Medieval Art Research

Call for papers: Villes/Cities – 12th Annual Symposium of the International Medieval Society, Paris (25 -27 June 2015)

Villes/Cities
12th Annual Symposium of the International Medieval Society, Paris
Dates: 25 -27 June 2015, Paris, France

Deadline for Abstracts: 30 January 2015

UPDATE: Programme now available

Centre Malher, 9 rue Malher, 75004 Paris, France, June 25 – 27, 2015
Registration deadline: Jun 12, 2015

Villes/Cities

12th Annual Symposium of the International Medieval Society (Paris),
presented in conjunction with the Laboratoire de médiévistique
occidentale de Paris (LAMOP, Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Jeudi 25 Juin /Thursday June 25th

9:00-9:30 Welcome / Accueil et inscriptions

9:30-10:00 Introduction: Sarah Long and Fanny Madeline

10:00-11:30
Boris Bove,
“De l’histoire des villes à l’histoire urbaine : état des lieux du
champ historiographique”

11:30-12:00 Pause café

12:00-13:30
Session 1: Acteurs et morphologie urbaine / The Form of the City
Chair: Fanny Madeline
Kathryn E. Salzer, “Creating the Physical Localities of Medieval
Cambrai”
Annarita Teodosio and Simona Talenti, “Salerne, capitale normande”
Catherine Barrett, “Concepts of urban development in town charters of
the counts of Toulouse and their Lieutenants”

Lunch/pause déjeuner

15:00-16:00
Session 2: La pensée politique de la ville / Political thought and the
city
Chair: Julian Führer
Nicole Hochner, “Nicole Oresme (c. 1320-1382) et la ville”
Daniele Dibello, “Aristotelian thought and governance of a medieval
city-state: the case of Venice”

16:00-16:30 Pause café

16:30-18:00
Session 3: La ville représentatée / The City in images
Chair: Anna Russakoff
Caroline Ziolko, “Ville, regard et imagerie médiatique”
Caroline Simonet, “Les villes sigillaires : topographies utopiques et
traces du réel”
Juliette Dumasy, “Plans et vues de villes en France à la fin du Moyen
Age”

18:00-19:00 Assemblée générale / IMS- Paris board meeting

19:30 Dîner/Dinner, remise du prix de l’IMS-Paris 2015

Vendredi 26 Juin/ Friday June 26th

9.30-11:00
Emma Dillon
“Listening to the medieval city: perspectives from musicology and sound
studies”

11-11.30 Pause café

11:30-13:00
Session 4: Les fonctions rituelles de l’espace urbain / Ritual
functions of urban spaces
Chair: Kristin Hoefener
Ewoud Waerniers, “Ritual use of the urban space in times of communal
unrest. Cambrai, c. 1150-1227”
Tova Leigh-Choate, “The Sacred Topography of Medieval Paris: Relics,
Routes, and Song in the City of Saint Denis”
Jeannette D. Jones, “La sainte épine: Ritual at the Bourbonnais Court
in Moulins”

Lunch/ pause déjeuner

14:30-16:00
Session 5: Les usages sociaux et symboliques de la ville / Social and
symbolic uses of the city
Chair: Sarah Long
Nathan A. Daniels, “ ‘Pour un vers de chanson’: Minstrels, Guilds, and
the Social Construction of Urban Space in the Fourteenth Century”
Troy J. Tice, “Penitential Paris: Thomas of Bailly and the Penitential
Anxieties of Medieval Parisians”
Margaret E. Hadley, “French Pilgrims’ Internal Paths through Jerusalem
via Arma Christi Miniatures”

16:00-18:00 Visite/visit – Medieval Paris

Samedi 27 juin/ Saturday June 27

9:30-11:00
Carol Symes
“L’espace public à Londres et Arras, 1086-1215: Cultures documentaires,
coutumes urbaines, et libertés civiques”

11:00-11:30 Pause café

11:30-13:00
Session 6: Comparer les villes / Comparing cities
Chair: Mary Franklin-Brown
Martin Schwarz, “Old Paris, New Athens: Translatio Studii in the Vie de
St Denis (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms fr 2090-2)”
Emerson S. F. Richards, “New Jerusalem and Old Manuscripts: Text and
Image Representations of New Jerusalem in 13th century French and
English Manuscripts”
Frans W. G. W. Camphuijsen, “Late medieval law courts and urban space:
the cases of Paris and Utrecht”

