Medieval Art Research

CFP: The Idea of Luxury and the Role of the Object, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

Call for Papers: The Idea of Luxury and the Role of the Object

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organizers: Andrew Sears, University of California, Berkeley; Laura Tillery, University of Pennsylvania

As Christopher Berry has shown in The Idea of Luxury, the concept of luxury is determined by countless factors: it is situated by socio-economic forces, enacted politically, and both justified and critiqued by philosophy and theology. Luxury is also a difficult scholarly concept to contend with, requiring close engagement with these aforementioned fields as well as distance from our own modern judgments and conceptualizations.

Our panel seeks to integrate physical objects within such epistemological studies and consider anew the vital role of Art History. We hope to use artworks to reevaluate some fundamental questions: what is luxury, how is it manifested in physical terms, and what are its functions for patrons, makers, and beholders? We also hope to bring to the fore new questions about the role of luxury objects in shaping scholarly questions and Art History as a discipline, dealing with the nature of the canon, the extant corpus of objects, and the role of collecting practices through time. Indeed, in today’s economic climate, it seems time to consider luxury’s history, our relationship to it, and what art historical lines of inquiry can bring to bear on cultural commentary.

We welcome papers in various stages of research, and across geographic, temporal, and material contexts. Potential topics include: the aesthetics of luxury; material treatises and the physical makeup of luxury; unexpected luxuries; church treasuries; notions of excess, and objects that warn against, or perhaps embody, luxuria and avaritia; commissioning, owning, and displaying luxuries; history and historiography of luxury; luxury and domesticity; luxury and gender; collecting luxuries.

To propose a paper, please send an abstract, C.V., and completed Congress Participant Information Form (available on the Congress website) to Andrew Sears (asears@berkeley.edu) and Laura Tillery (tillery@sas.upenn.edu) no later than 15 September 2016.

CFP: Digital Reconstructions: Italian Buildings and their Decorations, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

Call for Papers: Digital Reconstructions: Italian Buildings and their Decorations

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organizers: Amy Gillette (Temple University) and Kaelin Jewell (Temple University)

CFP: Global Byzantium: 50th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (University of Birmingham, 25–27 March 2017)

Call for Communications: Global Byzantium: 50th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies
University of Birmingham

25-27 March 2017

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For its 50th anniversary, the Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies returns to the University of Birmingham, where it began in 1967. On this anniversary of the discipline we ask what the language of globalism has to offer to Byzantine studies, and Byzantine studies to global narratives. How global was Byzantium? Our understanding of the links which Byzantium had to far-flung parts of the world, and of its connections with near neighbours, continues to develop but the significance of these connections to Byzantium and its interlocutors remains keenly debated. Comparisons from or to Byzantium may also help in thinking about globalism, modern and historical. How, for example, might Byzantine legal structures, visual culture or military practice contribute to debates about the role of the medieval state or the relationship between modern cultural and national identities? Finally, Byzantine studies has always been an international discipline, marked by the interaction of its different national, regional and linguistic traditions of scholarship, as well as its highly interdisciplinary nature. How has this manifested in the interpretation of Byzantine history and how might practices of global scholarship be pursued in the future? The 50th Spring Symposium invites contributions for communications on any of these themes and warmly invites abstracts from scholars outside the UK and in fields linked to Byzantine studies.

The call for communications is now open. If you would like to offer a 10-minute communication on the theme of the symposium, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to Daniel Reynolds at d.k.reynolds@bham.ac.uk by 1 September 2016.

Successful submissions will be informed no later than 1 October 2016. Some bursaries will be available to selected speakers, especially to attendees from outside the UK. If you would like to be considered for a bursary please indicate this on your abstract and we will send you further information about the application process if appropriate.

For more information, see: http://www.byzantium.ac.uk/events/spring-symposium-2017.html

CFP: Image & Meaning in Medieval Manuscripts: Sessions in Honor of Adelaide Bennett Hagens (Two Sessions, International Congress on Medieval Studies)

Call for Papers: Image & Meaning in Medieval Manuscripts: Sessions in Honor of Adelaide Bennett Hagens

Session I: Text-Image Dynamics in Medieval Manuscripts

Session II: Signs of Patronage in Medieval Manuscripts

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organized by Judith Golden and Jessica Savage, Index of Christian Art, Princeton University

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Session I: Text-Image Dynamics in Medieval Manuscripts

This session invites papers that examine the interaction between words and images in medieval manuscripts as they shape the reader-viewer’s experience of the book. How do texts and images interact on the page? How did medieval readers respond to the varied discourses between images and texts? This session endeavors to open up new perspectives in describing, analyzing, and contextualizing manuscript illumination. Speakers may address the topic of visual rhetoric and how images communicate meaning with accompanying text, image-text composition, and the recovery of the reader’s experience through text and iconography. Also of interest is the role of images and their intrinsic or peripheral textual elements (including rubrics, captions, mottos, names, initials, labels, titles, instructions, votives, quotations, speech scrolls, pseudo-inscriptions and other types of inscriptions), as well as that of formal text or paratextual elements, in elucidating meaning and engaging the viewer. Speakers may consider case studies of particular manuscripts or present analyses addressing broad iconographic trends.

