Join the upcoming Cambridge Medieval Art Seminar with Dr Maria Lidova (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), who will be presenting on: ‘Christ, Fire, Gospels: Images of Theophany in the Chapel of Galla Placidia in Ravenna’. The talk takes place online at 17:00 pm (GMT).
Scholarships: British Archaeological Association Travel Grants, deadlines 15 March 2021 and 15 May 2021
Applications for travel grants are invited from students registered on post-graduate degree courses (at M.A., M.Litt., M.St., M.Phil., and Ph.D. level). Grants of up to £500 are available to cover travel for a defined purpose (such as essential site visits, attendance at an exhibition/conference, short research trip, etc). The awards will be made twice yearly, with deadlines for applications on 15 March 2021 and 15 May 2021.
Applicants are required to provide one reference, together with a timetable and travel budget, while the objective of the travel must fall within the Association’s fields of interest (as defined below). Applicants should either be registered at a UK University, or be undertaking work on material from, in, or related to, the art, architecture or archaeology of the British Isles. Applicants are also responsible for asking their nominated referee to forward a reference directly to the Hon. Secretary within one week of the closing date for applications.
An application form follows on a second page. Once complete this should be sent as an email attachment to the Hon. Secretary on secretary@thebaa.org Funds are limited, so the awards are competitive. Given current Covid-related travel restrictions, it is possible that successful applicants will be unable to undertake the travel for which an award was made. In that event, we would ask that the grant instead be used for high-quality dissertation or thesis illustrations or be used within a year for future travel with an art-historical or archaeological objective. If successful, the Association would like candidates to write a short account (150-350 words) of the travel facilitated by the award that could be posted on the BAA website.
BAA STATEMENT OF INTEREST
The Association’s interests are defined as the study of archaeology, art and architecture from the Roman period to the present day, principally within Europe and the Mediterranean basin. The core interests of the BAA are Roman to 16th century. We only entertain applications that cover the 17th to 21st centuries if they are of an historiographical, conservationist or antiquarian nature and link back to the BAA’s core interests.
Call for Submissions: ‘Towards a Visual History of the Working Class’, Different Visions Journal, deadline 30 March 2021
The discipline of art history is closely tied to the art market and to wealthy donors and collectors, and for this reason has long identified with the upper class. Many art historians betray a tendency to identify with the elite. For example, Ruth Mellinkoff, in her fine book Outcasts, expresses a typical attitude when she asserts, “While we who live in the era of the common man publicly extol his virtues, privately we admire and covet the attributes of the upper class.” There are innumerable publications on medieval queens, wealthy art donors, and the luxury objects that they commissioned, but few studies concern the laboring class. In part this is because medieval sources are less interested in workers than in the elite. It is more difficult to write an art history from below because there are fewer textual and visual sources, but it can be done, as earlier scholars have shown. Outstanding examples include J. J. G Alexander’s study of peasants, Deidre Jackson’s essay on labor, and Ruth Mellinkoff’s book Outcasts, among others.
A future issue of Different Visions will be devoted to exploring those who labored. We welcome proposals for articles that explore any aspect that builds towards a visual history of the working class in the Middle Ages (400-1530). Essays may examine images of the laboring class or the objects that were part of their lives, or any other relevant topic. Michael Uebel and Kellie Robertson have shown that in every European language the medieval word for “labour” had an “unambivalent connotation of pain, suffering, and fatigue.” Do visual images confirm this? How is labor depicted? What role does the intersection of gender, race, and class play in medieval images of laborers? How does medieval art show animals or other nonhumans who labor? Have medieval images been used to support modern ways of seeing labor and capital, production and consumption? Does the Aristotelian contempt for labor affect medieval images? Which objects were associated with working class? Which material and immaterial qualities were associated with workers?
Please submit an abstract of about 150 words by March 30 2021 to Diane Wolfthal at dianewolfthal@yahoo.com. Those whose abstracts are selected for publication will be asked to submit their article by July 30. Contributors will then share their research through a zoom conference to be held Aug. 15. Final, revised drafts will be submitted Dec. 31 2021.
