Medieval Art Research

New Publications: Body-Worlds: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination

Body-Worlds: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination

Author: K. Whittington

Brepols Publishers

In 1334, an Italian priest named Opicinus de Canistris fell ill and experienced a divine vision of continents and oceans transformed into human figures, a vision which inspired numerous drawings. While they relate closely to contemporary maps and seacharts, religious iconography, medical illustration, and cosmological diagrams, Opicinus’s drawings cannot be assimilated to any of these categories. In their beautiful strangeness they complicate many of our assumptions about medieval visual culture, and spark lines of inquiry into the interplay of religion and science, the practice of experimentation, the operations of allegory in the fourteenth century, and ultimately into the status of representation itself.

Reviews

“Karl Whittington’s Body-Worlds brings Opicinus de Canistris’ idiosyncratic drawings out of the purely personal, mentally disturbed world to which they have generally been consigned into a more normative and accessible realm. To unlock their forms and meanings, Whittington persuasively compares the odd renderings to portolan charts used in marine navigation, which he sees as foundational to Opicinus’s project. And, building on the work of Michael Camille and Victoria Morse, he subjects the drawings to a sensitive analysis that never flattens these indisputably eccentric works but, in the end, enhances their innovative nature even while rendering it understandable.”

– Herbert L. Kessler, Johns Hopkins University

“Opicinus’s drawings contribute in new and unexpected ways to our understanding of the late medieval church, the history of vision and sensibilities, the body, the history of cartography, and Mediterranean studies. Karl Whittington is an intelligent reader of these very difficult works and a wonderful guide for readers encountering this material for the first time. His book will open up an important and under-utilized corpus for further study and should spark an on-going conversation about these intriguing manuscripts.”

– Victoria Morse, Carleton College

“In Body-Worlds, Karl Whittington has produced a magisterial study of the enigmatic drawings of Opicinus de Canistris. Focusing on a key grouping within the larger corpus of images, he examines some two dozen illustrations that superimpose human bodies on the form of the earth, its seas, and its continents. Two questions guide his task: why would this late medieval thinker adapt a diagrammatic form based on current understanding of cartography; and why turn this image into a system for analyzing broad theological and philosophical questions of the day? Although some scholars believe that Opicinus suffered from a form of physical and mental disorder, and that the drawings reflect a disturbed state of mind, Whittington’s complex study indicates otherwise. Whittington does justice to the rich multivalent nature of these drawings, showing us how Opicinus understood the relationship between the body and cosmos, as well as how sexuality and gender worked as important conceptual tools in his visionary system.”

– Catherine Harding, University of Victoria

ANN: Summer Course: Study of the Arts in Flanders (Leuven, 18-29 June 2017)

Leuven, Belgium, June 18 – 28, 2017

Deadline: Nov 30, 2016

Several Flemish research centres, universities and art museums
collaboratively organise the third edition of the Summer Course for the
Study of the Arts in Flanders in the summer of 2017. After the success
of the two previous editions with a focus on Jan van Eyck and Peter
Paul Rubens, this edition zooms in on Late Medieval and Early
Renaissance Sculpture. The target group for the course are master and
PhD-students in (art) history and junior curators from all over the
world.

The aim of the Summer Course is to bring to Flanders, annually, a group
of 18 select national and international, highly qualified young
researchers and to present them with an intensive 11-day program of
lectures, discussions, and on-site visits. The theme varies annually
and focuses each year on a different art-historical period. The aim is
to provide the participants with a clear insight into the Flemish art
collections from the period at hand, as well as into the available and
most suited research methods, the state of the research and the
research needs. After the course the students will be ambassadors for
the Flemish arts abroad.

The third edition of the summer course is titled Medieval and
Renaissance Sculpture in the Low Countries and will take place from
June 18 through June 28, 2017. It is coordinated by Museum M – Leuven
and the Flemish Art Collection. Excursions will be made to Leuven,
Mechelen, Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Maastricht, Aachen,
Liège, Zoutleeuw and Brussels. The language of the Summer Course will
be English.

