Blogging the Medieval: How to write for the web and social media

Academics and heritage professionals working with medieval collections are increasingly encouraged to disseminate their research to public audiences through blogging and social media, but many are new to writing inclusively to engage with non-specialist readers. The following guidelines provide helpful advice on writing blogs, using more accessible language, describing medieval objects, finding images to include in posts, and tips for using Twitter and Instagram.

Writing and Tone

While articles are lengthy pieces aimed towards academic readers, blogs are intended for broad audiences and are ideally 500-750 words in length. Be concise in your writing, explaining what the material is that you are discussing, why it is important to you, and what makes your topic relevant to current readers. Hook the reader by presenting your message in the opening paragraph rather than summing up in your conclusion. If you are writing on behalf of your institution, check whether they provide writing guidelines for you to follow. Your tone of voice should be a balance between your academic authority as an expert on the material and light-heartedness to reflect the joy the object brings to you and your readers.

Accessible Language

Accessibility does not mean dumbing down! Instead, you are providing contextual information for non-specialists of your topic. For example, manuscript classmarks are only meaningful to a small number of researchers, so refer to works by their title or form in the body of the post with the classmark in brackets: This illuminated Bible (CCA-DCc-AddMs/392) was produced in Paris. Explain specialist terms when first used, such as Psalter (the book of the Psalms). Take a look at the glossary of the British Library’s Medieval England and France website for further terms relating to medieval art and culture. Similarly, provide epithets and known dates for historical figures when first mentioned, for example: St Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury (r. 1162-1170). When referring to a medieval centre that is not a well-known location such as London or Paris, include a reference to the centre’s modern location: Echternach, in modern-day Luxemburg.   Finally, language is a barrier in medieval studies, so it is important to include English translations of Latin titles of works and quotations. These small additions to your post will allow much wider audiences to access and enjoy your research.

Describing Images

The public does not know how to ‘read’ medieval art, so you must be clear in your written descriptions of the images you discuss. Explain what the image depicts as well as if the work is shown in full or a detail of a larger programme. Be mindful that many medieval works used as sources of historical research continue to function as sacred objects, including Bibles, relics, and other religious items. Your tone should be mindful of the image’s present status to faith audiences. Do not attempt to interpret articles of faith like the Holy Trinity or the Crucifixion, as doctrine of the medieval Church is not accepted across all Christian faiths today. However, provide summaries of common medieval scenes that public readers may be encountering for the first time, for example: The Evangelist St Mark with his symbol of a lion. The British Library’s Discovering Sacred Texts website provides expert guidance on the teaching and description of faith texts and their imagery from Buddhism,  Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and the Baha’i Faith, Jainism and Zoroastrianism.

Image Credits

Before you include an image in your blog post, ensure you have the permission of the item’s holding institution to use it as reproductions come under copyright law. Most museums and libraries outline how images can be used online their website, but if in doubt get in touch by email to find out their policy. Caption the image with the item’s location and holding institution. For manuscripts, include the library classmark and folio number, as below. Also state the permission or credit line provided by the institution. This applies also to images available to download through digitisation projects.

Portrait of Eadwine the scribe, from The Eadwine Psalter, dated c. 1150, Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.17.1, f. 283v. This work is copyright the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Twitter and Instagram

Social media is used to promote museum and library collections, highlight upcoming events and exhibitions, drive traffic to project websites, and engage with researchers and the interested public in online communities. You can use social media to attract readers to your blog by sharing several tweets or posts over time with fun facts and images from the blog. Your post or Instagram bio should contain a website link to enable access for readers. Medieval manuscripts are not memes, include the classmark and folio number of the image shared to promote good practice online! Use any relevant hashtags, such as #MedievalTwitter, #nuntastic, #InternationalCatDay- follow the Twitter accounts of the British Library’s medieval curators @BLMedieval and the Bodleian Digital Library @BDLSS for great hashtag ideas. Most importantly, tag in the museum or library you are sharing from! Institutions can share your post on their social media feeds and staff love to see how researchers engage with the collections.

Happy writing!

About the Author

Dr Alison Ray has worked since 2018 as Assistant Archivist at Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, having previously worked at the British Library as Digitisation and Web Curatorial Officer with The Polonsky Foundation England and France, 700-1200 digitisation project. Follow Dr Ray on Twitter.

