CFP: Imago & Mirabilia (Barcelona, 18-20 Oct 2018)

Extended deadline!

The Ways of Wonder in the Medieval Mediterranean

18-20 October 2018 | Museu Nacional d’Art de Cataluyna

The ways of wonder in the middle Ages were shaped by a variety of places, stories and beliefs with ancient sources reworked by the Christian tradition. Activated by the opening of the Mediterranean, religious, commercial and military travels spread Christian worship, accounts and prized objects throughout Christianity. The real and the imaginary adventures confronted their protagonists with fabulous characters and places. The cult of Eastern saints found anchor points in the Western world where they sometimes developed as strongly or even more, proving, therefore, their polycentric nature.

Continue reading “CFP: Imago & Mirabilia (Barcelona, 18-20 Oct 2018)”

CONF: An Abbey Between Two Worlds San Nicolò in San Gemini and the Dislocation of Monumental Artworks in the first Half of the 20th Century (8-9 June 2018)

San Nicolo doorway

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Abbey’s restoration (1967-2017), the conference will address the phenomenon of legal exportation and reinstallation of monumental

complexes and oversized artworks in the first half of the 20th century. The Abbey’s portal, which arrived in the United States in 1936 and stands today at the entrance of the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will serve as the starting point to examine the circumstances around the exportation of works from Italy until the Second World War.

Continue reading “CONF: An Abbey Between Two Worlds San Nicolò in San Gemini and the Dislocation of Monumental Artworks in the first Half of the 20th Century (8-9 June 2018)”

#MetGala In All Its Glory

We’ve now had a week to digest the photos, the fashion, and the inevitable memes of Met Gala 2018. Hopefully a week has been enough time to take in the weird, wonderful, and worshipful experience that was this year’s annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. Each year the gala’s theme is based on the Institute’s summer exhibition, and on 10 May Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination opened at both the Met’s 5th Avenue and Cloisters locations. Kim Kardashian was compared to a Eucharist chalice, haloes abounded, and ‘Rihanna going full pope’ is now a phrase.

Continue reading “#MetGala In All Its Glory”

Conference: Manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea (Oxford, 1 Sept 2018)

This free study day will act as an introduction to Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscripts  dating from the 4th to 18th centuries. Context, production, and patronage will be discussed by leading experts from institutions such as The British Library and SOAS. See the detailed schedule and link to register below.

Continue reading “Conference: Manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea (Oxford, 1 Sept 2018)”

New Publication: The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Meanings of the Medieval Edifice in the Modern Period, edited by Stephanie Glaser

The essays in this book focus on various social, political, cultural, and aesthetic meanings ascribed to Gothic cathedrals in Europe in the post-medieval period.

Central to many medieval ritual traditions both sacred and secular, the Gothic cathedral holds a privileged place within the European cultural imagination and experience. Due to the burgeoning historical interest in the medieval past, in connection with the medieval revival in literature, visual arts, and architecture that began in the late seventeenth century and culminated in the nineteenth, the Gothic cathedral took centre stage in numerous ideological discourses. These discourses imposed contemporary political and aesthetic connotations upon the cathedral that were often far removed from its original meaning and ritual use.

This volume presents interdisciplinary perspectives on the resignification of the Gothic cathedral in the post-medieval period. Its contributors, literary scholars and historians of art and architecture, investigate the dynamics of national and cultural movements that turned Gothic cathedrals into symbols of the modern nation-state, highlight the political uses of the edifice in literature and the arts, and underscore the importance of subjectivity in literary and visual representations of Gothic architecture. Contributing to scholarship in historiography, cultural history, intermedial and interdisciplinary studies, as well as traditional disciplines, the volume resonates with wider perspectives, especially relating to the reuse of artefacts to serve particular ideological ends.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Medieval Edifice in the Modern Period — STEPHANIE A. GLASER

Part I — The Cathedral and the Nation

The Moorish-Gothic Cathedral: Invention, Reality, or Weapon? — MATILDE MATEO

Acting Medieval, Thinking Modern, Feeling German — MICHAEL J. LEWIS

L’Histoire d’une cathédrale: Viollet-le-Duc’s Nationalist Pedagogy — ELIZABETH EMERY

