Medieval Art Research

Picturing the present: Structuring the medieval beholder’s relation towards time (Kalamazoo 2016)

Simone Martini, Agostino Novello polytych, simultaneous narrative showing resurrection of a child

Armin Bergmeier (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich)
Andrew Griebeler (University of California, Berkeley)

“What then is time?” asks Augustine, the fourth-century bishop of
Hippo, “If no one asks me, I know, but if I wish to explain it, I do
not know.” Although intimately familiar, time eludes simple
description. For Augustine, it is a single, ever-moving point of the
present distended by the soul forward in anticipation of things to
come, and backward through memory and recollection. The centuries
following Augustine saw the continued emergence of Christian and
medieval approaches to time alongside the concurrent appropriation and
adaptation of older pagan models, such as Neoplatonic conceptions of
time as a moving image of eternity, or Aristotelian understandings of
time according to the change and movement of bodies.

This panel examines the relationship between medieval artworks and
their viewers’ conception and experience of the present. Scholars of
medieval art have mostly concentrated on imagery depicting the past or
the future, in particular, those that express anxiety about the end of
time. A wide range of images, however, was particularly concerned with
expressing ideas of the present and with depicting the relation between
the visible human world and the invisible divine realm. This panel,
therefore, emphasizes and explores the medieval viewers’ relationship
to the present and their current place in the cosmological system. We
invite proposals covering a wide range of media (portable objects,
manuscripts, sculpture, wall decorations) from Late Antiquity through
the late Middle Ages.

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to the following:
– How images relate to the conceptualization of the historical present
– How artworks structure or organize the experience of time
– How artworks reflect philosophical concepts of the nature of time
– Notions of temporality in depictions of visions and prophecies
– The visibility and visuality of time-keeping instruments and practices
– Medieval conceptions of change in the physical or natural historical
present, including seasons, tides,stages of life, and the movement of
stars

Please, send your abstracts (500 words maximum), CV with current
information, and completed Participant Information Form (available at
http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to the
organizers:
armin.bergmeier@campus.lmu.de and agriebeler@berkeley.edu

New Perspectives on Medieval Rome (2 sessions at Kalamazoo 2016)

The Last Judgment, detail. By Pietro Cavallini (c.1250-c.1330). Fresco, c.1293. Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, Italy .

Digital, environmental, material, Mediterranean, sensory, spatial:
these are among the recent “turns” taken by the medieval humanities,
including art history. The new perspectives on the past opened by these
approaches, many of which are informed by interdisciplinary research
and contemporary cultural interests in the natural and built world, are
fundamentally reshaping how we conceive of and study medieval art and
architecture. In the field of medieval art, the city of Rome has
traditionally been a key site for the formulation of innovative avenues
of approach, but what is its current status and its potential in
relation to the discipline’s new discourses?

These two linked sessions seek to assess the impact of recent
methodological developments on the study of the art, architecture, and
urban forms of Rome during the long middle ages, ca. 300–1500. We
invite papers that offer new research on, and new ways of thinking
about, the visual and material culture of medieval Rome.

Please direct inquiries/submissions to the organizers at
mhaukne1@jhu.edu and alison.perchuk@csuci.edu. Information about the
conference, including proposal submission forms, may be found at
http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html.

Exploring the Fourteenth Century Across the Eastern and Western Christian World (Leeds 2016 session)

“ […] and that Giotto changed the profession of painting from Greek back into Latin, and brought it up to date.” Cennino Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook, Chapter I

These words by the Italian artist Cennino Cennini, written just before the end of the fourteenth century, seem to testify to the definitive break between the Byzantine and the Western artistic traditions. Whilst studies of cultural and artistic relationships between the Catholic and Orthodox milieux during the thirteenth century are plentiful, the fourteenth century is considered as the culmination of the rupture between the two, a rupture initiated by the Fourth Crusade and the following Sack of Constantinople in 1204.

This session aims to challenge traditional assumptions about interactions between the East and the West, and explore possible points of contact between the Byzantine and the Latin traditions. Indeed, while the disastrous political and religious outcome of the Union of Lyon in 1274 seemed to presage a definitive break between the two Christian Worlds, their cultural and socio-political histories remained deeply intertwined. The Latin domination and the ongoing Franciscan missionary activities left profound traces in Constantinople and the Empire. Similarly, Byzantine merchants and scholars, as well as looted or exchanged artefacts, travelled to the West, influencing Latin culture and creating new artistic trends.