Online Lecture: ‘Cities and Surveillance in Spain and Beyond, 1200-1500’ with Dr Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute), 24 February 2021, 18-19pm (GMT)
Organiser: Zurbarán Centre with ARTES Iberian & Visual Culture Group, Durham University
Climbing tall towers is an unmissable element of modern city breaks, rewarding breathless visitors with opportunities to survey the city below and capture it in photos. In this lecture I consider the long history of surveillance and image making. Focusing especially on the famous Giralda in Seville, and I will show how climbing towers was always implicated in the ‘imperial gaze’, and suggest that the growing popularity of tower climbing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can be connected to the emergence of painted cityscapes and technologies of surveillance and map-making.
Dr Tom Nickson is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art & Architecture at the Courtauld Institute in London and Vice-Chair of ARTES. He is currently working on a book that surveys architecture in the Iberian Peninsula between 1150 and 1450.
The talk is free and open to all. It will last ca. 40 minutes and will be followed by Q&A. Booking is essential. Please email the Zurbarán Centre (Zurbaran.centre@durham.ac.uk) to register and to receive a zoom link. Please note registration closes 24 hours before the seminar.
Contact zurbaran.centre@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Online Conference: ‘Self-Representation in Late Antiquity and Byzantium’, 23rd International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society, 26–28 February 2021
Self-representation is a process by which historical actors – individuals, communities and institutions – fashioned and presented a complex image of themselves through various media.
Referring to Byzantine portraits, Spatharakis claimed that this “form of representation cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements of the society in which the given visual language gains currency”. Equally, self-representation provides an original way to interpret the past, because this artificial and reflected image cannot be divorced from the cultural, social, economic, religious and political context of its time. As a methodological tool, it has received increasing attention in the field of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, following the interest it has created in neighbouring fields such as Western Medieval or Early Modern studies.
The present conference aims to explore the cultural outputs of the Late Antique and Byzantine world – e.g. architecture, material culture, literary works – which conventionally or unconventionally can be understood as acts of self-representation. The Late Antique and Byzantine world was filled with voices and images trying to present and represent an idea of self. Some of the most famous examples of this are the lavish mosaics sponsored by imperial and aristocratic patrons, whose splendour still dazzles their observers and gives an idea of the kind of self-fashioning that they embody. Urban elites, such as churchmen, bureaucrats and intellectuals, constructed idealised personae through their literary works and the careful compilation of letter collections, while those of the provinces displayed their power through images on seals and inscriptions. In monastic typika, the founders presented themselves as pious benefactors, while donor epigraphy in rural churches secured the local influence of wealthier peasants. However, self-representation is not only a matter of introspection but also of dialogue with the “other”: such is the case of spolia, used to reincorporate a supposed classical past in one’s self-portrayal, or to create an image of continuity by conquerors. It is the conscious use of Byzantine motifs in Islamicate architecture, the fiction of Digenes Akritas, or the religious polemics of late Byzantium, pitting Muslim, Jews and Christians against one other. Through depicting what they were not, historical actors were (consciously or unconsciously) shaping their own identity.
This conference seeks to join the ongoing dialogue on self-representation in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies by providing a forum for postgraduate and early-career scholars to reflect on this theme in a variety of cultural media. In doing so, we hope to facilitate the interaction and engagement of historians, philologists, archaeologists, art historians, theologians and specialists in material culture.
This conference was conceived and organised by the OUBS Committee: Lorenzo Saccon (President); Alberto Ravani (Secretary); James Cogbill (Treasurer)
With the support of the: Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research; Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity; Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies; Arts and Humanities Research Council; Oxford Medieval Studies; The Oxford Research Centre for Humanities; History Faculty, University of Oxford.
Advance registration required – register here.
Conference Programme
Day 1: Friday 26 February 2021
9:30am – Opening Remarks
Speaker: Lorenzo Saccon (OUBS President)
10:00am – Session 1: Self-Representation in Early and Middle Byzantine Religious Writings.