Postdoctoral Fellowship: Junior Research Fellowship Competition 2021 (Non-stipendiary), Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, deadline 5 October 2020

Wolfson College invites applications for up to ten non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellowships under Title BI.

The non-stipendiary Fellowships with enhanced dining rights and annual research allowance are in any subject and tenable for one year from 1 April or 1 October 2021 (dependent upon funding), renewable for a further two years.

The Fellowships are open to graduates of any university, employed within Cambridge University or its allied institutions for the duration of their tenure. There is no age limit, but the Fellowships are designed to support those who are at an early stage in their academic careers, and will normally be awarded to candidates who have recently completed a PhD degree (or equivalent qualification), or is close to completing by the start date.

Candidates must produce satisfactory evidence that they have adequate funds to support their Fellowship. The Fellowships do not cover the cost of bench fees or other University fees or laboratory charges.

Further information, application and referee forms are available at: https://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/people/fellows/junior-research-fellows

All applications and references must be submitted as email attachments. Postal applications will not be accepted.

The closing date for April or October 2021 entry is midday 5 October 2020.

Online Exhibitions: Cambridge University Library

Cambridge University Library has a fantastic ‘online exhibition’ space, where you can virtually explore a number of their previous exhibitions. We’ve made a shortlist of those exhibitions that we think Medieval Art lovers will find most interesting! Let us know which one is your favourite (if you’re able to choose!).

Cambridge University Library - Dominican liturgy: books for the Mass

A pipeline from heaven: 800 years of Dominican books

In 1216 St Dominic settled a religious community of preachers at Saint-Romain in Toulouse. In 2016 the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) celebrates its 800th anniversary. This exhibition marks the central role that books have played in the work of the Order over eight centuries.

Romance of the Rose, Cambridge University Library MS Gg.4.6

The moving word: French medieval manuscripts in Cambridge

An exhibition tracing the development of medieval literature in French, and the manuscript culture through which it was conveyed across Europe and beyond.

The fame of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine: a view from the Cairo genizah

The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb) of the Persian polymath Avicenna (980–1037) was one of the most influential medical texts in both the medieval Arabo-Islamic world and in pre-modern Europe, and it is no surprise that such a pervasive treatise should be found among the 200,000 fragments of manuscripts of the Cambridge Genizah Collections. This exhibition presents a sample.

Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo

For a thousand years the Jewish community of Old Cairo put their worn-out writings into a synagogue storage room, a genizah. Explore one of the greatest collections of Cambridge University Library and a remarkable survival of the medieval past. Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo provides a window on the life of a community a thousand years ago – a Jewish community in the centre of a thriving Islamic empire, international in outlook, multicultural in make up, devout to its core.

Recipes, Prescriptions and Drugs from Medieval Cairo

Among the 350,000 fragments of medieval manuscripts retrieved from the Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo) we find almost 2,000 leaves dealing with medicine, the medical profession and health problems. They are written in Hebrew, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic and are an amazing source for studying the transmission of medical knowledge and the actual practice of medicine in the Middle Ages. This exhibition presents a sample.

Remembering the Reformation

2017 is the 500th anniversary of the events that brought about a permanent religious schism within Western Christendom. This digital exhibition explores how Europe’s multiple and competing Reformations have been remembered, forgotten, contested, and re-invented since the sixteenth century.

Cambridge University Library - The use and abuse of books 1450-1550

Private Lives of Print: the use and abuse of books 1450-1550

A major exhibition giving insights into the ways early books were decorated, annotated, bound, used and abused by their owners in the first hundred years after the development of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg.

See all the exhibitions and more here.

Online Lecture Series: ICMA at the Courtauld Institute of Fine Art

While this year’s ICMA lecture at The Courtauld Institute of Art was unfortunately cancelled due to the COVID-19 crisis, recordings of past events (from 2014-2019) can be found here or below.