The Gothic Cathedral and Historiographies of Space — KEVIN D. MURPHY

Part II — The Cathedral between Art and Politics

The Anarchist Cathedral — MAYLIS CURIE

L’Imaginaire de la cathédrale à l’épreuve de la Grande Guerre — JOËLLE PRUNGNAUD

Church, Nation, and ‘The Stones of France’ — RONALD R. BERNIER

Part III — The Cathedral in the Arts

Patterns of Behaviour  Architectural Representation in the Romantic Period — KLAUS NIEHR

Frozen Music and Symphonies in Stone. Gothic Architecture and the Musical Analogy: Intersecting Trajectories in German and French Thought from the Eighteenth through the Nineteenth Centuries — STEPHANIE A. GLASER

Délires opiomanes et gothicomanes de Thomas De Quincey à Wilfred Sätty — JEAN-MICHEL LENIAUD

The Cathedral as Time Machine: Art, Architecture, and Religion — RICHARD UTZ

Select Bibliography

Index

Call for Papers: 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 9 – 12 2019 – Mary Jaharis Center sponsored panel (Deadline: 27 May 2018)

hb_63-178-2To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 9–12, 2019. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.
Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/54th-international-congress-on-medieval-studies). The deadline for submission is May 27, 2018. Proposals should include:
**Title
**Session abstract (300 words)
**Intellectual justification for the proposed session (300 words)
**Proposed list of session participants (presenters and session presider)
**CV
Successful applicants will be notified by May 30, 2018, if their proposal has been selected for submission to the International Medieval Congress. The Mary Jaharis Center will submit the session proposal to the Congress and will keep the potential organizer informed about the status of the proposal.
The session organizer may act as the presider or present a paper. The session organizer will be responsible for writing the Call for Papers. The CFP must be approved by the Mary Jaharis Center. Session participants will be chosen by the session organizer and the Mary Jaharis Center.
If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse up to 5 session participants (presenters and presider) up to $600 maximum for North American residents and up to $1200 maximum for those coming abroad. Session organizers and co-organizers should plan to participate in the panel as either a participant or a presider. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.
Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions. Further information about the International Congress on Medieval Studies is available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress.

On this day in 1337…

Reposted from IAS Blog

K2779710.11
Reliquary of the Santo Corporale, gold and silver with basse taille enamel, 1.39×0.63 m, 1338 (Orvieto Cathedral). Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY

On 7 May 1337 goldsmith Ugolino di Vieri received the first payment for his masterpiece, the reliquary of the Santo Corporale of Bolsena. Payments are recorded for the following two years, reflecting the long process of creating an artwork as complex and monumental as this.

 

Reliquario_Corporale
Details of the Corporale, showing scenes from the Miracle. Source: Sailko on 
Wikimedia Commons.

The work was commissioned by the Bishop and Canons of Orvieto Cathedral to celebrate a miracle which had taken place in the nearby town of Bolsena in 1263. A priest in the town had become increasingly sceptical of the religious dogma of transubstantiation, namely the real conversion of the wine and bread used at Mass into the body and blood of Christ at the moment of their consecration. As the priest was celebrating the Eucharist one day, the consecrated host started bleeding on the corporal, the linen cloth used to cover the altar at this point of the celebration. Awed by the supernatural event, the priest described it to Pope Urban IV, who recognised it as a miracle and ordered the preservation of the blood-stained corporal as a relic.

Facciata_del_Duomo_di_Orvieto
Façade of the Duomo of Orvieto. Source: Hans Peter Schaefer on Wikimedia Commons

Conceived to contain the square corporal, Ugolino di Vieri’s reliquary abandoned the circular or polygonal shape typical of earlier objects of this type. Instead, it adopted a flat, rectangular structure which evokes an altarpiece or the façade of a church. The gables crowning the object are in fact very similar to those of Orvieto cathedral’s own façade.

 

 

 

maesta_duccio_00
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Maestà (back, conjectural reconstruction by Lew Minter), tempera on panel, 1308–1311. Source: Web Gallery of Art.

