Medieval Art Research

CFP: Artistic Dialogue during the Middle Ages. Islamic Art – Mudéjar Art

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Call for Papers: Artistic Dialogue during the Middle Ages. Islamic Art – Mudéjar Art, Córdoba, Casa Arabe, November 18 – 20, 2016
Deadline: Apr 30, 2016

The research about Spain’s medieval cultural heritage has experienced a
great development in the last centuries. With the reassessment of the
legacy of al-Andalus and of the Reign of Castile and Aragon during the
nineteenth century, the historiography focusing especially on cultural
connections and disconnections has grown extensively. Concepts like
Reconquista, Convivencia and Mudéjar Art, are being interpreted as the
result of Spain’s nineteenth century’s particular socio-political
interests, related to the debate about national identity, religious
intolerance and to an evolutionist conception of history. The special
political and cultural reality of the Peninsula and its Middle Ages as

a geographical and temporal frame of cultural coexistence, pluralism
and heterogeneity has been controversially debated since that time.
At present, we assist to a critical revision and to an intense debate
on those inherited concepts. While the traditional historiography had
delineated several political, religious and artistic frontiers, new
conceptions of the medieval reality arise that interpret those
frontiers as being permeable and dynamic. This perspective leads to the
consideration of an artistic dialogue as the basis of shared
vocabularies. Such a dialogue will be the common thread of the present
conference: we intend to analyze, share and spread recent results and
new research projects on the Islamic and Mudéjar past of the Peninsula.
The conference will constitute a platform for novel lines of
investigation contributing to the debate on the artistic dialogue of
the

medieval Iberian Peninsula.

The following sections and themes are planned:

– Nineteenth century’s historiography: the reassessment of the Islamic
and Mudéjar past
– Islamic and Mudéjar urbanism
– Architectural reuse
– The twelfth century: dialogue or confrontation?
– The Iberian Peninsula and Europe: cultural connections
– Al-Andalus and the three cultures

Organized by: Prof. Dr. Alberto León (Universidad de Córdoba), Prof.
Dr. Francine Giese (Universität Zürich), Casa Arabe

Submission: Each presentation will be of 20 minutes, and may be given in Spanish or

English. Please submit a proposal of maximum 300 words and a brief
curriculum vitae by the 15th of April to the following e-mail address:
conference@transculturalstudies.ch

Book roundup: Medieval architecture

All is thriving in medieval architecture publishing from the Romanesque to the Late Gothic: here are some very special books that have been published in the last few months.

As always do let us know of any recently-published medieval art history books you would like us to include in a book roundup – we would be happy to let people to know about them!

Tom Nickson – Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (Penn State University Press)

Medieval Toledo is famous as a center of Arabic learning and as a home to sizable Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Yet its cathedral—one of the largest, richest, and best preserved in all of Europe—is little known outside Spain. In Toledo Cathedral, Tom Nickson provides the first in-depth analysis of the cathedral’s art and architecture. Focusing on the early thirteenth to the late fourteenth century, he examines over two hundred years of change and consolidation, tracing the growth of the cathedral in the city as well as the evolution of sacred places within the cathedral itself. Nickson goes on to consider this substantial monument in terms of its location in Toledo, Spain’s most cosmopolitan city in the medieval period. He also addresses the importance and symbolic significance of Toledo’s cathedral to the city and the art and architecture of the medieval Iberian Peninsula, showing how it fits in with broader narratives of change in the arts, culture, and ideology of the late medieval period in Spain and in Mediterranean Europe as a whole.

Tom Nickson is Lecturer in Medieval Art and Architecture at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Costanza Beltrami – Building a Crossing Tower: A Design for Rouen Cathedral of 1516 (Paul Holberton Publishing)

Prompted by the recent discovery of an impressive three-metre tall late Gothic drawing of a soaring tower and spire, this book offers a rare insight into the processes of designing and building a major Gothic project. The drawing’s place and date of creation are unknown, and it corresponds to no surviving Gothic tower. Equally mysterious is the three-quarter, top-down perspective from which the tower is represented, without parallel in any other medieval drawings. Who drew this? When? And what did he hope to convey with his choice of a top-down representation of the tower? Building a Crossing Tower explores these questions, and uncovers the dramatic circumstances in which this drawing was created.

