Medieval Art Research

Seminar and Book Launch: Speaking Sculptures, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art (Vernon Square), Wednesday 23 January 2019, 5:00 pm–6:00 pm

Many statues and works of sculpture made in the late Gothic and Renaissance period are represented with mouth open, as if caught in a mid-utterance. These ‘speaking sculptures’ have received remarkably little comment from art historians. What are these speaking statues meant to be saying? And what, as viewers, are we meant to ‘hear’ and respond? The aim of this paper is to begin to unravel this illusion of speech and the agency it implies.

It would be a mistake to dismiss the phenomenon of the ‘speaking sculpture’ as just another virtuoso feature that enhanced the illusion of life and, with it, the persuasive character of a late Gothic art or Renaissance work of art. The illusion of speech creates a different level of engagement and interaction with the viewer: faced with such an image we not only look but ‘strain to hear’. Does this suggest a sort of animation that demands a living presence response? Or does the illusion of speech enhance the potential surrogacy of the statue, ‘enacting’ the hopes of the viewer? Or could it be that a speaking statue is actually ‘saying’ something quite specific that the viewer in some sense might have ‘heard’ as part of their viewing experience. If so, how do we recover the ‘period ear’ to listen in? These are some of the questions that will be addressed.

Kim Woods is a senior lecturer in Art History at the Open University, and a specialist in northern European late Gothic sculpture. She combines an object-based approach with an interest in materials and cultural exchange. Her single-authored book, Imported Images (Donington, 2007), focussed on wood sculpture. Since then she has been working on alabaster. Her Open University distance learning materials include the Renaissance Art Reconsidered volumes (Yale, 2007) and Medieval to Renaissance (Tate publishing, 2012).

The seminar will be followed by the launch of ‘Cut in Alabaster: a Material of Sculpture and its European Traditions 1330-1530′

Click here to book a free ticket for this seminar.

IX COLOQUIO ARS MEDIAEVALIS: Belleza, persuasión y retórica en el arte medieval (Aguilar de Campoo, Spain, 10 al 12 de mayo de 2019)

fmslr_cartel_arsmedievalis2019 Click here for more information

En las últimas décadas, los estudios de historia del arte medieval han pasado de estudiar el significado de las obras a analizar su materialidad. Más recientemente, Mary Carruthers, Paul Binski y otros académicos han renovado el estudio sobre la experiencia estética medieval. Para desentrañar y razonar las nociones sobre belleza y fealdad durante la Edad Media, estos autores han tomado textos dispersos en Agustín, Guido de Arezzo, Alain de Lille, Pedro de Celle, Bonaventura, Robert Grosseteste, Tomás de Aquino… con los que han compensado la ausencia de un corpus documental y una filosofía articulada. ¿De qué modo se entendía que los artefactos generaban deleite, disgusto, miedo y otras emociones? El estudio de esta cuestión capital ha puesto el foco sobre cuestiones como estilo, humor, artificio, dificultad y engaño. Este giro analítico ha acarreado una provechosa consecuencia: el placer derivado de la contemplación del ornamento superficial merece tanta atención como la exégesis de las imágenes bíblicas. La reconciliación de sensaciones diversas llega a ser tan importante como la iconografía de la materia. Las imágenes se distribuían, también, para aliviar el aburrimiento y esta cuestión debe considerarse junto con la especulación teológica. Dicho de otro modo: los falsos mármoles merecen tanta atención como la piedra real, incluso tal vez más.

Basándose en trabajos recientes, y conforme a las investigaciones desarrolladas en el coloquio Ars Mediaevalisde 2018 en torno al papel de los sentidos y la memoria, este noveno coloquio considerará el poder del arte medieval en dos planos complementarios: persuadir y construir conocimiento. El objetivo del coloquio Belleza, persuasión y retórica en el arte medieval no es rechazar ni cuestionar la importancia de las ambiciones intelectuales del arte medieval. Se examinarán los modos en que ornamentos y efectos de superficie, orden y variedad, imágenes curiosas o repulsivas, el humor y el ilusionismo, los efectos armónicos y discordantes, y los sistemas de retórica visual activaron las emociones y se emplearon para fines diversos.