From an art historical point of view, it is commonly acknowledged that while fourteenth-century Western artists explored three-dimensionality, Byzantine art maintained an abstract character. However, visual evidence demonstrates that similar changes occurred in both Eastern and Western art at this time: the number of figures increases, architectural settings become more detailed and multiple episodes are adopted to expound a narrative that was previously encapsulated in one scene only. Are these changes linked? What are the similarities and dissimilarities?

Scholars within the field of late medieval Western and Byzantine history and art history are invited to submit proposals for twenty-minute papers. We propose a loose understanding of the fourteenth century that includes the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth to better contextualise the session’s findings. Topics may include but are not restricted to:

Contacts between Eastern and Western merchants, patrons, and artists

Diplomatic embassies, marriage alliances, and gift exchange between the Eastern and Western Christian world

Eastern scholars emigrating to the West and vice versa

Instances of comparison between specific monumental decorations across East and West

Examples of Orthodox churches build in the West or Catholic churches in the East, their influences and effects

The proliferation of more developed narratives and secondary hagiographical cycles

The increase in the number of figures and the role of architectural settings within the narrative

Please send papers’ titles, abstracts of 250 words and a 100-word biography by September 21, 2015 to:

Maria Alessia Rossi: Mariaalessia.rossi@courtauld.ac.uk and Livia Lupi: ll546@york.ac.uk

CFP: Reading Architecture Across the Arts and Humanities (University of Stirling, 5 December 2015), deadline 26 September 2015

An AHRC-Funded Interdisciplinary Conference University of Stirling, Saturday 5th December 2015

The organisers of this one-day multidisciplinary conference seek to solicit proposals for 20-minute papers that consider the creation, expression and subject-areas across the Arts and Humanities. Papers should seek to address the creation, understanding, circulation and cultural impact of both real and international contexts. Original and creative accounts of how architecture might variously be ‘read’ and interpreted across such disciplines as welcome.

Plenary Speakers: Rosemary Hill and Olivia Horsfall Turner

Possible topics may include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
– Historicism
– Responses to, and recreations of, the architectural past
– Reflections upon architectural styles and ‘movements’
– Assessments of architecture and architectural practices
– Representations of architecture in film
– Architecture and the law
– Antiquarianism and architecture
– Architectural ruin and the tourist industry
– Architectural conservationism
– The politics of architectural form
– Literary representations of architecture
– Lives of architects
– The aesthetics of architectural form
– Historiography
– Architectural Heritage

300-word proposals should be emailed to the conference organisers, Dr Dale Townshend and Dr Peter N. Lindfield — architecture@stir.ac.uk — by 26 September 2015.

The School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling has generously agreed to fund a number of postgraduate travel-bursaries for this event. Please contact the conference organisers for further details.

This conference is the first event in a series of outputs arising from the AHRC-funded project, Writing Britain’s Ruins, 1700–1850: The Architectural Imagination at the University of Stirling (June 2015–December 2016).

CfP: The Goldene Tafel from Lüneburg in context: Investigations on technology, shape and significance of altarpieces in northern Europe around 1400 (Hanover, 7-9 April 2016)

One of the highlights of Hanover’s Landesgalerie is the so-called
Goldene Tafel, which once adorned the high altar of the Benedictine
Abbey S. Michaelis in Lüneburg. Four wings house an extensive
sculptural programme and valuable paintings which constitute important
examples of the International Gothic around 1400. The shrine –
unfortunately not preserved – is known to have contained the
gold-covered wooden antependium of the high middle ages which gave its
name to the altarpiece. The central panel was surrounded by
reliquaries, of which some are preserved in the Museum August Kestner.
Others, which fell victim to theft during the seventeenth century, can
still be documented through secondary sources. The altarpiece can be
considered one of the best documented and especially multiformed of its
kind.

Since 2012 the Goldene Tafel is the subject of an interdisciplinary
research project, sponsored by the VolkswagenStiftung, the
Klosterkammer Hanover and the FAMA-Kunststiftung. In collaboration with
the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and the Hochschule für angewandte
Wissenschaft und Kunst Hildesheim, conservators, art historians and
historians analyze the altarpiece. As well as subjecting the retable to
a full technical examination, the project also investigates its origin,
history, style and use.

Further more an up to date and sustainable way of conservation and
presentation of the four altar wings is developed.
This conference will present the research team‘s findings and place
these in a wider context.