Costanza Beltrami is a PhD student at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Ron Baxter – The Royal Abbey of Reading (Boydell and Brewer)

Reading Abbey was built by King Henry I to be a great architectural statement and his own mausoleum, as well as a place of resort and a staging point for royal itineraries for progresses in the west and south-west of England. From the start it was envisaged as a monastic site with a high degree of independence from the church hierarchy; it was granted enormous holdings of land and major religious relics to attract visitors and pilgrims, and no expense was spared in providing a church comparable in size and splendour with anything else in England.
However, in architectural terms, the abbey has, until recently, remained enigmatic, mainly because of the efficiency with which it was destroyed at the Reformation. Only recently has it become possible to bring together the scattered evidence – antiquarian drawings and historic records along with a new survey of the standing remains – into a coherent picture. This richly illustrated volume provides the first full account of the abbey, from foundation to dissolution, and offers a new virtual reconstruction of the church and its cloister; it also shows how the abbey formed the backdrop to many key historical events.

Ron Baxter is the Research Director of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland.

Conference: Paper and Parchment: Medieval Music, Architectural Drawings, and Illuminated Books

Conference: Paper and Parchment: Medieval Music, Architectural Drawings, and Illuminated Books, Kyle Morrow Room, 3rd Floor, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, Texas, April 6, 2016

Co-sponsored by the Minter Chair and the Department of Art History.
Free and open to the public.
Schedule:
9:30–9:45 a.m. Welcome
9:45–11:45 a.m. Session No. 1: New Directions in Architectural Drawings
Linda Neagley, “A New Medieval Architectural Drawing”
Robert Bork, “The Regensburg Façade Drawings:
Reality, Fantasy and Geometry”
Discussant: Nancy Wu
Noon–1pm Lunch
1–2:30pm Session No. 2: Workers and Manuscripts
Jennifer Pendergrass Adams, “A Carpenter, a Nobleman, a Fisherman and a Pope: Representations of Class in the Libro dei miracoli”
Layla Seale,”Infernal Labor: Late Medieval Demons at Work”
2:30–4pm Session No. 3: Gender on Paper
and Parchment
Thom Kren, “Toward a Gendered Iconography of Patronage in Books of Hours”
Diane Wolfthal, “Illuminating Infanticide: History and Representation”
4–4:15pm Coffee break
4:15–6:30pm Medieval Music Manuscripts
Rebecca Maloy, “The Old Hispanic Offices of Holy Week”
Peter Loewen, “Singing William Herebert’s English Chant Contrafacta”
Jennifer Saltzstein, “Old French Song Reimagined and Recopied: Contrafacture and Modeling by the Thirteenth-Century Cleric, Trouvères”
For more information, please contact Diane Wolfthal at wolfthal@rice.edu

International Symposium on the Freisinger Lukasbild: A Byzantine Icon and Its Millenary History

Conference: Internationales Symposium zum Freisinger Lukasbild: Eine byzantinische Ikone und ihre tausendjährige Geschichte, Diözesanmuseum, Freising, Germany, April 21-22, 2016.
Registration closes April 7, 2016.

The Treasury of the Cathedral of Freisinger has held since 1440 a Byzantine icon with a priceless metalwork frame, traditionally attributed to the hand of St Luke. The international Symposium will present new research on the panel, including new technical investigations.

Programme:

21 April 2016

9.15-9.30 Uhr
Begrüßung Dr. Christoph Kürzeder, Diözesanmuseum Freising
Einführung in das Tagungsthema Dr. Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie, Johannes
Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, und Dr. Carmen Roll, Diözesanmuseum
Freising

9.30-10.00 Uhr
Der Weg der Lukasikone von Mailand nach Freising
Prof. Dr. Claudia Märtl, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

10.00-10.30 Uhr
Kaiser Manuel Palaiologos und seine Reise in den Westen
Prof. Dr. Albrecht Berger, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

10.30-11.00 Uhr Kaffeepause

11.00-11.30 Uhr
Das Inschriftenprogramm der Freisinger Lukasikone
PD Dr. Andreas Rhoby, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien

11.30-12.00 Uhr
Die dem heiligen Lukas zugeschriebenen Marienbilder und ihre
Verbreitung nördlich der Alpen im Mittelalter
Prof. Dr. Michele Bacci, Universität Fribourg

12.00-14.00 Uhr Mittagspause

14.00-14.30 Uhr
Die Theologie der Ikone
PD Dr. Dr. Thomas Mark Németh, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

14.30-15.00 Uhr
Zur Adaption byzantinischer Marienbilder im Westen
PD Dr. Ulrike Koenen, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

15.00-15.30 Uhr Kaffeepause

15.30-16.00 Uhr
Kunsttechnische Beobachtungen am Freisinger Lukasbild
Dr. phil. Dipl. Rest. Cristina Thieme, Dipl. Rest. Luise Sand, TU
München, Lehrstuhl für Restaurierung, Kunsttechnologie und
Konservierungswissenschaft