PROGRAMA

Dirección:

Gerardo Boto Varela (Universidad de Gerona) – Alejandro García Avilés (Universidad de Murcia) – Herbert L. Kessler (Johns Hopkins University)

TEMPLA – GERM Estudios Visuales – Red ARSMED

PROGRAMA

Viernes, 10 de mayo (Sede Fundación Sta. Mª la Real)

Presidencia de sesión: Javier MARTÍNEZ DE AGUIRRE / Universidad Complutense de Madrid

09.15 h.: Recepción de participantes y entrega del material

09.45 h.: Presentación e inauguración del Coloquio

10.00 h.: Mary CARRUTHERS / New York University

Ordinary Beauty and Human Sensibility*

10.45 h.: Comunicación

11.00 h.: Debate

11.20 h.: Pausa-café

11.45 h.: Paul BINSKI / University of Cambridge

Aesthetic Attitudes in Gothic Art: thoughts on Girona Cathedral*

12.30 h: Comunicaciones

13.00 h: Debate

Sesión de tarde

Presidencia de sesión: Mª Dolores TEIJEIRA PABLOS / Universidad de León

16.00 h.: Francisco PRADO VILAR / Real Colegio Complutense, Harvard

El despertar de Endimión: Belleza, tiempo y eternidad en la escultura románica y su devenir fotográfico

16.45 h.: José Miguel PUERTA VILCHEZ / Universidad de Granada

Fantasía, placer y existencia en la estética árabe clásica

17.30 h.: Debate

17.45 h.: Descanso

18.00 h.: Vincent DEBIAIS / CNRS-EHESS

El color como camino de abstracción. Aproximación lexical e iconográfica*

18.45 h.: Debate

19.00 h.: Mesa redonda: Ante la belleza en la Edad Media: persuadidos y antagonistas

Sábado, 11 de mayo (Palencia. Diputación Provincial)

Presidencia de sesión: Fernando GUTIÉRREZ BAÑOS / Universidad de Valladolid

09.45 h.: Aden KUMLER / Chicago University

Periculum and peritia: aesthetics and affects in the medieval “ars market”*

10.30 h.: Descanso

11.00 h.: Joan MOLINA / Universidad de Gerona

Belleza y memoria en los contextos de Alfonso V

11.45 h.: Rocío SÁNCHEZ AMEIJEIRAS / Universidad de Santiago de Compostela

Lo sublime en la poética de lo visionario

12.30 h.: Debate

16.30 h.: Visita al monasterio de Santa María la Real de las Huelgas, Burgos. Gerardo BOTO / Universitad de Gerona

Domingo, 12 de mayo (Monasterio Sta. María la Real)

Presidencia de Sesión: Alejandro GARCÍA AVILÉS / Universidad de Murcia

09.30 h.: Herbert L. KESSLER / Johns Hopkins University

Eagle or Bear: Beauty as Restorative Sunlight or Spiritual Eclipse*

10.15 h..: Comunicaciones

10.45 h.: Debate

11.00 h.: Descanso

11.30 h.: Comunicación

11.45 h.: Jeffrey HAMBURGUER / Harvard University

Medieval Ut picture poesis: Beauty, Rhetoric and Monstrosity in a Twelfth-Century Illustrated Horace*

12:30 h.: Debate

13.00 h: Conclusiones y perspectivas

13.15 h.: Clausura y entrega de certificados a los asistentes

(*) Las conferencias serán impartidas en el idioma con el que se expresa su título. De las que se expongan en inglés se entregará a los asistentes el texto traducido al castellano

COMUNICACIONES

Este coloquio constituye una convocatoria abierta a aquellos investigadores que deseen presentar los resultados de sus análisis en esta materia. Los interesados deberán enviar un resumen del contenido de su comunicación, con una extensión máxima de 2 páginas DIN A4, a espacio sencillo (letra Times New Roman, de 12 puntos), además de una breve selección de las referencias bibliográficas fundamentales en las que se apoyará su discurso. Todo ello se enviará a la siguiente dirección de correo electrónico: plhuerta@santamarialareal.org

El plazo para la recepción de los resúmenes finalizará el 20 de marzo y se informará sobre la aceptación o no de la comunicación antes del 30 de marzo. En el caso de las admitidas se hará saber, igualmente, el tiempo disponible para su exposición en público (trámite obligatorio), la extensión requerida para su publicación en las actas y las normas de edición.