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Session II: Signs of Patronage in Medieval Manuscripts

This session invites papers that examine the many varied “visual signatures” of manuscript patrons, including the dress, gestures, posture, and attributes of donor figures; heraldry and personalized inscriptions; marginal notes, colophons, dedications, and other signs of ownership and use. Building on scholarship presented in the 2013 Index conference Patronage: Power and Agency in Medieval Art, this session seeks papers that will investigate the dynamic system of patronage centered on the interaction of owners with their books (whether as creator, patron, commissioner, or reader-viewer). Speakers may also investigate the importance of gender and social roles in book production, use, and readership or the role of patron as instigator in the process of book creation, from payment to design.

Adelaide Bennett Hagens is retiring from the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University after fifty years of dedicated research and scholarship. She studied under Robert Branner at Columbia University and joined the Index during the directorship of Rosalie Green. Adelaide has studied medieval art in a variety of media, but her passion at the Index and in her personal research has always been manuscript illumination, particularly of the Gothic period. Her publications include “Some Perspectives on the Origins of Books of Hours in France in the Thirteenth Century,” in Books of Hours Reconsidered, edited by Sandra Hindman and James H. Marrow (2013); “Making Literate Lay Women Visible: Text and Image in French and Flemish Books of Hours, 1220–1320,” in Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, edited by Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson (2012); and “The Windmill Psalter: The Historiated Letter E of Psalm One,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980). In two sessions, we celebrate Adelaide’s accomplishments and recognize her contributions to the Index of Christian Art and to the wider medieval and academic community.

Inspired by Adelaide’s continued interest in new research, we would particularly welcome submissions from emerging scholars in manuscript studies to share projects that reflect new developments and chart future possible courses for the field.

The deadline for paper proposals is: 15 September 2016

Please send the abstract of your proposed paper (300 words maximum), CV with current contact information, and completed Participant Information Form (available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to the organizers: Judith Golden (jkgolden@princeton.edu) and Jessica Savage (jlsavage@princeton.edu)

CFP: Networks of Books and Readers in the Medieval Mediterranean, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

Call for Papers: Networks of Books and Readers in the Medieval Mediterranean:
“Networks of Books and Readers in the Medieval Mediterranean I: Books” and “Networks of Books and Readers in the Medieval Mediterranean II: Readers”

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organized by Núria Silleras-Fernandez (Spanish and Portuguese, University of Colorado at Boulder) and sponsored by the CU Mediterranean Studies Group and the Mediterranean Seminar.

These sessions address the study of networks of books and readers in the Medieval Mediterranean. How did texts and ideas circulate in a Mediterranean context? What types of motifs, topics, and ideas travelled? What books were translated and why? Were there Mediterranean networks of readers who circulated particular texts? These two panels, one focusing on books and the other on readers, seek papers of a comparative, interdisciplinary and/or methodologically innovative nature that focus on how members of various faith and ethnic communities circulated texts and ideas in the broader Mediterranean.

Contact Núria Silleras-Fernandez (silleras@colorado.edu) for further information or to submit a proposal (300-word abstract, one-page CV, and media equipment request by 15 September 2016).

CFP: Art and Ideology in the Twelfth-Century Western Mediterranean (NYC, 14 October 2016)

Call for Papers: Art and Ideology in the Twelfth-Century Western Mediterranean

A Symposium at Bard Graduate Center, New York City, 14 October 2016

Supported by the Trehan Fund for Islamic Art and Material Culture
co-sponsored by the Spain-North Africa Project

In the twelfth century, new powers emerged throughout the Western Mediterranean, from the Almohads of North Africa to the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. In the Iberian Peninsula, upstart rulers with broad ambitions emerged in both Muslim and Christian territories. New city-states appeared with the dissolution of the Almoravid Empire in al-Andalus, and older kingdoms, including Castile-León and Aragon, began massive expansions under rulers who claimed imperial titles. “Art and Ideology in the Twelfth-Century Mediterranean” explores how the rulers of this region deployed art (conceived in the broadest sense) to legitimate new claims, how they asserted their authority through the construction of palatial and liturgical spaces, and what kinds of objects their kingdoms produced, traded, or coveted. We will investigate how these rulers looked to imperial and caliphal precedents and rivals for models, how they elaborated on these models, and which communities of artisans and workmen they drew on.