Candidates have earned an MA or are enrolled in a PhD programme, with a
focus on Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Sculpture. Candidates are
at the start of their professional career.
Thanks to the generous support of the Flemish Government the
participation fee of the Summer Course is now set at €900 per person.
The fee includes the full 11-day programme, 10 overnight hotel stays in
a single-occupancy room, all transportation within the programme, all
entry tickets, 2 receptions, 5 lunches and 5 dinners. Not included in
the participation fee is the transportation to and from Belgium.

Four grants in total will be awarded. Thanks to the generous support of
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation’s History of Art Grants Program 2 US
students and citizens are offered a grant that will fully cover the
programme fee and round trip flights between Belgium and the US.

The organisers of the Summer Course together with the Flemish
Government have made available 2 grants of €450 each. The recipients of
the grant will pay a reduced participation fee of €450 instead of the
regular fee.

Apply now through November 30, 2016. Mail to
Matthias.Depoorter@vlaamsekunstcollectie.be.

The Summer Course is a joint initiative of Museum M – Leuven, the Royal
Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Groeninge Museum Bruges, the Museum of
Fine Arts Ghent, the University of Ghent, the Catholic University of
Leuven, the Flemish Research Centre for the Arts in the Burgundian
Netherlands, the Rubenianum and the Flemish Art Collection. The
structural content partner for this edition is the Royal Institute for
Cultural Heritage.

Contact: Matthias.Depoorter@vlaamsekunstcollectie.be
Website: http://summercourse.eu
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1VSivk4
Youtube: https://youtu.be/p95n769iVI0

Cambridge Medieval Art Seminar Series: ‘Craft, Process, Techne’, 2016-2017

The University of Cambridge Senior Seminar in Medieval Art meets every other week during full term, attracting an impressive range of speakers from home and abroad.

The Department of the History of Art is pleased to announce the programme for the annual Medieval Art Seminar Series 2016-17. The seminars will explore ideas of craft and process in medieval art at practical and theoretical levels.

Papers (and in one case, a trip to the V&A) will be held on alternating Mondays during Michaelmas and Lent terms and the final two papers of our series will be held in Easter term. The venue for the seminars is Lecture Room 2 of the History of Art Department (1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge CB2 1PX), beginning promptly at 5.30pm. Following questions, attendees are invited to stay and speak more informally with speakers over wine and light nibbles. Lectures are free and open to the public.

Organisers: Robert Hawkins, Amy Jeffs

Please email Robert Hawkins at rh540@cam.ac.uk with any queries.

Programme:

Monday 10th October

Zoe Boden (Victoria and Albert Museum & University of Glasgow)

Opus Anglicanum and the Steeple Aston Cope

Monday 24th October

Group visit to the Opus Anglicanum Exhibition, meet 1.45pm at the V&A

Monday 7th November

Dr George Younge (University of York)

Anglo-Saxon sources of the Theological Windows at Canterbury Cathedral

Monday 21st November

Prof Richard Sennett (LSE and NYU)

The Craftsman: a Discussion

Monday 23rd January

Dr Lucy Wrapson (University of Cambridge, HKI)

Thomas Gooch and Thomas Loveday, two Suffolk Carpenters and their Rood Screens

Monday 6th February

Anya Burgon (University of Cambridge)

The Mechanical Arts in Twelfth-Century School Poetry

Monday 20th February

Dr Peter Dent (University of Bristol)

‘Domine dio fece scolpire questa croce’: Carving the Crucifix in Late Medieval Italy

Monday 27th February

Prof Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen)

The Craft of Spinning

Monday 6th March

Dr Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute of Art)

Gothic Encounters? Architectural History, Phenomenology and the Gothic Church

Monday 1st May

Prof Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge)

Writing sound : Designing Notation : Carolingian Musical Techne

Monday 15th May

Agata Gomolka (University of East Anglia)

Carving Romanesque Chiaroscuro

Exhibition: A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe, Walters Art Museum, 16 October 2016 – 8 January 2017

Walters Presents A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe Features more than 100 objects from world-renowned collections

Baltimore, MD – The Walters Art Museum presents A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe, a major international loan exhibition that brings together more than 100 works including stained glass, precious metals, ivories, tapestries, paintings, prints, and illuminated manuscripts from 25 public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Walters’ extraordinary medieval collection. On view from October 16, 2016 through January 8, 2017, A Feast for the Senses explores how medieval works of art spoke to all the senses. Luminous stained glass windows, tapestries depicting fragrant gardens, chalices used in the Eucharist—these objects were not only seen, but were also, and at the same time, touched, smelled, tasted, and heard. The Walters is first of only two venues to host this extraordinary exhibition. Admission is free.