CFP: ‘Same Old Things? Re-Telling the Italian Renaissance’, London, 3 May 19

untitled-2-1024x1024 — Marcello Maloberti, Trionfo dell’Aurora (2018), courtesy of the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan

Courtauld Institute of Art London, May 3, 2019

Deadline: Jan 28, 2019

Same Old Things? Re-Telling the Italian Renaissance

Even today, the history of art is largely dominated by narratives that are for the most part style-based. They tell a story that is teleological, ever-progressive, and structured around influential artistic centres. Within this framework, the role of individual objects shifts depending on how they fit into the broader narrative that they articulate visually. By focusing on the objects and their potential to fashion and dictate stories, a different narrative is likely to emerge.

This conference seeks to identify individual objects, or small sets of objects, which have the potential to destabilise canonical art-historical narratives of Italian art. We are not looking for an alternative Renaissance – instead, we want to ask whether a different story can be told for the same, old things. In the last few decades, art historians have reevaluated the position of understudied works of works in an increasingly de-centred, non-linear history of art. Certain interpretative frameworks, such as queer or feminist approaches, that laudably seek to interrupt conventional readings of objects, have had modest consequences for their placement within a historical narrative, often because they seek to disrupt that narrative in the first place. Sometimes objects themselves show the insufficiency of traditional critical tools to do them justice. But seldom have newly-developed critical tools been used to renegotiate the historical framing of those objects that have long stood at the core of the Western canon.

Having long questioned the exceptionality granted Italian Renaissance art by the founding fathers of art history, academia has not yet modified radically the way we tell the story of the cornerstones of any Western museum. As a consequence, academic discourse has grown increasingly distant from museum spaces. On the whole, museums have not rejected the comforting principles of order inherent in traditional narratives, of which they are sometimes the unyielding outposts. Arguably, they also struggle to balance object-based displays with the disruption of narrative frameworks typical of recent academic discourse. As a result, celebratory, unwavering views of the Italian Renaissance have proved remarkably resilient among the general public.

Applicants are encouraged to shrug off the burden of prescribed narrative schemes; to use fresh critical tools to unravel celebrated artworks from the patchwork of narratives that stitch them together, at the same time as weaving them into new stories — stories that might be open-ended, interrogative, undetermined, and far distant from those previously told. Papers should be object-based, but not object-focused, in that their interpretation should not be confined to the inward-looking understanding of the object per se, but rather should look outwards towards their (potentially large) role in new narratives. The objects themselves should date to between the thirteenth to the early seventeenth century; they may be Italian or not, canonical or lesser-known.

Papers are sought from doctoral candidates, early career scholars and researchers. Preference will be given to candidates presenting unpublished material. Proposals of no more than 350 words should be submitted, together with a short C.V. to giulio.dalvit@courtauld.ac.uk and adriana.concin@courtauld.ac.uk by 5pm on Monday 28 January 2019. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. We hope to be able to provide subsidy for travel and accommodation. We particularly encourage candidates from the U.K. and Europe. Successful candidates will be notified by mid-February.

CFP: Collecting, Curating, Assembling: New Approaches to the Archive in the Middle Ages, University of Saint Andrews, 13–14 September 2019

cropped-screen-shot-2018-06-07-at-11-47-00 — Reliquary diptych, late 14th century, Italian. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. 17.190.982)

The School of Art History, SAIMS and Special Collections Division at the University of St Andrews are pleased to announce an upcoming two-day conference on the archive in medieval art and thought.

The word archive suggests the acts of taxonomy and conservation, but also interpretation and regulation. Its etymology traces back to the Greek arkheion, thus highlighting the political nature of the physical archive and the act of archiving itself. The medieval world maintained this sense of privileged access. Isidore of Seville connected the Latin word archivium with arca, strongbox, and arcanum, mystery. But the term was malleable, referring to collections of various goods and treasures, not just of parchment records and registers. And yet, Michael Clanchy has argued that the medieval mind did not always distinguish between the library and the archive, as we do today.