We therefore invite papers as well as posters that present related
research projects, monographic investigations on comparable objects.
Especially welcome are contributions which focus on recent advances in
the field of technical examination and papers addressing the question
of museological display of similar works.

Suggested sections may include:
– Monumental architecture as princely commemoration? The construction
of Lüneburg’s St. Michael’s Abbey, its furnishings and its functions
– Commemoration and Representation: Charting the commemorative culture
of the Guelph dynasty
– Inclusion and representation. Relics and the purpose of “spoils” in
altarpieces of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
– Evidences of manufacture: tool marks, underdrawings, transfer of
motifs and forms of ornamentation. What the results of technical
examination can tell us about the production of major carved and
painted retables.
– North German, Central German, West German or Low Lands? Defining,
producing and disseminating sculpted and painted retables during the
fifteenth century.
– Ways of Seeing – Presenting the medieval retable in the museum
environment

Proposals for 30-minute papers or 5-minute poster presentations should
be forwarded to
antje-fee.koellermann@landesmuseum-hannover.de until the 30th of
September. Requested are the title and a brief summary (max. 2000
characters) in German, English or French.

Lectures and posters are intended for publication as part of the
Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte.

Guiding the Mind of the Beholder – The Materiality of the Medieval Text as Determinant of its Meaning and Use (Leeds 2016 session)

International Medieval Congress 2016
University of Leeds, 4–7 July 2016
Call for Papers
Guiding the Mind of the Beholder –
The Materiality of the Medieval Text as Determinant of its Meaning and Use

How we perceive and use a text is influenced by the way it is visualized and how it is
intentionally or unintentionally associated with other texts. Based on the manuscript evidence,
the session wants to explore the different ways how this change of a text’s meaning or usage
can be achieved. This includes the (re)organization of a text in a manuscript witness, or how
accompanying texts like commentaries, glosses and notes complement, add to or even change
a text, as well as the influence of the ‘mise-en-page’ and the materiality of the manuscript
book itself. Through these the session will examine the ways in which the experience of a
reader (anticipated or real) is directed to facilitate and constrain their engagement with the
text. Furthermore the broader context of the manuscript will be taken into account: It will be
asked, how associating or relating a text with other texts in a manuscript may either conserve
traditional interpretations of a text, or generate new readings and new perspectives on the
text’s usage.

The organizer would like to invite papers on Manuscript Studies from all academic
disciplines. Please submit proposals which fit the overall topic of the session via email to
Rüdiger Lorenz by September 15, 2015 and
please include the following information:
 paper title
 short abstract (ca. 150 words)
 name and title
 contact details and affiliation
 a short CV
 equipment needed

All papers should be given in English and should not exceed 20 minutes. Feel free to contact
the organizer, if you have any questions.

Please note, that the organizer is not able to provide any financial support to cover travel,
registration or accommodation expenses of the participants. The IMC offers bursaries that
may cover all or part of the Registration and Programming fee, accommodation and meals.
The IMC bursary applications should be submitted by October 17, 2015. For more
information on the IMC 2016 see <https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2016_call.html>.
Dr. Rüdiger Lorenz,
Department of History,
University of Freiburg,
Germany

Call for Papers: ‘Choir stalls and its workshops’, Misericordia internationale kolloquium 2016, deadline 31 October 2015

Session organisers: Anja Seliger, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung; Prof. Dr. Gerhardt Weilandt, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University of Greifswald, Department of Art History

Misericordia International is an international multidisciplinary network for broad-based research on choir stalls. Starting from the artistic design the studies dedicate to the relationship with other
artistic elaborations and their proliferation in the Middle Ages and more recent times. The intensive exchange with scientists of neighboring disciplines shows interfaces between disciplines and subjects of investigation and give new impetus to the exploration of the choir stalls. The basis for scientific exchange is the bi-annual international conference.

The next colloquium taking place in Greifswald in June 2016 focusses on the medieval artistic production and all questions related to the working practice in workshops for choir stalls. In addition to monographic studies which seek to identify a master-workshop relation by means of stilistic analysis we welcome papers that explore further questions on medieval workshop practice.

The organisers particularly welcome papers that:
– examine collaboration between carpenters, sculptors and painters during work in progress;
– present new archival research;
– deal with inscriptions and used typography on choir stalls;
– answer businessrelated questions;
– discuss mechanisms for the spread of new styles and techniques, e.g. marquetry, and which workshops they mediated;
– investigate the merger of regional characteristics because of migrant craftsmen;
– illuminate the problem of art center and periphery or
– discuss the phenomenon monastery workshop.