The iconography of the reliquary is as innovative as its form. It is decorated with 32 scenes representing the Passion of Christ and the Miracle of Bolsena in colourful basse taille enamel. The former narrative is illustrated with scenes copied from the famous Maestà altarpiece painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna for Siena Cathedral in 1308–11. Instead, the miracle had never been represented in art before, and Ugolino had to invent a completely new iconography to represent the event. Proud perhaps of his great achievement, Ugolino inscribed the reliquary with his name and with its date of completion.

 

On the day of Corpus Christi, 1338, a solemn procession transported the completed reliquary from Ugolino’s workshop to the cathedral. The procession evokes the similar celebration held for Duccio’s Maestà in 1311, as narrated by an anonymous Sienese chronicler:

On the day on which [the Maestà] was carried to the Duomo, the shops were locked up and the Bishop ordered a great and devout company of priests and brothers with a solemn procession, accompanied by the Signori of the Nine and all the officials of the Comune, and all the populace and all the most worthy were in order next to the said panel with lights lit in their hands, and then behind were women and children with much devotion; and they accompanied it right to the Duomo making procession around the Campo, as was the custom, sounding all the bells in glory out of devotion for such a noble panel as was this.

In Orvieto, Ugolino’s reliquary is still paraded every year during Corpus Christi celebrations.

Reference: Geddes, Helen. “Ugolino di Vieri.” Grove Art Online. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000086908.

CONFERENCE: Pantokrator 900: Cultural Memories of a Byzantine Complex (August 7-10 2018), ANAMED Istanbul

CONFERENCE: Pantokrator 900: Cultural Memories of a Byzantine Complex, 7-10 August 2018, ANAMED Istanbul

The Christ Pantokrator Complex (Zeyrek Camii, a UNESCO World Heritage Site) that included the mausoleum of the imperial dynasty, a monastery, a hospital, an orphanage, a home of the elderly and a poorhouse was founded in 1118 by Empress Piroska-Eirene and Emperor John II Komnenos. The second largest Byzantine church still standing in Istanbul after the Hagia Sophia, the Pantokrator was the most ambitious project of the Komnenian renaissance and the most impressive construction of twelfth-century Byzantine architecture. To commemorate the nine hundred years of the Pantokrator Complex, the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU Budapest and the Hungarian Hagiography Society organize, in collaboration with LABEX RESMED of Sorbonne-Paris, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, and the Hungarian Institute in Istanbul an international conference that brings together scholars from diverse scholarly traditions to discuss the social, architectural and spiritual meanings of this outstanding monument.

Tuesday, August 7

9- 9:30 Marianne Sághy (CEU and ELTE Budapest), Gábor Fodor, director of the Hungarian Cultural Istitute in Istanbul – welcome and opening of the workshop
9:30-10 Albrecht Berger (Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich) – Celebrating foundations: from the Pantokrator to Zeyrek Camii
10:30-11 coffee break
11-11:30 Béatrice Caseau (Université Paris IV, Sorbonne) — Spiritual and physical healing at the Pantokrator Monastery
11:30-12:30 Roundtable Discussion: Monuments and New Trends in Byzantine Studies
12:30 -2 pm lunch break
2 pm-2:30 pm Floris Bernard (University of Ghent – CEU Budapest) – Empress Eirene in Komnenian Poetry: Perceptions of Gender, Empire and Space
3-3:30 coffee
3:30-4 Zoltán Szegvári (PhD student, University of Szeged) The Image of the Latins in Late Byzantine Epistolography
4:30-5 Etele Kiss (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest) –  Visual and Spiritual Portraits of Eirene, the Co-Founder of the Pantokrator
5:30-6 Cicek Dereli (PhD student, CEU Budapest) Cultural Heritage in Istanbul –  Monasteries in Focus

Wednesday, August 8On-the-Spot: Monument and museum visits guided by David Hendrix and Şerif Yenen

Thursday, August 9

10-10:30 Marianne Sághy Greek Culture in Early Árpádian Hungary
11-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-12 Béla Zsolt Szakács (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest) – Between Byzantium and Italy: the Art of Twelfth-Century Hungary
12:30-2 pm lunch break
2-2:30 pm Márton Rózsa (PhD student, ELTE University of Budapest) — The Byzantine Second-Tier Élite in the Komnenian Period
3-3:30 Lioba Theis (University of Vienna) – Light Symbolism in the Pantokrator
4-4:30 coffee break
4:30-5 Hâluk Çetinkaya (Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul) Funeral Spaces in the Pantokrator Monastery
5:30-6 Etele Kiss (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest) Cosmology between Byzantium and the Occident in the Twelfth Century: Piroska-Eirene and the Opus Sectile Floor of the Pantokrator Monastery
6-6:30 Discussion and conclusions