16.00-16.30 Uhr
Ein Palimpsest – die Malerei der Hagiosoritissa
Prof. Dr. Barbara Schellewald, Universität Basel

17.00-18.00 Uhr Domberg- und Domführungen in Gruppen
18.00-19.30 Uhr Abendessen
19.30 Uhr Feierliche Marienvesper mit Chor und Orchester
20.30-22.00 Uhr Empfang für die Tagungsteilnehmer

Freitag 22. April 2016

9.30-10.00 Uhr
A propos des revêtements d’orfèvrerie des icônes byzantines à l’époque
des Paléologues
Dr. Jannic Durand, Musée du Louvre Paris

10.00-10.30 Uhr
Rahmen und Beschlag des Freisinger Lukasbildes: Untersuchungen zur
Ornamentik in Byzanz
Dr. Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

10.30-11.00 Uhr Kaffeepause

11.00-11.30 Uhr
Technologische und materialanalytische Untersuchung der Metalle und
Emails des Rahmenbeschlags der Freisinger Lukasikone
PD Dr. Heike Stege, Doerner Institut München
Rest. BA Shimon Mahnke, Archäologische Staatssammlung München
Dipl. Rest. Alexander Grillparzer, TU München, Lehrstuhl für
Restaurierung, Kunsttechnologie und Konservierungswissenschaft

11.30-12.00 Uhr
On the Enamels of the Freising Icon: Technological Features
Dr. Olga Shashina, Kremlin Museums Moskau

On the Enamels of the Freising Icon: Historical Background, Repertoire
and Style
Dr. Irina Sterligova, Kremlin Museums Moskau

12.00-13.30 Uhr Mittagessen

13.30-14.00 Uhr
Die Reliquie im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.
Authentie und Medialisierung
Prof. Dr. Marc-Aeilko Aris, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

14.00-14.30 Uhr
Vom Korbinians- zum Mariendom? Zur Programmatik der ersten barocken
Renovatio
Dr. Meinrad von Engelberg, Universität Darmstadt

14.30-15.00 Uhr Kaffeepause

15.00-15.30 Uhr
Die barocke Silberrahmung für die Lukasikone. Ein Werk des Münchner
Goldschmieds Gottfried Lang aus dem Jahr 1629
Dr. Annette Schommers, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München

15.30-16.00 Uhr
Mittelalterliche Kunst in Barockkirchen. Zur Inszenierung historischer
Legitimationsargumente in Süddeutschland
Dr. Tobias Kunz, Bode Museum Berlin

16.00-16.30 Uhr Abschlussdiskussion

CFP: Pastoralia in the Late Middle Ages: Teaching, Translation, Transmission

Call for Papers: Pastoralia in the Late Middle Ages: Teaching, Translation, Transmission,
The University of Kent, Canterbury, June 24-25, 2016
Deadline: 18 March 2016

Pastoralia–the corpora of catechetical, homiletic and pastoral texts designed to aid in teaching the tenets of Christianity to the laity –flourished in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council’s plea for the clergy to take their pastoral duties more seriously, and the subsequent ecclesiastical legislation enacted to implement this.
In England, Pecham’s Lambeth Constitutions (1281) outlined the pastoral syllabus that was to be taught in the province of Canterbury, whilst similar legislation was enacted to cover the province of York. In recent years, a great deal of scholarly attention has begun to focus on the surviving texts that were composed to help the clergy carry out these pastoral duties. This conference seeks to investigate the utility and efficacy of pastoralia, and the ways in which the laity responded to these developments.

Papers might consider:

Evidence of manuscript transmission: production, acquisition, and circulation; individuals, institutions, and networks.
The transmission of ideas: from the university to the parish, the cloister to the tavern.
Translatio and its many interpretations: contemporary translations of Latin texts into the vernacular, and vice versa; modern principles of translating and editing texts.
Teaching: the efficacy of pastoralia as a catechetical tool; how pastoral discourse was controlled, appropriated, and contested.