This lecture series, established in 1999, is sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art, New York.  ICMA promotes the study of the visual arts of the Middle Ages.  Its worldwide membership includes academics, museum professionals, students, and other enthusiasts.  ICMA publishes a scholarly journal Gesta, a newsletter, sponsors lectures and conference sessions and maintains the website www.medievalart.org

Previous lecturers and their topics (which can be viewed on YouTube)

2018/19, Dr Elizabeth Morrison (Senior Curator of Manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum)

A Beast of a Project: Curating an Exhibition on Bestiaries at the Getty

The prospect of curating a major international loan exhibition is equal parts thrilling and intimidating. After eight years of intense research, loan negotiation, design development, and thousands of emails, Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World will open at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles on May 14, 2019. This presentation will look at the behind-the-scenes planning necessary by the lead curator, from the intellectual origins of the concept to some of the major challenges faced along the way. It will explore the exhibition’s major themes, including how the vivid images of the bestiary created an influential visual language that endured for centuries and became so popular that the animals escaped from the pages of books into other types of art objects ranging from massive tapestries to diminutive ivories. The exhibition will feature 115 objects from 45 lenders across the United States and Europe, including one third of the world’s surviving Latin illuminated bestiaries.

Elizabeth Morrison is Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She received her PhD in the History of Art from Cornell University and began work at the Getty in 1996. During her tenure there, she has curated numerous exhibitions including the 2010 co-curated exhibition Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500, which was a finalist for the College Arts Association award for outstanding exhibition catalogue. She has published on both Flemish and French illumination and has served on the boards of the International Center of Medieval Art and the Medieval Academy of America.

2017/18, Professor Nancy Sevcenko (Visiting Scholar, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC)

All in the Family: The Byzantine imperial family of the Comnenians as patrons in the first half of the 12th century

The Comnenian imperial family dominated the later 11th and 12th centuries in Byzantium: Emperor Alexios I, and his son and successor John II, ruled for a combined total of 62 years (1081-1143).  And the family was large: Alexios had nine children and John had eight, and most of these children were adults, with children of their own, by the death of John II in 1143.  Given that the administration of the empire in this period centered around membership in the imperial family, the relative proximity of each family member to the emperor himself, whether by blood or by marriage, became key. 

The works of art associated with this famille nombreuse consist of everything from grand monastic foundations to illuminated manuscripts to small metal reliquary crosses.  Some of these works, large and small, have survived; for others, there is ample written evidence.  This paper will look at the many works of art and literature commissioned by, or associated with, specific members of the family in these decades, tracking issues such as how proximity to the throne of the individual may have affected the nature and general perception of the work and its place on a spectrum between public and private. 

Nancy Patterson Ševčenko is a Byzantine art historian whose work has focused primarily on illustrated lives of the saints, and on the intersection of art and liturgy.  She is the author of The Life of Saint Nicholas in Byzantine Art (1983), of Illustrated Manuscripts of the Metaphrastian Menologion (1990), and of Greek Manuscripts at Princeton, Sixth to Nineteenth Century: A Descriptive Catalogue (2010) with S. Kotzabassi and D. Skemer); she is currently preparing a catalogue of the Byzantine illuminated manuscripts of the monastery of St. John on Patmos.  A selection of her articles have been reprinted in her Variorum volume, The Celebration of the Saints in Byzantine Art and Liturgy (2013).  She recently completed a term as the President of the International Center of Medieval Art, and is currently Visiting Scholar at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC.  She lives in South Woodstock, Vermont.

2016/17, Dr Adam Cohen (University of Toronto)

Local and Global: Medieval Art in an Age of New Nationalisms

In light of recent world events, this talk addresses some of the disciplinary questions about methodology and classification that underlie the study and teaching of medieval art today. It focuses on the tension between working intellectually and practically in an ever-expanding global environment and attending at the same time to the particulars of specific historical contexts.

The consideration of borders ranges from the geographic to the temporal and from cultural to confessional. Among the specific topics to be treated are the role and implications of Jewish art, both in the medieval world and in modern scholarship; the practice of art history in the European and Chinese academies; and the challenges of writing a new survey of medieval art.

2015/6, Professor Lawrence Nees (Professor of Medieval Art & Department Chair, Department of Art History, University of Delaware)

Reading and Seeing: the beginnings of book illumination and the modern discourse on ethnicity

Much attention has been paid to the change of books from roll to codex form, largely accomplished by the fourth and fifth centuries, and the impact of this change on the illustration of books.  However, for some centuries the form of writing in the new codex format changed relatively little, and another change, arguably as significant, is associated with the seventh and eighth centuries, with books beginning to adopt multiple scripts displaying a hierarchy, spaces between words, punctuation, and decorative embellishment with illuminations of various sorts. The new kind of books, and readers, are strongly associated with monasticism, as has of course been noted before, but for a variety of reasons scholars have not explored the interactions between writing, illumination, and reading in depth.  Instead, a powerful strand of scholarly tradition, especially in the Anglophone world, has linked illumination with “barbarian” traditions, an approach that deserves challenge and reconsideration.