During the late medieval period—roughly the 12th to 15th centuries—religious and secular life mingled to the point that the boundaries between them become hard to distinguish: the delights of life and anticipation of heavenly reward were closely intertwined. The arts of the time reflect a new interest in human experience, the enjoyment of nature, and the pursuit of pleasure by evoking and celebrating beauty through all of the senses. While such pleasures were not directed exclusively toward spiritual enlightenment, religious practices were also defined by rich sensory experiences.

The exhibition evokes these not only through the works of art on view but also through specially designed sensory experiences, ranging from smells of roses and incense to the sounds of church bells and gardens, and the tactility of rosary beads.

“In many museums today, visitors experience the artworks by viewing them from afar in silent galleries. A Feast for the Senses will push the boundaries of the art museum by inviting visitors to encounter art with more than just their eyes,” says exhibition curator Martina Bagnoli (former Walters’ curator of medieval art, who is now executive director of the Gallerie Estensi in Modena, Italy).

Loans and Support

More than 25 museums and collections in the United States and abroad are lending works to the exhibition, including the British Museum, London; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition also includes masterpieces from the Walters’ renowned collection of medieval art, one of the most important in the United States

A Feast for the Senses has been organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in partnership with the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, and will be on view at the Ringling February 4 through April 20, 2017.

The exhibition received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the National Endowment for the Arts; and anonymous donors, with additional support from the Gary Vikan Exhibition Fund, Nanci and Ned Feltham, and the Helen Hughes Trust. The accompanying catalogue was made possible by an anonymous donor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or the National Endowment for the Arts.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Accompanying Publication

A generously illustrated catalogue presents new research in the developing field of sensory perception within art history. It includes essays by leading scholars exploring the themes of the exhibition through representations of religious practices, royal rituals, feasts and celebrations, and music and literature. Edited by exhibition curator Martina Bagnoli, the catalogue is published by the Walters Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press. It is available for sale in the Walters Art Museum Store and online ($65, hardcover) beginning in mid-October.

Opening Day Event

A public opening day talk Symposium on the Senses in Medieval Culture will be held Sunday, October 16 at 1:30 p.m. Exhibition curator Martina Bagnoli, Walters’ in-house curator Joaneath Spicer, and other scholars will explore aspects of the role played by sensory perception in medieval culture that are both surprising and completely familiar to us today. A reception and book signing follow.

Tickets are $10, and free for Walters members.

Lecture: ‘Light and colour; dark and shadow’, with Professor Liz James, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 11 October 2016, 17:30 pm

Prof Liz James (University of Sussex): ‘Light and colour; dark and shadow’

Light and colour, darkness and shadow, are all fundamental aspects of works of art in a practical way (can we see the work?), a formal fashion (what colours are used?) and conceptually (why these colours? Why this light or this lighting?). But they are also elements of the work of art that have tended to have a secondary place within the history of art. Through a discussion of Byzantine monumental mosaics, this lecture will consider some of the ways in which light, dark, colour and shade are fundamental elements in the appearance, effectiveness and function of images.

Liz James is Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex and a Byzantinist. She has been interested in light and colour for a long time, writing her doctoral thesis on colour in Byzantium. She has just finished writing a book about medieval mosaics (provisionally entitled ‘A short history of medieval mosaics’).

Ticket / entry details:

Tuesday 11 October 2016
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN

This lecture launches the Frank Davis Memorial Series on Light/Darkness

Open to all, free admission

New Publications: Romanesque Cathedrals in Mediterranean Europe

Romanesque Cathedrals in Mediterranean Europe:
Architecture, Ritual and Urban Context

Boto Varela, J. E.A. Kroesen (eds.)