The organisers therefore invite proposals on the theme of the expanded medieval archive, as it relates to art and material culture. What can medieval collections, compilations, and assemblages of material things tell us about the accumulation of knowledge and the preservation of memory? How is the archive manipulated to fit political or social agendas, and by whom? What are the limits of the medieval archive? Paper topics and themes may include, though are not limited to:

Records or inventories of collections, secular, civic, and ecclesiastical;
The archive as a physical object or visual record, including books and manuscripts, buildings, reliquaries, etc.;
The accretive nature of written testimony in the form of: chronicles, herbals, visitations, necrologies, inscriptions and tituli;
Time, writing history through the material, and collapsing temporalities;
The creation and perpetuation of memory, identity, and authority;
The accumulation and transmission of cultural or familial knowledge via material culture;
The politics of preservation, documentation, and display in the medieval world, and of the medieval in the modern world.

Collecting, Curating, Assembling: New Approaches to the Archive in the Middle Ages will take place 13–14 September 2019 in St Andrews, Scotland. Professor Erik Inglis (Oberlin College) will deliver the keynote. The organisers intend to publish the conference proceedings as an edited volume.

All papers must be no more than 30 minutes maxmimum. Please submit a 250 word abstract and title by 15 February 2019. Prof Julian Luxford, Prof Kathryn Rudy, and Dr Emily Savage, along with Senior Archivist Rachel Hart, warmly welcome all submissions and queries at medievalarchive@st-andrews.ac.uk.

https://medievalarchive2019.wordpress.com/

Lecture: ‘A Ruler of the Latin East? Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (1186-1190)’, by Professor Helen Nicholson (Cardiff University), IHR London, 22 January 2019, 7pm

The London Society for Medieval Studies is hosting the following lecture on Tuesday 22^ndJanuary at 7pm:

Professor Helen Nicholson (Cardiff University), speaking on ‘A Ruler of the Latin East? Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (1186-1190)’

Location: Institute of Historical Research, Wolfson Room NB01, Senate House (located on Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU).

The lecture is open to all.

Resource: Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources

The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources aims to document all given names recorded in European sources written between 500 and 1600. New editions are published quarterly.

Looking for a particular name? Browse the entries.

Wondering how to interpret an entry? See the guide.

Want to know more? Read about the project.

See: http://dmnes.org

CFP: Pilgrimage and the Senses, University of Oxford, 7 June 2019

Deadline for submissions: 20 January 2019

Keynote Speaker: Professor Kathryn Rudy (University of St. Andrews)

With the release of its inaugural issue in 2006, The Senses and Society journal proclaimed a “sensual revolution” in the humanities and social sciences. The ensuing decade has seen a boom in sensory studies, resulting in research networks, museum exhibitions, and a wealth of publications. This interdisciplinary conference hosted at the University of Oxford aims to shed light on how sensory perception shapes and is shaped by the experience of pilgrimage across cultures, faith traditions, and throughout history.

Pilgrimages present an intriguing paradox. Grounded in physical experiences—a journey (real or imagined), encounters with sites and/or relics, and commemorative tokens—they also simultaneously demand a devotional focus on the metaphysical. A ubiquitous and long-lasting devotional practice, pilgrimage is a useful lens through which to examine how humans encounter the sacred through the tools of perception available to us. Focusing on the ways in which pilgrimage engages the senses will contribute to our knowledge of how people have historically understood both religious experience and their bodies as vehicles of devotional participation. We call on speakers to grapple with the challenges of understanding the sensory experience of spiritual phenomena, while bearing in mind that understandings of the senses can vary according to specific cultural contexts. While the five senses are a natural starting point, we are open to including papers that deal with “sense” in a more general way, such as senses of time and place.