The aim of the symposium is to consider art and ideology in the Western Mediterranean as an integrated region where culture and religio-political ideologies cut across the geographic, ethnic, and religious lines that are so often used to divide it. Art and material culture provide a powerful lens for considering and clarifying the sometimes-hidden connections in this region, since the movement of objects and craftsmen rarely ceased at the edges of the cultural zones and traditions later fostered and imposed by nation-state institutions and modern scholars. We will explore how examining the broader region affects our understanding of its component kingdoms, and, following recent scholarship, seek to establish a theoretical framework for understanding the imbricated world of the medieval Western Mediterranean.

The symposium will feature several keynote lectures by scholars who work on Sicily, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula from Christian and Islamic perspectives, followed by a panel of shorter papers by junior scholars. We welcome proposals of 20-minute papers for this panel from PhD students and those within three years of the PhD, considering these topics from any disciplinary perspective.

Potential topics for presentation include (but are not limited to) questions such as the following:

How were art and architecture deployed by rulers and aspiring rulers and their courts?
How are articulations of politico-religious power visible in architectural construction and decoration?
What artisanal communities participated in the production of new spaces and what was the nature of their relationship to political power and patronage?
How were legitimating strategies mirrored across cultural and political boundaries and how is this visible in material culture and its circulation?
How were old patterns adopted and transformed by those engaged in new political endeavors and projects?
How did groups not clearly associated with the dominant religious identities and evolving orthodoxies (e.g. Jews, Mozarabs, and Kharijites) participate, and how was their cultural production affected by the political and demographic transformations of the twelfth century?
How did people who were traditionally marginalized, including slaves and women, participate in programs of cultural production?
How were new ideas of crusading/jihad manifested in material culture?

Please submit your 300-word proposals via emaito abigail.balbale@bgc.bard.edu by Friday, July 29.

Final drafts for pre-circulation are due October 1.

CFP: The Virgin as Bridge: Cultural Exchange and Connection through Images of the Virgin Mary, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

CFP: The Virgin as Bridge: Cultural Exchange and Connection through Images of the Virgin Mary

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organizers: Diliana Angelova (University of California, Berkeley) and
Amanda Luyster (College of the Holy Cross)

Across the medieval Mediterranean and beyond, people of many faiths and backgrounds sought the succor of the miraculous virgin and mother, Mary. Christians venerated Mary as the holiest figure of Christianity after Christ, the one thanks to whom the divine mystery of the Incarnation was fulfilled. The Koran also hailed her as chosen by Allah. Converts to Christianity from paganism or Islam were often said to be motivated by their great love of the Virgin. Byzantine churches were incomplete without her image in the holiest of holies, the apse of the sanctuary. In the West, the grandest Gothic cathedrals rose in her honor. Objects such as the thirteenth-century Freer canteen, as well as shared shrines, suggest that Marian images could be appreciated by audiences professing different faiths. Images of the Virgin acted as a shared touchpoint between people of many different backgrounds, socio-economic strata, and faiths.

This panel invites 15-20 minute papers that focus on the capacity of the Virgin to act as a bridge or cultural mediator: between regions, between genders, between political factions and cities, and between belief systems. Panel participants could focus on representations of the Virgin as well as references to religious practices associated with images of the Virgin. Icons, cult centers, personal objects such as jewelry, metalwork more broadly, manuscripts, monumental sculpture, wall-painting, architecture, as well as practices associated with all of these, might be considered.

The deadline for paper proposals is September 15, 2016.

Please send the abstract of your proposed paper (300 words maximum), CV with current contact information, and completed Participant Information Form, available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions to the organizers, Diliana Angelova and Amanda Luyster, at angelova@berkeley.edu and aluyster@holycross.edu

All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions.