Also welcome are contributions regarding recent eras, as well as papers that deal with sample books and/or the phenomenon of church decorator in the late 19th century.

Participants from different fields are welcome, including, but not limited to art history and technical history, material studies, restoration and conservation studies, and sociology. Following the lecture days a full day excursion to selected choir stalls of the region is planned.

The conference language is English. A timely publication of contributions in the series Profane Arts of the Middle Ages is provided. The organisers are seeking funding to cover the travel expenses for speakers.

Please submit your abstract to seliger@chorgestuehl.de
Paper proposals should consist of the following:
1. Abstract of proposed paper (500 words maximum)
2. CV with home and office mailing addresses, e-mail address, and phone number
Deadline for paper proposals submission: October 31, 2015
Notification of paper acceptance: December 15, 2015

Suggestion for young scholars: The Association Misericordia International has a limited number of Travel Bursaries for students and postgraduate doctoral students.

Call for Papers: Juridical Circulations and Artistic, Intellectual and Cultural Practices in Medieval Europe (13th-15th Centuries) International Conference (Lisbon, 25-27 February 2016)

Call for Papers

The International Conference Medieval Europe in Motion 3 continues the series of scientific meetings launched in 2013 by the Institute of Medieval Studies (IMS) of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon (FCSH/UNL) – devoted to the topic of social, cultural, and artistic mobility in Medieval Europe (https://sites.google.com/site/medievaleuropeinmotion2013/home).

In keeping thematically with the previous conferences, the main objective of this new event is an analysis of the mobility and circulation of people, ideas and objects related to the study and practice of law during the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. Among topics addressed may be the intellectuals involved (scholars, notaries, jurists, ecclesiastics and others); the manuscripts and texts themselves; artistic models for the illumination of legal manuscripts; or the circulation of the law itself and ideas connected to its role and practice in the Medieval West. We would like to focus on studies of the southernmost territories of the West: the Iberian Peninsula, Southern France, and Italy.

Topics for consideration:
We seek to examine and discuss the ways in which the phenomena of mobility interacted with processes of codification and teaching of law, just as much as it influenced the visual representations of this discipline in manuscript illuminations. While it is clear that this is not unexplored territory in the context of art historical or cultural studies, or even political and economic history—since recent conferences have explored these topics—much still needs to be done in the investigation of how they interact and relate to each other. We would like this conference to establish a new forum for debate and for proposing new ways to move forward in research on such themes.

This objective has determined the various sections into which this conference will be divided and the various research questions we wish to address.

First, we aim to look at the phenomenon of mobility in connection with scholars who studied and taught Law in different regions of Medieval Europe: How did this take place? Who were the people who traveled? Where did they choose to go and which towns were affected by such global movements?

Second, we want to look at how mobility also affected the manuscripts, especially the juridical manuscripts, and the illuminated ones in particular. Their circulation, along with the travel of illuminators, influenced, stimulated, and modified substantially the iconographic and stylistic processes of production and creation in all the geographical regions here under examination.

We also wish to address the role of private or institutional patrons and promoters: institutional commissions would often include the mediation of individual agents; those of the pontifical curia were done through the command of cardinals; those of the universities through the command of Doctores; and those of towns and communes by the Podestas or the jurists at their service. The following questions should be addressed: who orders illuminated juridical manuscripts and why do they need to possess them? What are the social, political and economic frameworks that may justify such orders?

With regard to the illumination of such juridical manuscripts, we must ask questions about the iconographical models used to visually represent the exercise of justice, and their circulation. In what cultural contexts are they produced? How did such production influence—particularly in the axis Italy–French Midi–Iberian Peninsula —the presence of “foreign” illuminators? In relation to codicology we will aim at analysing the material characteristics of the juridical manuscripts in order to see how they influenced the production techniques, as much as the physical characteristics of the book as an object.