Keynote papers by Prof. Ralph Hanna and Prof. John Arnold

Submission: send abstracts by 18 March 2016 to pastoralia2016@gmail.com

Call for Sessions: ‘360° – Places, Boundaries, Global Perspectives,’ IV Forum Medieval Art

Call for Sessions: ‘360° – Places, Boundaries, Global Perspectives,’ IV Forum Medieval Art, Berlin and Brandenburg, September 20 – 23, 2017
Deadline: June 1, 2016.
The 4th Forum Medieval Art will focus on research at the geographical
and methodological boundaries of classical medieval studies. The
various venues in Berlin and Brandenburg are the starting point, where,
on the one hand, local medieval topics will be discussed, and on the
other hand, the rich collections of Byzantine and Middle Eastern art
are available. Accordingly, the conference will highlight the
interaction of Central European medieval art and artistic production
with other regions ranging from Eastern Europe, Byzantium, the Middle
East, the Caucasus and the Mediterranean to the British Isles and the
Baltic region. Thus research areas such as Byzantine Studies or Islamic
Art History will be brought into the focus and consciousness of
medieval studies, particularly in the context of the severely
threatened artistic and architectural monuments of the Middle East.
Especially welcome are topics discussing phenomena such as migration,
media transformation and cultural paradigms. By asking for culturally
formative regions at the borders of “Europe” and transcultural contact
zones, definitions of the Middle Ages can be put up for debate. As a
counterpart to this panorama, research about the region of Brandenburg
and Berlin will also be presented. This includes subjects of museum
studies and the history art of and in Berlin, where the development of
areas of cultural exchange has a long tradition.

Organisation: Christian Freigang and Antje Fehrmann (Freie Universität
Berlin), Kai Kappel and Tina Zürn (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) with
further partners in Berlin and Brandenburg

Submission: Please send your submission until June 1, 2016, to
mail@mittelalterkongress.de

More information: www.mittelalterkongress.de

CFP: Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar @QMUL

2014-06-mhrc-colloq-gif1 Call for papers: Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar @ the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary, University of London, June 23-24, 2016.
Deadline: 25 April 2016

Papers concerning any aspect of the literature, language, history and culture
of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages will be considered. They will be
delivered in either English or Spanish and will last a maximum of twenty
minutes.
Submission: Proposals should be sent in the body of an email to mhrs-
colloquium@qmul.ac.uk by 25 April 2016. Please include name and institutional affiliation (as you wish them to appear on the programme), and a title and abstract of no more than 150 words.
Authors will receive confirmation of acceptance of proposals and details of registration via email after 6 May. Should you need a letter of confirmation please indicate this in your proposal email and provide full contact details. Accommodation is available for speakers in university halls of residence on campus.

CFP: Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London, 14 July 2016.

Call for Papers: Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium
University of Liverpool in London, Finsbury Square, July 14, 2016.
Deadline: 30 April 2016

The use of digital surveying and analysis techniques, such as laser scanning, photogrammetry, 3D reconstructions or reverse engineering offers the opportunity to re-examine historic works of architecture. In the context of medieval vaults, this has enabled new research into three-dimensional design processes, construction methods, structural engineering, building archaeology and relationships between buildings.

Recent research on Continental European and Central American vaults has established the significance of these techniques, however, as yet there has been little exploitation of digital technologies in the context of medieval vaults in the British Isles. This is despite international recognition of the importance of thirteenth and fourteenth-century English vault design to the history of Gothic architecture in an international context.

The aims of the present symposium are to present new research in this emerging field in order to establish appropriate methodologies using digital tools and identify significant questions for future research in the area.

Conference organisers: Dr Alex Buchanan and Dr Nick Webb.

Abstracts (500 words maximum) are invited for 20 minute papers on the following subjects:

Representation and analysis of medieval vaults using digital technologies.
Investigations of British tierceron, lierne or fan vaults.
Digital techniques used for the analysis of historic works of architecture applicable to gothic vaulted buildings.

Submission: Abstracts (500 words maximum) to be addressed to Nick Webb by email.

Our intention is that proceedings will be published in a suitable journal.

Symposium cost: £40 for listeners and £25 for students/speakers.

Summer School: Visualizing Venice Workshop – Digital Visualization Training: Mapping and Modeling the Venice Ghetto

Call for Applications: Visualizing Venice Workshop – Digital Visualization Training: Mapping and Modeling the Venice Ghetto
Venice International University, Venice, Italy, June 8 – 20, 2016
Deadline: Mar 31, 2016

With the support of The Getty Foundation as part of its Digital Art
History initiative, The Wired! Lab at Duke University, Università Iuav
di Venezia, the University of Padua, and Venice International
University are collaborating on a Summer Workshop that will train Art,
Architectural and Urban Historians with the digital media that can
enhance or transform their research questions and their capacity to
communicate narratives about objects, places and spaces to the public.
This fifth annual 12-day workshop teaches a range of digital skills in
mapping, 3D modeling, mobile application & web development, and time
based media authorship to enable participants to engage historical
questions with emerging digital tools. The course will engage with the
Ghetto of Venice on the 500th anniversary of its creation as case study
for training with a variety of technologies and applications.Instruction will be given in English by faculty and staff from Duke
University’s Wired! Lab (http://dukewired.org) and Università Iuav di
Venezia.