Chair: Callan Meynell
- Speaker 1.1: Paul Ulishney (Christ Church, Oxford), References to Islam in Anastasius of Sinai’s Hexameron
- Speaker 2.1: Blake Lorenz (KU Leuven)Psalm 78 and the Self in Pseudo-Methodius; Speaker 3.1: Arie Neuhauser (St Cross College, Oxford), Negotiating Legitimacy Between a Rebel and Lazaros of Mount Galesion
- Speaker 4.1: Cristina Cocola (Ghent University-KU Leuven), A Repentant Sinner: Representing the Self in Nikephoros Ouranos’ Katanyktic Alphabet
11:40am – Break until 12:00pm
12:00pm – Session 2: Representing Power and Legitimacy from Late Antiquity to Middle Byzantium.
Chair: Raymond Ngoh
- Speaker 2.1: Matt Hassall (University of Cambridge), Devolved Networks of Self-Representation and Propaganda during the Reign of Justinian the 1st
- Speaker 2.2: Silvio Roggo (University of Cambridge), The Self-Portrayal of Eutychios of Constantinople as Legitimate Patriarch, 577-582
- Speaker 2.3: Zhang Kaiyue (St Stephen’s House, Oxford), The Lawgivers and the Idol-Breakers: Self-Representation of the Isaurian Emperors as Old Testament Kings
- Speaker 2.4: Tom Alexander (St John’s College, Oxford), A Prince of Armenia between Byzantium and the Caliphate: Tʿēodoros Ṙshtuni as Depicted in Seventh- and Eighth-Century Armenian Historiography.
13:40pm – Break until 15:00pm
15:00pm – Session 3: Ut Pictura Poesis: Representing Art, Literature and Self
Chair: Kelly McClinton
- Speaker 3.1: Julian Wood (University College, Oxford), ‘For this does not define Peter only, but also Paul and John’: Theodore of Stoudios on Representing the Unique Self
- Speaker 3.2: Ana C. Núñez (Stanford University), Lost Mosaics and Religious Chant: Fashioning Royal Power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem
- Speaker 3.3: Joshua Hitt (St Hilda’s College, Oxford), ‘I Scrape off the Old Age of the Painting’s Colours’: The Rhetoric of Restoration in Twelfth-Century Byzantium
- Speaker 3.4: Dorota Zaprzalska (The Jagiellonian University), Composite Icons as a Means of Presenting and Interpreting the Past
16:40pm – Break until 17:00pm
17:00pm – Keynote Lecture
Professor Cecily Hilsdale (McGill University), Genres of Imperial Self-Representation in Later Byzantium
Day 2: Saturday 27 February 2021
11:00am – Session 4: Self-representation in Late Antique literature
Chair: Arie Neuhauser
- Speaker 4.1: Filomena Giannotti (University of Siena), Self-Representation and Fictional Portraits of a Key Figure in Late Antiquity: Sidonius Apollinaris
- Speaker 4.2: Ben Kybett (University of Cambridge), Religious Self-Representation in Fourth-Century Panegyric
- Speaker 4.3: Elia Otranto (University of Granada), Let’s Talk About Me: Dialogue and Self-Representation in Emperor Julian’s Writings
- Speaker 4.4: Frederick Bird (Regent’s Park College, Oxford), The ‘Dead Self’ in Byzantine Sepulchral Epigrams
12:40pm – Break until 14:00pm
14:00pm – Session 5: Negotiating Identity within and outside Late Byzantium
Chair: Lorenzo Saccon
- Speaker 5.1: Christina Nicole Conti (Independent Researcher), Heir to An Ancient Empire and the Illusion of Power: The Examination of Imperial Propaganda Under Alexios III of Trebizond in the Greek Alexander Romance Codex gr. 5
- Speaker 5.2: Francesca Samorì (University of Padua), Shaping History for an Autobiographical Outline: the Historia Dogmatica of George Metochites
- Speaker 5.3: Benjamin Sharkey (Magdalen College, Oxford), Forming a Christian identity: Syriac funerary inscriptions in Kyrgyzstan (1201-1345)
- Speaker 5.4: Bella Radenović (Courtauld Institute of Art), Artistic Self-Representation in Medieval Georgian Metalwork
15:40pm – Break until 17:00pm
17:00pm – Session 6: Buildings, Images and patrons
Chair: Katerina Vavaliou
- Speaker 6.1: Kelly E. McClinton (Merton College, Oxford), Elite Identity and Self-Representation in Domestic Spaces in Rome: Redecoration in Late Antique Houses
- Speaker 6.2: Veronika Poláková (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Self-Representation as a Marian Devotee: A Comparison of Donor Portraits in Byzantine and New Spanish Paintings
- Speaker 6.3: Maria Elisavet Samoili (Independent Researcher), The Modified Portrayals of the Founders Th. Limniotis and A. Radini in Frescoes at Agioi Anargyroi in Kastoria, Greece: From Aristocracy to Monasticism?