2014/2015, Professor Holger A Klein (Professor of Art History and Archaeology & Department Chair, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University)

Art, Faith, and Politics in Late Medieval Venice

Following the Crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204 and the subsequent looting of its churches, chapels and palaces, Venice became a key repository of sacred relics imported from Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean. Some of the most treasured relics were soon incorporated into the liturgical and ceremonial rituals of the city and its most distinguished churches. While Venetian efforts to acquire new relics slowed down considerably after the end of the Latin domination of Constantinople in 1261, several prominent Eastern relics entered the city during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and enriched the city with their spiritual and miracle-working power. This lecture will explore how two prominent donations of relics of the True Cross, one to the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista the other to the Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità, impacted religious, public, and artistic life in Venice from the mid-fourteenth through the early sixteenth century.

New Publication: The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket, by Christopher de Hamel

From the bestselling author of Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, a captivating account of the last surviving relic of Thomas Becket

The assassination of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 is one of the most famous events in European history. It inspired the largest pilgrim site in medieval Europe and many works of literature from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and Anouilh’s Becket.

In a brilliant piece of historical detective work, Christopher de Hamel here identifies the only surviving relic from Becket’s shrine: the Anglo-Saxon Psalter which he cherished throughout his time as Archbishop of Canterbury, and which he may even have been holding when he was murdered.

Beautifully illustrated and published to coincide with the 850th anniversary of the death of Thomas Becket, this is an exciting rediscovery of one of the most evocative artefacts of medieval England.

Christopher de Hamel: In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s Christopher de Hamel probably handled and catalogued more illuminated manuscripts and over a wider range than anyone else alive. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and was Librarian of the Parker Library from 2000 to 2016, which holds many of the earliest manuscripts in English language and history, including the Psalter of Becket. Christopher de Hamel is the author of A History of Illuminated Manuscripts and Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which won the Wolfson History Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize in 2016. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society.

Pre-order the book here.

New Resource: Introducing Medieval Christianity

This site is a pilot version of a resource designed to introduce students to some key concepts in medieval Christianity. The goal is to provide short articles and other resources which will help undergraduates in their study of medieval culture and literature. In studying medieval literature, students are likely to come across Christian ideas, terminology, and ways of thinking which are unfamiliar to them, and the aim here is to provide a range of accessible introductory resources to enrich their study of this period.

So far, the website has a number of interesting articles concerning key concepts in medieval Christianity such as those relating to Art and Architecture (Light and Colour in Medieval Christianity, Medieval Annunciation Symbolism and The Sensory Experience of Visiting a Medieval Shrine).

On the website you can find lots of valuable resources, including a glossary of key terms, lists of external resources, and more!

Publication: Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience

Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendancy of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture were considered both superstitious and idolatrous. In Pygmalion’s Power, Thomas E. A. Dale argues that the reintroduction of architectural sculpture after a hiatus of some seven hundred years arose with the particular goal of engaging the senses in a Christian religious experience.

Since the term “Romanesque” was coined in the nineteenth century, the reintroduction of stone sculpture around the mid-eleventh century has been explained as a revivalist phenomenon, one predicated on the desire to claim the authority of ancient Rome. In this study, Dale proposes an alternative theory. Covering a broad range of sculpture types—including autonomous cult statuary in wood and metal, funerary sculpture, architectural sculpture, and portraiture—Dale shows how the revitalized art form was part of a broader shift in emphasis toward spiritual embodiment and affective piety during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Adding fresh insight to scholarship on the Romanesque, Pygmalion’s Power borrows from trends in cultural anthropology to demonstrate the power and potential of these sculptures to produce emotional effects that made them an important sensory part of the religious culture of the era.