Friday, August 10

On-the-Spot: Byzantine City Walks guided by David Hendrix and Şerif Yenen

CONFERENCE: ‘L’oeuvre en mouvement, de l’Antiquité au XVIIe siècle’, Amiens (June 7-8 2018)

Conference: L’oeuvre en mouvement, de l’Antiquité au XVIIe siècle

Amiens, Logis du Roy, 9 passage du Logis du Roy F-80000, June 7 – 08, 2018

Le laboratoire TrAme (Textes, représentations, archéologie et mémoire de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance), EA 4284 de l’Université de Picardie Jules Verne à Amiens (axe « Objets, matérialité, représentations »), organise un colloque pluridisciplinaire sur l’œuvre en mouvement de l’Antiquité au XVIIe siècle.

Jeudi 7 juin

9h-9h10 : accueil des participants

9h10-9h30 : Introduction : Mohammed Benlahsen (Président, Université de Picardie Jules Verne), Tiphaine Barthélémy (directrice, École Doctorale Sciences Humaines et Sociales, Université de Picardie Jules Verne), message de Laurence Boulègue (directrice, TrAme – EA 4284, Université de Picardie Jules Verne), Véronique Dominguez

I. Geste et création
Présidente de séance : Marie-Laurence Haack

9h30-9h50 : Gérard Gros (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, TrAme – EA 4284)
Remarques sur la représentation littéraire du mouvement au Moyen Âge : hiératisme, convention, réalisme

9h50-10h10 : Giuseppe Pucci (Università degli Studi, Sienne / Società Italiana di Estetica)
Punctum temporis, forma fluens

10h10-10h30 : Audrey Gouy (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour / ITEM – EA 3002)
Mouvements et gestes au prisme de la cinétique. Réflexion à partir des représentations étrusques de danse (VIe-Ve siècle avant J.-C.)

10h30-10h50 : discussion

10h50-11h05 : pause

II. Mouvement dans la pierre
Président de séance : Arnaud Timbert (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, TrAme – EA 4284)

11h05-11h25 : Sébastien Biay (Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris)
Mouvements rythmiques dans l’ornementation des portails romans

11h25-11h45 : Nicolas Reveyron (Université Lumière Lyon 2, ARAR – UMR 5138)
Le geste et l’action. Rhétorique du mouvement dans les figurations médiévales (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)

11h45-12h05 : Anne Vuillemard-Jenn (École d’arts appliqués MJM, Strasbourg / Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Strasbourg)
La spatialisation et les parcours visuels induits par la polychromie gothique

12h05-12h25 : discussion

12h25-13h45 : pause déjeuner

III. Mouvement dans l’image
Président de séance : Philippe Sénéchal

13h45-14h30 : Conférence plénière
Jean-Claude Schmitt (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Centre de Recherches Historiques – UMR 8558)
Rythmes et mouvement dans l’Occident médiéval

14h30-14h50 : Véronique Dalmasso (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, TrAme – EA 4284)
Chute du corps, envol de l’âme, fixité iconique

14h50-15h10 : David Zagoury (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome)
The Early Modern Rotating Shield

15h10-15h30 : Matthieu Creson (Faculté des Lettres, Sorbonne Université, Centre André Chastel -UMR 8150)
Le mouvement dans les natures mortes peintes en France dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle

15h30-16h : discussion

16h-16h15 : pause

IV. Objets en circulation
Président de séance : Giuseppe Pucci

16h15-16h35 : Flavia Morandini (Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Ausonius – UMR 5607)
Déplacements rituels des objets de culte : le cas des dépôts votifs dans l’Italie centrale

16h35-16h55 : Dominique Frère (Université Bretagne Sud, Lorient, TEMOS – FRE 2015)
Parfums en mouvements