Brepols Publishers

This volume explores the architecture and layout of Romanesque cathedrals in Europe, especially around the Mediterranean, paying special attention to liturgical ritual, church furnishings, iconography, and urban context.

The architecture, interior settings and urban environment of Romanesque cathedrals around the Mediterranean offer unique insights into religion and culture in southern Europe during the 10th-13th centuries. In this period, cultural and artistic interchange around the Mediterranean gave rise to the first truly European art period in Medieval Western Europe, commonly referred to as ‘Romanesque’. A crucial aspect of this integrative process was the mobility of artists, architects and patrons, as well as the capacity to adopt new formulas and integrate them into existing patterns. Some particularly creative centers exported successful models, while others became genuine melting pots. All this took shape over the substrate of Roman Antiquity, which remained in high esteem and was frequently reused.

In these studies, Romanesque cathedrals are employed as a lens with which to analyze the complexity and dynamics of the cultural landscape of southern and central Europe from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. The architecture of every cathedral is the result of a long and complicated process of morphogenesis, defined by spatial conditions and the availability of building materials. Their interior arrangements and imagery largely reflected ritual practice and the desire to express local identities. The various contributions to this volume discuss the architecture, interior, and urban setting of Romanesque cathedrals and analyze the factors which helped to shape them. In so doing, the focus is both on the influence of patrons and on more bottom-up factors, including community practices.

New Publications

Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean

SEJ Gerstel (ed.)

Brepols Publishers

Multidisciplinary, geographically broad, and diachronic in scope, the papers in this volume consider the cultural and political agency of Greece as part of the late antique world, the Byzantine Empire, and the early modern Mediterranean.

Deriving from conferences, workshops, and lectures that took place in conjunction with “Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections,” an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Art Institute of Chicago from 2013 to 2015, the thirteen papers in this volume focus on the art, architecture, and topography of medieval and early modern Greece. Multidisciplinary, geographically broad, and diachronic in scope, these papers consider the cultural and political agency of Greece as part of the late antique world, the Byzantine Empire, and the early modern Mediterranean. The Greek lands—spread across island and mainland—are seen as parts of broad trade and political networks, as points of religious dynamism, and as regions that are simultaneously central and peripheral. Cities and workshops, readings of monumental painting, approaches to sacred art, views of architecture and power, and printed images of the landscape are some of the main themes treated by the authors. The volume also includes reflections on the exhibition written by curators and critics.

SHARON E. J. GERSTEL is Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. An art historian and archaeologist, her research focuses on the late Byzantine village and on the intersections of art and ritual. She is author of Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs of the Byzantine Sanctuary (1999) and Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium: Art, Archaeology and Ethnography (2015) and has edited numerous books including, most recently, Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese (Washington, DC, 2013).

CfP: Bodies in flux: Rewriting the Body in Medieval Literature, Art, and Culture 1000-1450, University of Warwick, 20th May 2017,

Deadline for abstract submission: 15th December 2016

Keynote Speakers: Dr Miranda Griffin (St Catharine’s College, Cambridge), Dr Robert Mills (UCL), Dr Debra Strickland (University of Glasgow)

What is it to have a body? And to experience change and transformation through that body?

This interdisciplinary conference asks what the transformation of the body means for the conception of bodies of different kinds: human, nonhuman, animal, material, divine, and how the representation of these changes in different media reflects on and inflects the boundaries conventionally associated with the body. We are inviting abstracts from graduate students and early career researchers from all disciplines. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

metamorphosis – boundaries between species – boundaries between materials – volatile matter – changing forms – spiritual bodies – transubstantiation – transforming saints – vulnerable bodies – death, illness, injury – medical transformations – bodily miracles – translating bodies – bodies in text and image – allegory and symbolism – transforming meaning

Please submit abstracts of 250 words to warwickbodiesinflux@gmail.com by 15^th December 2016. We look forward to hearing from you!