- Speaker 6.4: Alevtina Tanu (Independent Researcher), Two Examples of Comparison of Royal Women to the Theotokos in the Eastern Orthodox World.
Day 3: Sunday 28 February 2021
9:30am – Session 7: Society and its Representation in Middle and Late Byzantium
Chair: Joshua Hitt
- Speaker 7.1: Emma Huig (Christ Church, Oxford) Title: Dynamics of the Identification of Female Characters in the Slavic and Greek Digenis Akritis
- Speaker 7.2: Zuzana Mitrengová (Masaryk University), Self-Representation of the Female Protagonist in Late Byzantine Romances
- Speaker 7.3: Michael Kiefer (University of Heidelberg), What to Wear in Byzantium? – On the Portrait Habitus of Middle and Late Byzantine Elites
- Speaker 7.4: Anna Adashinskaya (New Europe College), Pious Offerings to Meteora Monasteries (1348-1420s): Between Political Representation, Family Belonging, and Personal Agency
11:10am – Break until 12:00pm
12:00 – Session 8: Beyond the Border and across the Sea: Constructing Identities around Byzantium
Chair: Benjamin Sharkey
- Speaker 8.1: William Neubauer (Balliol College, Oxford), The Fourteenth Sibylline Oracle: Eschatology and Identity among the Jews of Seventh-Century Alexandria
- Speaker 8.: Valentina A. Grasso (University of Cambridge), Kingship, Self-Representation and Cross-Cultural Assimilation: A Reading of Late Antique pre-Islamic Arabian Epigraphic Testimonies
- Speaker 8.3: Fermude Gülsevinç (Bilkent University), ‘We Are Pilgrims in an Unholy Land’: Christianizing the Seascape of Naxos and Chios in the Late Antiquity (Fourth to Sixth Centuries)
- Speaker 8.4: Prolet Decheva (University College, Dublin), An Abstract Way of Self-Representation: Personified Virtues in Late Antique Mosaics and Beyond.
13:40pm – Break until 14:30pm
14:30pm – Session 9: Self-Representation in the Socio-Economic Sphere
Chair: Thomas Laver
- Speaker 9.1: William Bunce (Wadham College, Oxford), Roman Law as Roman Self-Representation: A Case Study in Holiday Law
- Speaker 9.2: Gemma Storti (The Ohio State University), Mismatched Eyes, Penny-Pinchers, and Eaters: Byzantine Nicknames and Self-Representation
- Speaker 9.3: Carlo Berardi (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), A Lion, not an Angel: Heraldic Devices and Dynastic Identity in the Frescoes of Saint Panteleimon, Nerezi
- Speaker 9.4: Yunus Doğan (Bilkent University), ‘S(igillum) Felicis (Fran)Corum Exercitus in Rom(a)nie F(..)Bus(?) Comorantis’: Seal of the Catalan Company.