16h55-17h15 : Sabrina Valin (Université Paris Nanterre, HAR – EA 4414)
Le symbole du mouvement représenté sur les jetons et leur distribution au sein de la monarchie française du XVIIe siècle

17h15-17h35 : discussion

19h : Conférence-spectacle au théâtre “Chés Cabotans”
Ce corps qui parle, par Yves Marc (Compagnie “Théâtre du Mouvement” – 31, rue Édouard David, 80000 Amiens)

Vendredi 8 juin

V. Objets et mécanismes
Présidente de séance : Véronique Dominguez

9h-9h20 : Xavier Barral i Altet (Université de Rennes 2 / Université de Venise, Ca’ Foscari / Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome)
Marionnettes et statues articulées : stratégies scénographiques du discours religieux médiéval

9h20-9h40 : Jelle Koopmans (Université d’Amsterdam)
Machinerie théâtrale et théâtre des machines (XVe-XVIe siècles)

9h40-10h : Marie-Domitille Porcheron (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, CRÆ – EA 4291)
Mouvoir l’œuvre d’art. Représentations et perceptions dans l’Europe de la Renaissance et du maniérisme

10h-10h30 : discussion

10h30-10h45 : pause

VI. Processions
Président de séance : Xavier Barral i Altet

10h45-11h05 : Véronique Bücken (Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelles)
Le char de procession de sainte Gertrude de Nivelles : un véhicule animé du XVe siècle

11h05-11h25 : Raphaële Skupien (Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France – Département des Archives et des Nouvelles Technologies de l’Information / Université de Lille / TrAme – EA 4284)
En marche ! L’expérience de la rue dans les images de processions parisiennes du XVe au XVIIIe siècle

11h25-11h45 : Valentina Fiore (Polo Museale della Liguria – Ministero dei Beni Culturali, Gênes) et Sara Rulli (Ministero per i Beni e le attività culturali e del turismo, Gênes)
Muovere gli affetti, muovere le « casse »: suggestioni di movimento nei riti professionali a Genova tra Seicento e Settecento

11h45-12h15 : discussion

12h15-14h : pause déjeuner

VII. Genre, mouvement, objets
Présidente de séance : Morgan Dickson

14h-14h20 : Irina Dumitrescu (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn)
Mixed Moves and Sinful Women

14h20-14h40 : Denis Ferhatović (Connecticut College, New London, CT)
The Paradox of Motion While Being Affixed in Exeter Riddles 14 (“Horn”) and 20 (“Sword”)

14h40-15h : Anna Russakoff (American University of Paris)
Miracles and Movements: Miraculous Images of the Virgin Mary in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

15h-15h20 : Thor-Oona Pignarre-Altermatt (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Centre de Recherches Historiques, – UMR 8558, groupe AHLoMA)
Prier à l’image de la Vierge : dispositifs mobiles et dévotion domestiques à travers les scènes d’Annonciation flamandes au XVe siècle

15h20-15h50 : discussion

15h50-16h05 : pause

VIII. Danse
Présidente de séance : Dominique Paris-Poulain

16h05-16h25 : Isabelle Marchesin (Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris / Université de Poitiers,  CESCM – UMR 7302 / École nationale des chartes, centre Jean-Mabillon – EA 3624)
Entre lexis et semiosis : la jongleresse danseuse dans la sculpture romane aragonaise

16h25-16h45 : Anne-Zoé Rillon-Marne (Université catholique de l’Ouest, Angers / CESCM, Poitiers – UMR 7302 / IReMus, Paris – UMR 8223)
Les rondeaux latins du manuscrit de Florence (Pluteus 29.1) : clercs en mouvement et mutations de l’Église au début du XIIIe siècle

16h45-17h05 : discussion

17h05 : conclusions

Organisateurs :
Morgan Dickson (Littérature anglaise du Moyen Âge) : morgan.dickson-farkas@wanadoo.fr
Véronique Dominguez (Langue et littérature françaises du Moyen Âge): veronique.dominguez@aliceadsl.fr
Marie-Laurence Haack (Histoire ancienne) : marie-laurence.haack@u-picardie.fr
Dominique Poulain (Histoire de l’art médiéval) : dp-poulain@orange.fr
Philippe Sénéchal (Histoire de l’art moderne) : philippe.senechal@u-picardie.fr