Thomas E. A. Dale is a Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research explores how medieval art and architecture of Europe and the Mediterranean basin offer primary sources for understanding religion, politics, rituals, and cultural interaction. An essential premise of his approach is the recognition that the efficacy of visual culture and architecture lie in their forms, materiality and engagement of the spectator. He firmly believes that the cultures of the Middle Ages offer crucial insights into current ideas and concerns, ranging from the power of material images (and iconoclastic destruction) to globalization and racism.

Pygmalion’s Power is published by Penn State University Press. For more information on the book, please visit their website.

PhD Funding: PhD candidate in the ERC Consolidator project FEATHERS: Elizabeth I, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, deadline 7 September 2020

The Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) invites applications for a PhD candidate in the ERC Consolidator project FEATHERS: Elizabeth I

JOB DESCRIPTION

The PhD candidate will be working on a subproject within the ERC Consolidator research project FEATHERS,funded for 2020-2025 by the European Research Council (ERC), and directed by Nadine Akkerman (Reader in early modern English Literature at Leiden University).

Manuscript production was a collaborative or ‘socialised’ enterprise that often involved secretaries and scribes who physically wrote what the author dictated. FEATHERS will overhaul historical approaches and offer new ways to assess the partnership between employer and scribe thus expanding the notion of early modern authorship to include hitherto marginalised voices: of women, the poor, the illiterate and the lower-born – those who ‘wrote’ without physically writing.

To distinguish authorial and scribal voices it will analyse 3 distinct manuscript types: Letters, Legal documents, and Literary works. It will address 3 questions: who were these scribes; what was their role or function, and where did their influence end and their employer’s begin?

The project will concentrate on England 1558-1642, a time when the centres of power were stable enough to allow for relatively constant employment, making individual scribes and their influence easier to identify. The model we create will be applicable to multiple political periods and countries.

Subproject: 

The Amanuensis & His Mistress: The Secretaries of Queen Elizabeth I, c.1558-1603 (PhD1) We are looking for a highly motivated, enterprising and enthusiastic PhD candidate to join the project team and write a thesis crucial for understanding the ways in which a secretary might interact and influence their female patron. When household accounts are absent or fragmentary, the only way to identify a secretary is by studying an entire body of correspondence. Most female correspondences comprise mere handfuls, but this is not true for the epistolary remains of queens or queen-consorts. Still, besides Elizabeth I and Elizabeth Stuart, no Tudor or Stuart queen’s letters have yet been annotated or even collected. This makes it all the more surprising that Queen Elizabeth I’s secretariat has received only piecemeal attention, excepting studies of her foreign language letters and secretaries/scribes (Bajetta; Andreani; Bajetta, Coatalen and Gibson). The English language scribes languish uninvestigated, let alone cross-referenced. Who were her personal secretaries/scribes and did they overlap with government functionaries? The PhD candidate is expected to conduct an analysis of c.2500 letters, namely the corpus of Elizabeth I, through computational authorship attribution (stylometrics), and the study of individual secretaries who worked under her, to reveal the queen’s authorship and, alongside another subproject working on her gender counterpart King James VI/I, help create a working definition of the early modern secretary.

Key responsibilities

  • Conducting research on Elizabeth I’s secretariat. An important part of this research will take place in UK archives;
  • Completing a PhD thesis (in English) within four years;
  • Publishing at least one article in a peer-reviewed journal; and at least one in a popular magazine;
  • Participating in fortnightly meetings of the project research group;
  • Presenting papers at conferences, both in the Netherlands and internationally;
  • Participating in the training programme of the LUCAS Institute, the Leiden Graduate School of Humanities and the National Research School in Cultural History (Huizinga Institute) and other relevant masterclasses, discussion groups, seminars, workshops, and events;
  • Participating in the PhD community and the intellectual life of the Institute;
  • Contributing to the organization of the events and activities within the project, including the project’s conference in year 3 of the project;
  • Subject to progress and demand, some teaching in the English department in the second and third years of the appointment.