CONF: Journeys of the Soul: Multiple Topographies in the Camposanto of Pisa (Pisa, 1–2 September 2016)

Conference: Journeys of the Soul: Multiple Topographies in the Camposanto of Pisa

Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore
September 1-2 2016
Palazzo della Carovana, piazza dei Cavalieri 7, Sala Azzurra

Organizers: Michele Bacci (Université de Fribourg), David Ganz
(Universität Zürich), Rahel Meier (Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz)

The construction of the Camposanto in Pisa, begun in the late 1270s, resulted in an innovative type of monumental cemetery. Generously dimensioned and surrounded by a prestigious shell of white marble, the new cemetery of the cathedral complemented both the dome and baptistery as a third monument of equal ranking. Placed directly beside one of the city gates, the cemetery complex constituted an astonishing Portal of the powerful seaport. Great artistic expenditure was continued on the inside: the high walls of the four wings were decorated with frescoes of heretofore unknown dimensions, thus creating one of the most impressive painted spaces of the Late Middle Ages. The Camposanto provided the municipal audiences with a place of burial which eclipsed that of the popular mendicant church cemeteries.

The aim of the conference is to illuminate the Camposanto venture as an innovative interaction between the two artistic mediums of architecture and mural painting and the funerary utilization of the space. The guiding concept of “Journey” allows us to consider perceptions of burial as an entry into an otherworldly Journey, as well as journeys to holy and otherworldly places, which are invoked in the iconographic program of the frescoes. Following this concept, the conference will focus on a long Pisan tradition of spatial interweaving of locations within the Mediterranean Region – in particular the holy sites of Palestine – which were diversely linked to Pisa through overseas trade, by military participation in the crusades and through its position as starting point and place of passage for pilgrimages.

Recent research projects have emphatically illuminated a widely circulating practice of “site-relics” and “site-transfer” in the medieval West. Pilgrim’s ampoules with lamp oil and stones from the holy sites were media for the creation of composite places which superimposed the local topography and the Terra Sancta sites of memory. Transfer processes and the adoption of foreign locations were already abundant in the older constructions of the cathedral area in Pisa: the Dome itself was built on the occasion of the victory over the Saracens ruling in Sicily and to commemorate the seminal myth of the second Rome. The baptistery begun in the 11th Century cited the forms of the Anastasis in Jerusalem.

The project of the Camposanto can be understood as a further development of this topographic memory. In this context, the narratives about the sacred earth, which was allegedly spread throughout Camposanto, played a central role. The notion that sacred earth could be spread in a cemetery can be understood as an innovative advancement of older models of site transfer. Source evidence suggest that these legends were greatly enriched over the centuries, although they already circulated in nuce at the time the cemetery was founded. These stories also motivated the innovative designation of a cemetery as „campus sanctus“. It is a key purpose of the conference to consider the interplay between the sacred substance of earth, the fictive spaces within the murals and the burial practices within the cemetery.

Program:
Thursday, September 1
09:00 Greetings
09.10 Introduction by Michele Bacci (Fribourg) and David Ganz (Zurich)

PANEL I – THE CAMPOSANTO: ARCHITECTURAL AND PICTORIAL TOPOGRAPHIES
CHAIR: DAVID GANZ
09:30 Neta Bodner (Jerusalem): A Reading of the Camposanto’s Role among the Monuments of the ‘Piazza’
10:30 Margherita Orsero (Lausanne): La parete dipinta sulla piazza: sequenze, strati pittorici, incongruenze
11:30 Coffee break
12:00 Lorenzo Carletti (Pisa) and Francesca Polacci (Siena): Senza cornice: lo spazio dell’arte negli affreschi del Camposanto tra ricezione e storia materiale
13:00 Lunch break
14:30 Visit to the Camposanto (Carlo Giantomassi/Donatella Zari)

PANEL II – SACRED EARTH. THE TERRA SANCTA-LEGEND
CHAIR: MICHELE BACCI
16:00 Rahel Meier (Florence): Between Flesh and Blood. The Early Construction History of the Camposanto in Pisa and its Relation to the so-called Terra Santa Legend
17:00 Coffee break
17:30 David Ganz (Zurich): Sacred Earth, Panoramatic Spaces. The Early Fresco Decoration of the Campo Santo

Friday, September 2
PANEL III – THE JOURNEY AFTER DEATH
CHAIR: RAHEL MEIER
10:00 Friederike Wille (Berlin): “Mirandoti intorno”: Visual evidences in Campus sanctus
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 Alessandra Malquori (Florence): L’immagine della morte e l’edificazione attraverso l’immagine nelle Storie degli anacoreti del Camposanto di Pisa
12:30 Lunch break
14:00 Visit to the Laboratorio di Campaldo (Carlo Giantomassi/Donatella Zari)
16:00 Roundtable discussion with Michele Bacci (Fribourg), Ottavio Banti (Pisa), Antonio Caleca (Pisa), Chiara Frugoni (Pisa), David Ganz (Zurich), and Mauro Ronzani (Pisa)
17:00 Coffee break
17:30 Conclusion by Michele Bacci
18.00 End of Conference