For more information, visit: www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/bif/

Conference: Textile Gifts in the Middle Ages (Rome, 3-5 November 2016)

Gifts of textiles and clothing appeared in diverse contexts and fulfilled various functions in pre-modern Europe. They could be offered in the course of an initiation rite and or an act of social transition, including upon investiture, marriage, or entry into a monastery. Gifts of clothing to the poor, meanwhile, were among the works of charity
thematized in the vitae of numerous medieval saints. Sumptuous textiles were sent as resplendent gifts to religious institutions or, like
patterned silk textiles from Byzantium, circulated through diplomatic gift exchanges. Gifts of clothing were also distributed within the court as compensation in kind, which supported the structuralization and hierarchization of courtly society. Textile gifts could represent the donor. Especially in the case of clothing previously worn by its donor, the physical presence of the giver might have been woven into the materiality and form of the gifted garment.

The goal of this interdisciplinary conference is to situate the diversity and polysemy of such acts of symbolic communication into the broader context of medieval gift culture. The integration of
anthropological and sociological models (Marcel Mauss, Bruno Latour) into an art historical approach allows for gifted artifacts to be taken seriously as independent entities within the giving process as a socially generative form of communication. The conference therefore
investigates the relationship between human actors and the “agency” of gifts themselves, exploring how the dynamics of reciprocity and its attendant obligations were charged both visually and materially.

For the programme, please visit <http://arthist.net/archive/13867>.

CFP: Medieval Collaborations, The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 22nd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium (4 February 2017), deadline 25 November 2016

Saturday 4 February 2017. Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

In the earliest days of the discipline, medieval art historians were preoccupied with attempts to name and locate masters in anonymous works through formal analysis. In recent years, however, new approaches have favoured the proposal and identification of collaborative working practices. Recent investigations of collaborations like that of Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, the illuminators of the Winchester Bible, or the creators of Opus Anglicanum reveal a more complex picture of artistic co-operation. Notions of the artist as master have been replaced with those of artists working together, from the collaborative artisan activity in eighth-century cloisters to the increasing specialisation in the twelfth-century shop. Collaborations spanned media, with the erection of stone churches requiring not just the mason’s carving but the carpenter’s scaffolding and centring. The master and apprentice paradigm has slowly been eroded with narratives of apprentices working alongside, subverting, and surpassing their so-called masters.

The Courtauld Institute’s 22nd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium invites speakers to consider new approaches to artistic collaborations of the Middle Ages, and how conceptions of collaboration have impacted on the study of these works. Applicants are encouraged to consider a wide range of methodologies and subjects in their approach. Some possible areas might include:

Collaborators and Co-Creations: how can medieval art and architecture act as evidence of artistic collaboration? Case studies of artworks; seen and unseen collaborations between artist and patron, writer, scribe and illuminator, mason and glazier, master and apprentice, carpenter and painter; collaborations between or within religious orders, church and crown, across countries
Process and Method: how were collaborative artworks planned and carried out? Collaborative working processes and shared technologies; specialized skills and divisions of labour; contracts and documentary evidence; shop structures vs ad hoc collaborative undertakings; collaborations across media
Conflict in Collaboration: how were conflicting methods and ideas resolved? Evidence of less-than-seamless cooperation and differing conceptions; reworking by a second collaborator of the first’s work
Representation and Reception: how are collaborative projects presented and represented? Signatures, mythologies of the maker as individual, and representations of cooperative working
Intervention and Adaption: how are initial plans adapted over time? Long-term building/construction projects; later interventions to earlier artworks; ‘collaborations’ spanning time
Collaborations in Medieval Art Scholarship: how have scholars of the Middle Ages collaborated in their work? Collaborative interdisciplinary projects past and present, such as Acta Sanctorum, the Corpus Vitrearum and the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland; digital humanities and collaborations in medieval art research; historiography of collaboration

The Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium offers the opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present and promote and discuss their research. There is some funding available for speakers attending from outside London. If you would like to be considered for this, include a brief statement of need in your application.

Please send proposals of up to 250 words for 20 minute papers, together with a CV, to imogen.tedbury@courtauld.ac.uk and meg.bernstein@courtauld.ac.uk no later than 25 November 2016.

http://courtauld.ac.uk/event/22nd-annual-medieval-postgraduate-student-colloquium-medieval-collaborations