Sample topics may include (but are not limited to):

the role of beholding (places, relics, miracles, mementos) in the pilgrimage experience
haptic encounters with relics
ways in which pilgrims are seen: wearing specific clothing and/or badges, public acts (or affects) of devotion, how pilgrims are depicted or described
pilgrims’ auditory expressions: wailing/crying, chanting, singing, reciting prayers
bathing and purification in preparation for devotions
food as a ritual element or means of experiencing cultures along a pilgrimage route
the place of music on the pilgrimage route and/or at pilgrimage destinations
pain as a facet of the pilgrimage journey
the sensory spectacle—visual, auditory, olfactory—of pilgrimage processions
devotional objects that require handling, such as prayer beads and prayer wheels
psychosomatic sensory experiences as a means of engaging with the divine
the evocation of sensory participation through works of art and/or written accounts

The organisers invite 20-minute papers from any discipline on topics related to the themes outlined above, especially in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, art history, history, literature, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and theology. We welcome submissions relating to aspects of pilgrimage of any faith or historical period. Doctoral students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged to apply.

Please submit a title, abstract (max. 250 words), and brief bio to pilgrimagesenses2019@gmail.com by January 20th. Successful applicants will be notified by February 5th. All submissions and papers must be in English.

Click here for more information

Medieval Touch: Handling session at the British Museum on scientific instruments in medieval and Renaissance Europe

On Weds 21st November 2018, Lloyd de Beer, Naomi Speakman, and Oliver Cooke kindly allowed students and staff from the Courtauld Institute of Art and elsewhere into the horological storerooms of the British Museum, the latest in a series of handling sessions organised by Medieval Touch. Dr Jeanne Nuechterlein of the University of York led the group in a joint examination of a series of mostly sixteenth-century scientific instruments, including replicas from her own collection.

We began by looking together at an astrolabe. Astrolabes were observational and calculating instruments and allowed users to tell the time through the position of the stars in relation to the astral map on the astrolabe itself, however your ability to do so was contingent upon any number of factors, not least the environmental conditions.

As well as explaining their purpose, Jeanne attempted to instruct us all in their use and as each of us tried and frequently failed to grasp the fundamentals of astrolabe reading, it became apparent that astrolabes are not intuitive instruments. Their use implies and demands significant technical experience and knowledge. We questioned whether this knowledge was simply more widespread in the early modern world or whether utility was not their only value. Even when we consider astrolabes purely in practical use, several limiting factors would have dictated how and by whom they were employed. Astrolabes are geographically specific instruments, each backplate designed for a set latitude – the mobile user would have required multiple plates. Moreover, larger instruments were more easily legible and produced more accurate readings.

Certain instruments that survive like this column shaped sundial were too elaborately shaped to be of any functional use. Their design seems to effect other concerns, perhaps commemorative (was this the model of a larger monumental sundial?) or aesthetic.

However, other instruments were clearly more useable. Ivory diptych sundials like these 16^th-century examples from Nuremberg, appear to have been designed for the Early Modern traveller. Handy and conveniently pocket sized, they also offered a range of adjustable settings depending on location.

London to Naples, Portugal to Constantinople: the lists of cities on these objects, clustering around the cities of Mitteleuropa and Northern Italy, Bremen, Königsberg, Venice and Genoa, spoke to some of us of a now lost trading geography of Europe. However, made of ivory and not unelaborately decorated, these objects were demonstrably prestige items and must have elicited viewing as much as reading.

A glance at the range of sundials in the cabinets of the horological department reveals the complex interplay of aesthetic and practical motives at work in these objects.

Here’s what we saw, all visible on the British Museum’s website:

Sundial/horary quadrant, England 14th c., 1972,0104.1

Sundial etc., Hans Dorn 1492, 1894,0615.1

Astrolabe, Georg Hartmann 1532, 1871,1115.3

Crucifix polyhedral sundial, Georg Hartmann 1541, 1894,0722.1

Astronomical compendium/wind-vane, Christopher Schissler c. 1550, 1855,0904.1

Sundial in the form of dividers, Christopher Schissler 1558, 1888,1201.283

Universal equinoctial dial with case, Christopher Schissler c. 1570, 1922,0705.3

Regiomontanus-style sundial, Caspar Vopel 1551, 1895,0319.1

Crucifix sundial, Melchior Reichle 1569, 1874,0727.3

Standing cup in the form of a celestial globe, French, 1569, AF.3060

Pillar dial in the form of a Corinthian column, Germany, 1593, 1888,1201.282

Scaphe sundial, Germany late 16th c., 1922,0705.6

Sundial etc., Netherlands late 16th c.?, 1871,1115.5

European celestial globe from 1659, 1896,0322.1

17c armillary sphere, 1855,1201.221

Diptych dial, Hartmann, 1562, 1900,1017.1

Many thanks again to Jeanne for a fascinating session!