REQUIREMENTS

  • A ResMA/MRes or MA in English Literature, History or Early Modern Studies, awarded by time of appointment, with a thesis on a 16th-century or 17th-century topic, and a grade of at least 8.0 on a ten-point scale (or equivalent, such as distinction for UK scholars);
  • Well-developed research skills, including the ability to formulate creative research questions, descriptive and analytical skills, and a clear and persuasive style of writing;
  • Willingness to work up 3-4 months in UK archives in year 1 and year 2 of the project, up to a total of 8 months for the duration of the project;
  • Native or near-native speaker of English;
  • Experience with archival research and palaeography;
  • Knowledge of gender studies, digital humanities, early modern diplomacy, and / or court studies will be a plus;
  • Independent thinker and team player;
  • Ability to finish the proposed PhD research in 4 years.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

The PhD project has a duration of 4 years (1.0 FTE, 38 hrs per week). The starting date is on 1 February 2021. Initially the employee will receive a one-year contract, with extension for the following 36 months on condition of a positive evaluation. The appointment must lead to the completion of a PhD thesis. Salary range from € 2,395.- to € 3,061.- gross per month (pay scale P in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities).

International candidates are especially encouraged to apply, but must be willing to relocate to the Netherlands for the duration of the project. Candidates are not expected to learn Dutch.

Leiden University offers an attractive benefits package with additional holiday (8%) and end-of-year bonuses (8.3%), training and career development. Our individual choices model gives you some freedom to assemble your own set of terms and conditions. Candidates from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for a substantial tax break.

Diversity
Leiden University is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from members of underrepresented groups.

EMPLOYER

Leiden University

The Faculty of Humanities is a unique international centre for the advanced study of languages, cultures, arts, and societies worldwide, in their historical contexts from prehistory to the present. Our faculty is home to more than 6,000 students and 800 staff members. For more information see the website.

The Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is one of the seven Research Institutes of the Faculty of Humanities. LUCAS is dedicated to ground-breaking research that explores the multifaceted relationships between the arts and society. For more information see he website.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Enquiries about the project and the position can be addressed to the Principal Investigator, Nadine Akkerman, e-mail n.n.w.akkerman@hum.leidenuniv.nl. Enquiries about the procedure and LUCAS can be sent to im-lucas@hum.leidenuniv.nl. Information about LUCAS and links to staff expertise can be found at the website.

Find out more here.

New Publication: Renaissance Meta-painting, Edited by Alexander Nagel and Péter Bokody

The volume offers an overview of metapictorial tendencies in book illumination, mural and panel painting during the Italian and Northern Renaissance. It examines visual forms of self-awareness in the changing context of Latin Christianity and claims the central role of the Renaissance in the establishment of the modern condition of art.

Metapainting refers to the ways in which artworks playfully reveal or critically expose their own fictiveness, and is considered a constitutive aspect of Western art. Its rise was connected to changes in the consumption of religious imagery in the sixteenth century and to the advent of the portable framed canvas, the single most important medium of modernity. While the key initial contributions of some Renaissance painters from Jan van Eyck to Andrea Mantegna have always been acknowledged, in the principal narrative the Renaissance has largely remained the naïve moment of realistic experimentation to be ultimately superseded by the complex reflexive developments in Early Modern art, following the Reformation.

Aiming to challenge this view, this volume examines how painters interrogated the constructed nature of representation before 1500, and evaluates the possibilities of a critical pictorial vocabulary in the predominantly religious framework of Latin Christianity. The contributions delve into an analysis of illusionism, embedded images, subversive attributes, equivoque frames, transparent veils and the staging of the painter at work. The case studies trace these issues in mural and panel painting, as well as in book illumination on both sides of the Alps, and reconstruct their invention and reception during the Italian and Northern Renaissance. The collection also features the first-ever English translations of seminal articles by André Chastel (1964), Klaus Krüger (1993) and Wolfgang Kemp (1995).

Alexander Nagel is Professor of Fine Arts at New York University. He is the author of Medieval Modern (2012), The Controversy of Renaissance Art (2011 – winner of Charles Rufus Morey Award) and Anachronic Renaissance (2010 – co-authored with Christopher Wood). His work is focused mostly on Renaissance art, and is mostly concerned with how material artefacts allow humans to think through time and find orientation in the world.

Péter Bokody is Assistant Professor of Art History at Plymouth University, UK. He is the author of Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250-1350): Reality and Reflexivity (2015). His chief interest is the emergence of painting as a complex and political medium in late-medieval visual culture. He is currently working on a book on representations of sexual violence in early Italian painting.

