for Immigrant Women in London during the Later Middle Ages

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 4C       Poster Judging & Book Launch            

Judging of student posters 

Launch of Harlaxton Medieval Symposia volume(s) 

Friday, 30 July:

2:30 – 4:00 PM            Session 5A      Travel Wonders

Alan Thacker: Travels of St Wulfram

Shayne Legassie: Botanical Wonder and Medieval Travel

5:00 – 6:30 PM            Session 5B       Travel and the Exotic

Melanie Taylor: In Search of the Exotic: Visual Evidence of Knowledge and Trade in Simians, Birds, and Wingless Dragons

Kate Franklin: From Marvels to Motels: Imagined and Infrastructural Worlds of the Silk Road Travel

Final words: Caroline Barron

New Publication: The Gems of Dante’s Divine Comedy by Ann C. Pizzorusso

In honor of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, geologist Ann C. Pizzorusso has published a new book, available in English and Italian on the gems Dante used as metaphors in the Divine Comedy.

From a gemological point of view, the Divine Comedy is a veritable treasure trove: containing rubies, topazes, emeralds, sapphires, pearls and diamonds, as well as crystal, amber and glass. Most of the references to gems can be found in the Paradiso, the Canticle of Light, in which Dante makes abundant use of illumination on objects in the form of reflection, refraction and shadow to convey a variety of metaphors and concepts – pearls, the intellectual luster of the wise; rubies, souls of Christian warriors; diamonds, fortitude and steadfastness; and the sapphire, emblematic of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven.


It is evident that Dante was well aware of the intrinsic physical characteristics of each gemstone and its astrological association as well as the spiritual, metaphysical, and medicinal attributes each was purported to possess. His working knowledge of light’s reflection, refraction and dispersion on specific gems is extraordinary as he combines the knowledge of a physicist with the words of a bard. All of this in an era in which many rare, faceted precious stones were entering Europe and the principles of gemology, as we know them, lay centuries in the future.


Using gemological passages from the Divine Comedy, the author will show how Dante used the physical characteristics of each gem to describe the intrinsic characteristics of humanity, starting with man and proceeding upward toward the souls, angels, saints and finally to the divine – as characterized by a brilliant, spotless diamond.

Available on Amazon worldwide in English and Italian in ebook and paperback form.

https://www.prurgent.com/2021-03-04/pressrelease472053.htm

New Publication: Ficino and Fantasy – Imagination in Renaissance Art and Theory from Botticelli to Michelangelo by Marieke J.E. van den Doel

Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? Art historians have been fiercely debating this question for decades. This book starts with Ficino’s views on the imagination as a faculty of the soul, and shows how these ideas were part of a long philosophical tradition and inspired fresh insights. This approach, combined with little known historical material, offers a new understanding of whether, how and why Ficino’s Platonic conceptions of the imagination may have been received in the art of the Italian Renaissance. The discussion explores Ficino’s possible influence on the work of Botticelli and Michelangelo, and examines the appropriation of Ficino’s ideas by early modern art theorists.

Marieke J.E. van den Doel is Assistant Professor of History of Humanism at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. Previously, she was Director of Studies in Art History at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR) and Curator of Exhibitions at Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam.

Readership – All interested in History of Art, especially Italian Renaissance Art (Botticelli, Michelangelo) as well as its historiography and Renaissance humanism and Platonism, both students and specialists alike

Call for Papers: Session at International Congress on Medieval Studies (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 9th -14th May 2022), Deadline: 10th May 2021

IAS Sponsored Sessions at ICMS 2022

Call for IAS-Organized Session Proposals (https://:www.italianartsociety.org)
57th International Congress on Medieval Studies 2022
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 9-14 May 2022 
https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress

The IAS sponsors up to three linked sessions at the annual meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS). The Congress is an annual gathering of more than 3,000 scholars interested in Medieval Studies, broadly defined. It features more than 550 sessions of papers, panel discussions, roundtables, workshops, and performances.

The IAS is seeking session proposals that cover Italian art from the fourth through the fifteenth centuries. Members interested in putting together a panel or linked panels should send a brief abstract (250 words max), session title, a short list of potential or desired speakers (they need not be confirmed), the name of the chair(s) with email addresses and affiliation, and a one-page CV.

IAS online application:
https://www.italianartsociety.org/conferences-lectures/icms/

Questions to programs@italianartsociety.org.

More information about ICMS submissions:
https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions

Submit to IAS by: 10 May 2021 
Submit to ICMS by: 1 June 2021

Online Lecture: Curators’ Introduction – Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint, 7th May 2021, 17.30–18.30 (BST)

To mark last year’s 850th anniversary of his brutal murder, the exhibition explored Becket’s remarkable life, death and legacy. It presents his journey from a merchant’s son to Archbishop of Canterbury, and the attempts to obliterate his cult under the Tudor dynasty.

Introduced and chaired by the Director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, the exhibition curators, Lloyd de Beer and Naomi Speakman, discuss the themes, context and highlight objects of this remarkable show.

To book this online event:

Book now to secure your place. We’re hosting the event on Zoom – a free video conferencing system that requires users to register in advance. If you do not already use Zoom, you can sign up using this registration link.

If the event is fully booked, or you do not wish to use Zoom, you can also watch the event streamed live – as well as other events in the series – on the Museum’s live events YouTube channel.

This event includes live captioning delivered by Stagetext and delivered by MyClearText.

Credit: Reliquary pendant showing Becket as archbishop. England, 15th
century. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Info: This pendant may once have contained Becket’s relics. The reverse shows an
image of St John the Baptist.

New Journal Article: ‘A portrait of central Italy’s geology through Giotto’s paintings and its possible cultural implications’, Ann Pizzorusso, Geoscience Communication, Volume 3, Number 2, December 2020

Central Italy has some of the most complex geology in the world. In the midst of this inscrutable territory, two people emerged – St. Francis and Giotto – and they would ultimately change the history of ecology, religion and art by extolling the landscapes and geology of this region.

From antiquity to the Middle Ages, humans had a conflicting relationship with nature, seeing it as representing either divine or satanic forces. On the vanguard of a change in perspective toward the natural world was St. Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181–1226) who is now, thanks to his pioneering work, a patron of ecology. He set forth the revolutionary philosophy that the Earth and all living creatures should be respected as creations of the Almighty.

St. Francis’ affinity for the environment influenced the artist Giotto (ca. 1270–1337), who revolutionized art history by including natural elements in his religious works. By taking sacred images away from heaven and placing them in an earthly landscape, he separated them definitively from their abstract, unapproachable representation in Byzantine art. Giotto’s works are distinctive because they portray daily life as blessed, thus demonstrating that the difference between the sacred and profane is minimal.

Disseminating the new ideas of St. Francis visually was very effective, as the general populace was illiterate. Seeing frescoes reflecting their everyday lives in landscapes that were familiar changed their way of thinking. The trees, plants, animals and rocky landscapes were suddenly perceived as gifts from the Creator to be used, enjoyed and respected. Furthermore, Giotto recognized that the variety of dramatic landscapes would provide spectacular visual interest in the works. By including the striking landforms of central Italy, and portraying them accurately, Giotto allows us the opportunity to identify the types of rock in his frescoes and possibly even the exact locations he depicted. In fact, it would be discoveries in the pink Scaglia Rossa limestone – depicted in Giotto’s frescoes as pink buildings and used to construct the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi – which would revolutionize the history of geology.

How to cite. Pizzorusso, A. C.: A portrait of central Italy’s geology through Giotto’s paintings and its possible cultural implications, Geosci. Commun., 3, 427–442, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-3-427-2020, 2020.

To read the full article, click here.