Finally, we will aim at studying the issues of mobility and circulation, not in isolated forms, but rather in their social, political, cultural and economic contexts. With these desiderata in mind, we are calling for proposals for 20-minute papers to be organized within the following sections:

The peregrinatio academica in the context of juridical culture
Modalities of teaching and practicing Law in Medieval Europe (13th–15th centuries)
Social, economic, cultural and artistic contexts related to the practice of Law
The production of juridical manuscript books (illuminated or not illuminated): economic and cultural contexts; juridical books in relation to other types of illuminated manuscripts; the place of juridical books in the context of medieval artistic production; the institution of Studia and illuminated juridical manuscripts; peciae and illuminated manuscripts; England and the Continent; from juridical illuminated manuscript to press
People, ideas and objects connected to the practice of Law and their circulation in Medieval Europe 13th –15th centuries. –

Please send an abstract of up to 250 words along with the title of a paper proposal (accepted in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian) as well as a brief CV (up to 1 page maximum) by 30 October 2015 to: memconference2016@gmail.com

The Scientific Committee will analyse the proposals and will respond after 15 November 2015.

Registration fee: 50 euros Organisation Committee: Coordinator: Maria Alessandra Bilotta (IEM-FCSH-UNL – TEMPLA – LAMOP) Francisco José Díaz Marcilla (IEM-FCSH-UNL) Mário Sergio Farelo (IEM-FCSH-UNL)
Secretariat: Anabel Moreno (Universidad de Girona – TEMPLA)

Leeds 2016: Gender at the Feast (Hortulus sponsored session)

Call For Papers, International Medieval Congress at Leeds, 2016

Hortulus-sponsored session

Gender at the Feast

The roles of women and of gender in the Middle Ages have received particular attention in recent years with invigorating studies across multiple disciplines. Medieval women, such as Margery Kempe or Christina of Markyate, have been brought to the forefront in the minds of medieval scholars and questions of female agency and gender roles have been given new scholastic importance in medieval circles.

Keeping in mind the theme of the 2016 Congress this session seeks to turn the focus of gender to the specific topic of feasts and feasting. This session will examine how gender roles and gendered objects affected the preparation, celebration, ceremony, patronage, and perception of feasting in all strata of medieval society. The session follows the theme of our Fall, 2016 issue of Hortulus, ‘Gendered Spaces’, and we hope to be able to publish in that issue some of the papers delivered in this session. As our journal mission is to support the professionalization efforts of graduate students, the session is organized, presided over, and comprises papers given by current graduate students.

Welcome topics include, but are not limited to:

Roles of women and female religious orders at feast times.

Gendered objects and their uses in times of celebration or feasting.

Defining gender roles within the process of celebration.

Gendered spaces pertaining to either the secular dining hall or the physical religious environment at feast times.

Abstracts for 20 minute papers and brief bio or CV to Dustin Aaron (dustin.aaron@courtauld.ac.uk / dustin.aaron1@gmail.com) by September 20, 2015.

The Challenges and Opportunities of Medieval Difficulty (Kalamazoo 2016 session)

Session at International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, 12-15 May 2016)
University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo, May 12 – 15, 2016
Organizer: Beth Williamson, University of Bristol
Deadline: Sep 15, 2015

“What is sought with more difficulty is discovered with more pleasure.” (On Christian Doctrine 2.6.8). In praising difficulty, Augustine reminds us of its role as a good within medieval intellectual and devotional culture. With scholarly anxieties about ‘over-interpretation’ and a liking for ‘Occam’s razor’-type analyses, though, few opportunities are provided for the modern medievalist to delve into, and value, difficulty – especially as it remains unresolved, and resists conclusion.
This panel seeks papers on all manner of medieval difficulty: the process of working hard at something, of figuring out a range of meaning(s) in texts, images and artefacts, of living with – and revelling in – open-endedness and lack of resolution, of confronting resistant materials (both physical and abstract), and other long-lasting efforts.
What might have been the devotional and intellectual capital of the difficulty of understanding or even hearing motets, of seeing the upper reaches of stained glass windows, or of engaging in theological concepts beyond human perception and understanding? Where might the deferral of resolution have been seen as appropriate, even beneficial? In what circumstances might individuals and/or groups have sought out challenges that made the road they were seeking to travel (be it to their own salvation, or to the completion of a physical task, or toward any other goal) a difficult one?
This session seeks papers from all disciplines within medieval studies that seek to trace the challenges and opportunities surrounding difficulty as it was sought and sustained in medieval culture.
DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS: 15 September 2015
Paper proposals should consist of the following:
1. Paper proposal (maximum one page)
2. Completed Participant Information Form available at:http://wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html
3. CV with home and office mailing addresses, e-mail address, and phone number
Please direct all proposal submissions and inquiries to: beth.williamson@bristol.ac.uk