Table of Contents

Metapainting before Modernity – Péter Bokody and Alexander Nagel

Origin and Reception

Mimesis as Pictorality of Semblance – on the Fictiveness of Religious Imagery in the Trecento – Klaus Krüger

Complicity and Self-Awareness: the Frescoes of Giusto de’ Menabuoi at the Santo – Robert Brennan

Tradition and Innovation: Images-within-Images in Italian Painting after the Age of Giotto – Péter Bokody

Transformations

Depicting Panel Painting in Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Art: Questions of Transfer and Reception – Erik Eising

Practical Ekphrasis – On Images-within-Images in Van Eyck and Mantegna – Wolfgang Kemp

Metapainting and the Painted Book

Reflexive Devotion – Nicholas Herman

The Self-Aware Attribute, or ‘Where does a parergon begin and end?’ – Anna Degler

At the Threshold of Painting: The Man of Sorrows by Albrecht Dürer – Beate Fricke

Structures of Archaism in Leonardo, Fra Bartolommeo, and Raphael – Alexander Nagel

Jan Gossart’s Immaculate Art – Shira Brisman

Picture-within-Picture – André Chastel

Bibliography

New Publication: Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity, edited by Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese

This is the first study of monstrosity in Jewish history from the Middle Ages to modernity. Drawing on Jewish history, literary studies, folklore, art history and the history of science, it examines both the historical depiction of Jews as monsters and the creative use of monstrous beings in Jewish culture.

Jews have occupied a liminal position within European society and culture, being deeply immersed yet outsiders to it. For this reason, they were perceived in terms of otherness and were often represented as monstrous beings. However, at the same time, European Jews invoked, with tantalizing ubiquity, images of magical, terrifying and hybrid beings in their texts, art and folktales. These images were used by Jewish authors and artists to push back against their own identification as monstrous or diabolical and to tackle concerns about religious persecution, assimilation and acculturation, gender and sexuality, science and technology and the rise of antisemitism.

Bringing together an impressive cast of contributors from around the world, this fascinating volume is an invaluable resource for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in Jewish studies, as well as the history of monsters.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction: Writing a Jewish History of Horror, or What Happens When Monsters Stare Back, Iris Idelson-Shein (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Part I: The Monster Without: Monsters in Jewish-Christian Inter-Cultural Discourse
1. Monsters, Demons and Jews in the Painting of Hieronymus Bosch, Debra Higgs Strickland (University of Glasgow, UK)
2. Bestial Bodies on the Jewish Margins: Race, Ethnicity and Otherness in Medieval Manuscripts Illuminated for Jews, Marc Michael Epstein (Vassar College, USA)
3. enge unpathas uncuð gelad: The Long Walk to Freedom, Asa Simon Mittman (California State University, Chico, USA) and Miriamne Ara Krummel (University of Dayton, USA)
4. Demonic Entanglements: Contextualisations of Matted Hair in Medieval and Early Modern Western and Eastern Ashkenaz, François Guesnet (University College London, UK)
5. A Jewish Frankenstein: Making Monsters in Modernist German Grotesques, Joela Jacobs (University of Arizona, USA)
6. “Der Volf” or the Jew as Out(side of the)law, Jay Geller (Vanderbilt University, USA)
7. Stranger in the House: Gender, Sex and Jewishness in Weimar Cinema’s Monsters, Cathy Gelbin (University of Manchester, UK)
8. Monsters in the Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors, Kobi Kabalek (University of Haifa, Israel)

Part II: The Monster Within: Monsters in Jewish Intra-Communal Discourse
9. Unearthing the ‘Children of Cain’: Between Human, Animal, and Demon in Medieval Jewish Culture, David I. Shyovitz (Northwestern University, USA)
10. Sexuality and Communal Space in Stories about the Marriage of Men and She-Demons, David Rotman (Achva Academic College, Israel)
11. The Raging Rabbi: Aggression and Agency in an Early Modern Yiddish Werewolf Tale, Astrid Lembke (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
12. Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings, David B. Ruderman (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
13. Sexorcism: On the Sexual Dimensions of Jewish Exorcism Techniques, J. H. Chajes (University of Haifa, Israel)
14. Rabbinic Monsters: The World of Wonder and Rabbinic Writings at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century, Maoz Kahana (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
15. End of the Demons?: Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Reflections on the Eclipse of Demons and Monsters by Human Evil in the 20th Century, Christian Wiese (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Index

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