CFP: ‘Scaling the Middle Ages: Size and Scale in Medieval Art’, Courtauld Institute of Art’s Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium, deadline 16 November 2018

The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 24^th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium (London, Friday 8 February 2019) invites speakers to consider issues and opportunities encountered by medieval artists and viewers in relation to size and scale.

Deadline: 16 November 2018

From micro-architectural reliquaries and minute boxwood prayer beads to colossal sculpture and the built spaces of grand cathedrals and civic structures, size mattered in medieval art. Examples of simple one-upmanship between the castles and palaces of lords and kings and the churches and cathedrals of abbots and bishops are numerous. How big to make it was a principal concern for both patrons and makers of medieval art. Scale could be manipulated to dramatic effect in the manufacture of manuscripts and the relative disposition of elements within their decorative programmes. Divine proportions – of the Temple of Solomon or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – were evoked in the specific measurements and configuration of contemporary buildings and decisions were made based on concern with numbers and number sequences.

Inspired by the ‘Russian doll’ relationship between the Sainte Chapelle in Paris and its micro-architectural miniature in the form of a gilded reliquary in the Musée de Cluny, Scaling the Middle Ages seeks to explore a range of questions surrounding proportion, scale, size, and measurement in relation to medieval art and architecture. The Sainte Chapelle, built by the saint-king of France Louis IX to house the relics of Christ’s Passion, is itself often described as an over-sized reliquary turned inside-out. The Cluny reliquary – made to house relics of Saints Maxien, Lucien, and Julien held within the chapel – both complicates and compliments that comparison, at once shrinking the chapel back down to size through close architectural quotation of its form in miniature and pointing the viewer’s attention back to that same, larger space. The relationship between these two artefacts raises a host of questions, including:

Scale and making

How were ideas about size and scale communicated between patrons, architects, craftspeople, and artists? In an age without universal standardised units of measurement, how did craftsmen negotiate problems of scale and proportion?

How were the measurements of a medieval building determined? What techniques did architects, masons, and artists use to determine the scale of their work?

Scale and meaning

What effects were achieved and what responses evoked by the manipulation of scale, from the minute to the massive, in medieval art?
What was the role of proportion and scale in architectural ‘copies’ or quotations?
What representational problems were encountered by artists approaching out-sized subjects, such as giants?
How was scale manipulated in order to communicate hierarchy or relative importance in medieval art?
How did size and scale function in competition between patrons or communities in their artistic commissions and built environments?

Problems of scale

What, if anything, happened when something was the wrong size? When was something too big, or too small? And how were such problems solved by patrons and makers?
How does the disembodied viewing of medieval art through digital surrogates distort or assist in our perception of scale?
How can modern measuring techniques and digital technology enhance our understanding of medieval objects and buildings?

Applicants to the colloquium are encouraged to explore these and related issues from a diverse range of methodologies, analysing buildings and objects from across the Middle Ages (broadly understood in geographical and chronological terms). The Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present, discuss and promote their research.

To apply, please send a proposal of up to 250 words for a 20-minute paper, together with a CV, to teresa.lane@courtauld.ac.uk and oliver.mitchell@courtauld.ac.uk no later than 16 November 2018.

Organised by Oliver Mitchell and Teresa Lane (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Conference: ‘Medieval Seas’, London Medieval Society, 11 Bedford Square, London, November 17, 2018, 10.30-18.00

‘Medieval Seas’ brings together scholars from the fields of history, archaeology and literature to explore our medieval maritime past. Dr Aisling Byrne, Dr David Harrap, Dr James Barratt, Dr Craig Lambert and Dr Alfred Hiatt will examine representations of the sea in literature and cartography, the development of maritime liturgies and the latest maritime projects which have aided scholars in learning more about the sea in the Middle Ages. Over lunch join Dr Rachel Moss as she discusses the new project ‘Women at Sea’ and asks ‘can we build a feminist medieval maritime?’

Click here for tickets

Organised by the London Medieval Society