16:10pm – Break until 17:15pm
17:15pm Keynote Lecture 2
Professor Stratis Papaioannou (University of Crete), The Literature of the Self in Byzantium; Closing Remarks
New Publication: ‘Typical Venice? The Art of Commodities, 13th-16th Centuries’, edited by Ella Beaucamp and Philippe Cordez
What is the art of commodities, and how does it contribute to shaping a city? The case of Venice, which perhaps more than any other late medieval or early modern city depended on trade, offers some widely applicable considerations in response to these questions.
Commodities exist as such only when they can be bought and sold. Select materials, techniques and tools, motifs, and working processes are entailed in the conception and realization of commodities, with the aim of producing and selling in numbers. The art of commodities is an art of anticipation and organization, as complex as the material, social, and symbolic situations it results from, deals with, and contributes to shaping. In turn, an analysis of commodities allows for profound insights in these situations. The art of commodities ultimately presents specific challenges, solutions, and styles; it is an art of objects, as well as an art of cities and societies.
In Venice, commodities did much more than circulate throughout the Lagoon: the city was made of them. The studies in this book consider the Serenissima’s diverse commodities, merchants, and routes from multiple perspectives.
Ella Beaucamp is a doctoral candidate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where she developed her dissertation topic within the research group ‘Premodern Objects. An Archaeology of Experience’, led by Philippe Cordez. She studies the high medieval stone reliefs of Venetian house facades, relating them to the larger context of Mediterranean trade and artistic production. The Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, and the Max Weber Foundation – German Humanities Institutes Abroad have supported her work. For her master’s thesis she was the recipient of the Heinrich Wölfflin Prize from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
Philippe Cordez is Deputy Director of the German Center for Art History in Paris. His research and teaching deal with medieval art history and more generally with object studies in art history. This work has been supported by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Universität Hamburg, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the Université de Montréal, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. His book ‘Treasure, Memory, Nature: Church Objects in the Middle Ages’, translated from French and awarded the Prize of the German Medievalists’ Society (Mediävistenverband e.V.), is available at Harvey Miller Publishers.
Find out more information here.
Table of Contents
ELLA BEAUCAMP AND PHILIPPE CORDEZ
Glass Vessels, Camel Imagery, House Façades: The Venetian Art of Commodities (13th–14th Centuries)
MANLIO LEO MEZZACASA
Sacred Objects by Venetian Goldsmiths (Late 13th–15th Centuries): Economics, Seriality, Identity
NATHANIEL SILVER
‘magna ars de talibus tabulis et figuris’: Reframing Panel Painting as Venetian Commodity (14th–15th Centuries)
BENEDETTA CHIESI
Ivories of the 14th–15th Centuries: The Pride and Ill-Fortune of a ‘Venetian Commodity’
ELIZABETH RODINI
Imitation as a Mercantile Strategy: The Case of Damascene Ware
SUSANNE THÜRIGEN
The Commodification of Ornament: Jacob Marquart’s Table Clocks
DARIO MICHELE ZORZA
Crafting Venetian Quality: Printing Legislation and the Case of Gabriele Giolito’s ‘Orlando Furioso’ (1542)
MEGAN K. WILLIAMS
Paper in the Piazza: The Late Medieval and Early Modern Trade in Venetian Paper
CRISTIAN LUCA
The Export of Venetian Commodities to the Romanian Principalities in the 16th Century
LEAH R. CLARK
The Politics of Acquisition: Venetian Objects in Italian Courtly Collections, c. 1475–1525
ROMEDIO SCHMITZ-ESSER
An Untypical Case? Late Medieval and Early Modern Venetian Commodities and their Re-Evaluation
CFP: Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350-1750), deadline 1 April 2021
IS-LE and COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) invite papers for the workshop Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350-1750): a thesaurus under discussion. Studying the relations between Christianity and Islam in late medieval and early modern Europe and the Mediterranean means covering a vast geographical region, which is diverse in its languages and cultures. Against this background it is necessary to find a common ground that makes it possible to understand the exchange between these two cultures as one border-crossing phenomenon. To achieve this comprehensive understanding, it is necessary to identify overarching ideas and common terms that are widely used in this field of research. Some of these terms are used analogically or even equivalent in different languages, which emphasizes the fact that there were similar images circulating throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Therefore, the aim of this project is to discuss each of the 5 below terms in the context of their historiographies and how they were shaped by then prevailing notions.