The workshop is designed for Ph.D or Post doctoral participants in the
Interpretive Humanities (including Cultural Patrimony, History of Art,
Architecture and Urbanism, History, Geography, Architecture,
Archaeology, and other relevant disciplines). Preference will be given
to Ph.D. students and recent Ph.D. graduates in History of Art,
Architecture and Urbanism.

The workshop is taught at Venice International University on the island
of San Servolo in the Venetian Lagoon. Participants can live in the
housing facilities of the island of San Servolo, or arrange for
accommodation in the city of Venice.

Tuition fees are euro 1,000 (+22%VAT). Scholarships are available in
order to support tuition, travel, board and accommodation expenses.
Thanks to the generosity of the Getty Foundation.

More information: http://www.univiu.org/shss/seminars-summer-schools/visualizing-venice-summer-workshop

CFP: Textile Gifts in the Middle Ages – Objects, Actors, and Representations

fb6e7e0f36 Call for Papers: Textile Gifts in the Middle Ages – Objects, Actors, and Representations (Textilschenkungen im Mittelalter)
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome, November 3-4 2016.
Deadline: March 24, 2016

As art history has given greater attention to material culture and its social contexts as a whole, the applied arts have also re-entered the scope of art historical discourse. Cultural-historical approaches, such as those employed in material culture studies, explore the objectness of artifacts and their efficacy. Related are studies of objects as mediums of symbolic communication, in which such objects are described and interpreted as part of complex performances of ritual and ceremony. Gifts of textiles in the Middle Ages provide a test field for the evaluation of such questions and approaches for the discipline of art history.

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. Gifts of clothing 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.

Already in the 1920s, Marcel Mauss showed that gift giving established social relationships and was composed of three necessary elements: giving, accepting, and reciprocating (the “principle of reciprocity”). At play in such exchanges is essentially the construction of power and social hierarchies. While Mauss’ theory has long been employed within medieval studies, recent criticism has pointed out that the particular efficacy resulting from the material and visual qualities of gifts has not been sufficiently addressed, as studies applying Mauss’ model concentrate primarily on donors, recipients, and their interaction. In other words, the context of the exchange has been privileged over the objects of exchange (Cecily Hilsdale, 2012). With its focus on images and objects, art history is poised to show how the dynamics of reciprocity and its attendant obligations might be charged both visually and materially.

The conference focuses on textile gifts in pre-modern Europe in order to explore such questions in greater detail. The integration of anthropological models 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 relationship between the actors and the “agency” of gifts themselves can therefore be further explored (Bruno Latour).

We invite paper proposals from the field of art history and related disciplines, such as history, anthropology, archaeology, and literature. Papers might address the following subjects in particular:
– Textile gifts as acts of symbolic communication in the Middle Ages:
Especially welcome are case studies that illustrate the act of giving and the sense of obligation generated between donor and recipient and that, in so doing, attend to the visual and material efficacy of textile gifts. Papers might consider gifts of personal garments, like the gifting of a sovereign’s mantle to an ecclesiastical institution, and the honor—or affront—such gifts might entail.
– Methodological reflections on the suitability of anthropological models for medieval art history:
How helpful are anthropological models (Marcel Mauss’ gift theory and its lineage) in understanding and interpreting pre-modern textile gifts? We begin with the premise that no single general theory is capable of explaining every gift act definitively. Rather, a number of approaches originating in Mauss, some of which are controversial, could be debated within the context of medieval textile gifts.
– The relationship of textile gifts as performative acts to their representations:
How were medieval textile gifts represented in word and image? What relationship do these representations have to their material prototypes (surviving textile gifts) and their contexts (acts of donation)?
– Gendered aspects of textile gifts:
Could textile gifts in the Middle Ages be gender-specific? Can we observe different behavioral patterns in the gifting practices of men and women?
– Re-use and re-contextualization of textile gifts:
The appreciation, use, and conservation of medieval textile gifts, including their restoration or alteration, can reveal much about how recipient institutions dealt with their donations. How, for example, did recipients interpret and use textile gifts in the formation of their identities? How did such a process shape the relationship between a recipient institution and its donor?

Submission: Proposals for talks should be sent in the form of an abstract (max 1 page) with a brief CV by March, 24th, 2016 to Christiane Elster (elster@biblhertz.it).