CFP: Light and Darkness in Medieval Art, 1200–1450, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

Call for Papers: Light and Darkness in Medieval Art, 1200–1450 (I–II)

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art

(Convenors: Stefania Gerevini and Tom Nickson)

Separation of Light and Dark, Sarajevo Haggadah Light has occupied an increasingly prominent role in medieval studies in recent years. Its perceptual and epistemic significance in the period 1200-1450 has been scrutinized in several specialised research projects, and the changing ways in which light and light-effects are rendered and produced in the arts of the Middle Ages, particularly in Byzantium and Islam, are routinely evoked in literature. However, scholarship on these topics remains fragmented, especially for the Gothic period, and comparative approaches are seldom attempted. New technologies of virtual reconstruction and changing fashions of museum display make it an opportune moment to consider these issues in a more systematic manner.

These two sessions will investigate how perceptions of light and darkness informed the ways in which art across Europe and the Mediterranean was produced, viewed and understood in the period 1200–1450. In the late 12th century a key set of optical writings was translated from Arabic into Latin, providing new theoretical paradigms for addressing questions of physical sight and illumination across Europe. At this time theologies of light also gained renewed popularity in the eastern Mediterranean – particularly as a result of the Hesychast controversy in Byzantium, and in connection with Sufi notions of divine illumination in Islam. What correlations can be traced between theories of optics, theologies of light, practices of illumination, and modes of viewing in the Middle Ages? Are there similarities in the ways different religious or cultural communities conceptualised light and used it in everyday life or ritual settings?

These sessions invite specialists of Christian, Islamic and Jewish art and culture to explore the status of light in broader discourses around visuality, visibility and materiality; the interconnections between conceptualizations of light and coeval attitudes towards objectivity and naturalism; and the ways in which light can articulate political, social or divine authority and hierarchies. The session will also welcome papers that address such broad methodological questions as: can the investigation of light in art prompt reconsideration of well established periodizations and interpretative paradigms of art history? How was the dramatic interplay between light and obscurity exploited in the secular and religious architecture of Europe and the medieval Mediterranean in order to organise space, direct viewers and convey meaning? How carefully were light effects taken into account in the display of images and portable objects, and how does consideration of luminosity, shadow and darkness hone our understanding of the agency of medieval objects? Finally, to what extent is light’s ephemeral and fleeting nature disguised by changing fashions of display and technologies of reproduction, and – crucially – how do these affect our ability to apprehend and explain medieval approaches to light?

Proposals for 20 min papers should include an abstract (max.250 words) and brief CV. Proposals should be submitted by 16 September 2016 to the session organizers: Stefania Gerevini (stefania.gerevini@unibocconi.it) and Tom Nickson (tom.nickson@courtauld.ac.uk). Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of speakers in ICMA-sponsored sessions up to a maximum of $600 ($1200 for transatlantic travel). If available, the Kress funds are allocated for travel and hotel only. Speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions will be refunded only after the conference, against travel receipts.

CFP: Monumental Failures (Session, International Congress on Medieval Studies)

Screen Shot 2016-07-15 at 12.15.50 PM Call for Papers: Monumental Failures

International Congress on Medieval Studies

May 11-14, 2017

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan

International Center for Medieval Art, Student Committee

In 1284, part of the choir of Beauvais cathedral dramatically collapsed during construction. This event would go on to alter the plan of one of the most ambitious building projects of the Middle Ages. Like Beauvais, greater and lesser failures throughout the Middle Ages served as the inspiration, motivation, and impetus for artistic change and development. Given the nature of failure, unsuccessful creations do not always leave a lasting mark. Nevertheless, the impact of failure is evident in subsequent artistic creation. Because of this relative obscurity, “failure” has seldom been explored in a field focused on the great artistic achievements of the past.

We hope to address this lacuna by offering an opportunity for young scholars to present research on the less-than- successful endeavors of medieval artisans, both large and small. We invite papers engaging with various incarnations of failure (alteration, incompletion, destruction, rejection, collapse, etc.) as approaches to artistic production or interpretation.

The Student Committee of the International Center for Medieval Art involves and advocates for all members of the ICMA with student status and facilitates communication and mentorship between student and non-student members.

To propose a paper, please send a 300 word abstract, C.V., and completed Congress Participant Information Form (available here: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to Dustin Aaron (dsa268@nyu.edu) and Katherine Werwie (katherine.werwie@yale.edu).

Deadline: September 10