Topics (terms) to be addressed:
- Orient-Occident, Morgenland-Abendland, Doğu-Batı
- Coexistence, Convivencia
- Hybridity
- Border-Frontier, Center-Periphery, Holy Land 5. Reconquista, Rückeroberung, Fetih
The deadline for submissions is 1 April 2021. Each proposal for an article should discuss one term, respectively one set of terms. The variations of the terms are not limited to the languages used above and can be complemented by translations into other languages. Proposals should not exceed one page (12 pt.), please also submit a short bio (250 words). The selected proposals will be presented during a workshop organized by the COST Action in Bosnia Harzegovina (University of Sarajevo), September 7, 2021. Due to budgetary restrictions, the number of reimbursed participants will be limited. If the Covid-19 situation prevents the in-person celebration of the workshop, it would be conducted online. Following the workshop, the articles will be published in a special issue of a journal to be announced at a later moment. We explicitly encourage submissions of researchers at any stages of their career and any related field of research.
For more information, please visit the IS-LE and COST website.
Image credit: detail of the Catalan Atlas, c. 1375, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Online Lecture: ‘The ‘Tara’ brooch: the making of a medieval masterpiece’ by Dr Niamh Whitfield, 17 February 2021, 7.30pm (GMT)
Join the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society on Wednesday 17 February for Dr Niamh Whitfield’s presentation on: ‘The ‘Tara’ brooch: the making of a medieval masterpiece’.
Online Event: Interview with Ephraim Shoham-Steiner on “Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe,” Fordham University, 17 February, 2021
Join Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies on Wednesday, 17 February at 1:00pm EST for an interview with Ephraim Shoham-Steiner on his recently published book Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe. Hosted by Fordham University and the New York Public Library, Ephraim will be in conversation with Fordham history professors Nicholas Paul and Magda Teter.
Shoham-Steiner is a professor of Medieval Jewish History in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er-Shevah Israel (BGU).
Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were often unfounded, at times criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim examines the reasons for Jewish involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society’s attitude toward individuals identified as criminals—by others or themselves—can serve as a window into that society’s mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society’s attitudes toward them.
This event is a joint initiative of Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies and the New York Public Library and is a part of the Fordham-NYPL Joint Research Fellowship Program in Jewish Studies.
This event is predicted to be very popular, and advantage register is encouraged and required. Please register here.
CFP: Resilience, Resistance, and Renewal in the Medieval and Early Modern World (UCLA, 27 May 2021), deadline 1 March 2021
The medieval and early modern world (broadly considered, c. 900-1750) underwent myriad profound changes, from devastating famines, plagues, and wars to an increased entanglement of the continents, economic transformations, and technological and scientific developments. These changes were often accompanied by calls for the reshaping of the institutions and structures – political, religious, intellectual, etc. – which undergirded societies’ approach to these challenges, encompassing such responses as resistance, resilience, and renewal.
The Medieval and Early Modern Student Association (MEMSA) and Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) at UCLA invite submissions of individual paper presentations (15-20 minutes) for an online conference considering aspects of cultural, environmental, social, economic, and other change in the medieval and early modern world. We particularly encourage those whose work highlights moments of resilience, resistance, and renewal. Presenters from all disciplines are welcome, especially those that take on inter-disciplinary perspectives and methodologies. We hope to provide opportunities for graduate students to present their research on a variety of topics that takes into consideration what many are also thinking about from another perspective, informed by the experience of recent events.
Please contact the officers of MEMSA (memsa.ucla@gmail.com) to submit an abstract of the proposed presentation (250-300 words) by March 1, 2021.
Image credit: The Morgan Library, Book of Hours, France, Paris, ca. 1420-1425, MS M.1004 fol. 143v
Medieval Art Research 