Lunch/ pause déjeuner

14:30-16:00
Session 7: Le développement urbain: les villes de Champagne/ Urban
development: the towns of Champagne
Chair: Raeleen Chai-Elsholz
Claire Bourguignon, “Approche de la fabrique d’une ville médiévale:
Troyes (Aube) au tournant du haut Moyen Âge et du Moyen Âge central”
Cléo Rager, “Aménagements municipaux et identité urbaine : voirie et
«voyeurs» à Troyes au XVe siècle”
Julien Briand, “Un théâtre du pouvoir : la ville de Reims en ses
registres (XIVe-XVe siècles)”

16:00-16.30 Conclusions

16.30-17:00 Final discussion

18:00 Closing apéritif

More information: http://www.ims-paris.org/

–

Keynote Speakers: Emma Dillon (King’s College, London), Carol Symes
(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), and Boris Bove (Université
Paris VIII).

The International Medieval Society, Paris (IMS-Paris) invites abstracts and session proposals for our 2015 symposium on the theme of cities in Medieval France. After the decline of late-antique cities in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, a revival of cities began in the course of the eleventh century. This phenomenon, which profoundly transformed the dynamics of the West to our day, is a field of research that has been enriched in pace with archeological discoveries and by new technologies that offer original perspectives and approaches. This symposium will approach new lines of investigation that will deepen our knowledge of medieval cities (11th – 15th centuries) not only in their cartographic and monumental dimensions, but also political and cultural ones.

The question of the construction of urban space could be explored in a
variety of ways:

– Through its material dimensions, consisting of different forms of cityscapes, its urbanism, and its architecture.
– Through uses of space and their performative function. For instance,the role of rituals and urban processions, how music and theater contribute to the establishment of urban space in its practical use and representations.

We also wish to explore urban culture, which consists of material, intellectual, or spiritual culture, including:

– The role of writing in the development of a literate, mercantile culture, and new modes of government
– The daily lives of city dwellers: their lifestyles and patterns of consumption, their culinary tastes, etc.
– The development of practices related to the rise of intellectual institutions (schools, universities, patronage, mendicants, etc.)

Finally, we wish to explore the question of visual representations of the city and in the city, notably:
– The ways in which cities were represented in the Middle Ages, and how medieval cities are represented now
– Models for cities and the role of imaginary cities in the construction of urban spaces

Proposals should focus on France between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, but do not need to be exclusively limited to this period and geographical area. We encourage proposals and papers from all areas of medieval studies, such as anthropology, archeology, history, economic and social history, art history, gender studies, literary studies, musicology, philosophy, etc.

IMS-Paris Graduate Student Prize:

The IMS-Paris is pleased to offer one prize for the best paper proposal
by a graduate student. Applications should consist of:

1) symposium paper abstract/proposal
2) current research project (Ph.D. dissertation research)
3) names and contact information of two academic references

The prizewinner will be selected by the board and a committee of honorary members, and will be notified upon acceptance to the Symposium. An award of 350 euros to support international
travel/accommodations (within France, 150 euros) will be paid at the Symposium.

Proposals of 300 words or less (in English or French) for a 20-minute paper should be e-mailed to communications.ims.paris@gmail.com no later than 30 January 2015. Each should be accompanied by full contact information, a CV, and a list of audiovisual equipment you require.

Please be aware that the IMS-Paris submissions review process is highly competitive and is carried out on a strictly blind basis. The selection committee will notify applicants of its decision by e-mail by February 26th 2014.

Titles of accepted papers will be made available on the IMS-Paris website. Authors of accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel costs and conference registration fee (35 euros, reduced for students, free for IMS- Paris members).

The IMS-Paris is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (French/English) organization that fosters exchanges between French and foreign scholars. For the past ten years, the IMS has served as a center for medievalists who travel to France to conduct research, work, or study.
For more information about the IMS-Paris and the program of last year’s symposium, please visit our website: www.ims-paris.org.

Medieval Conferences in Paris, December 2014

A reminder of all that’s going on in Paris in a couple of weeks!

Róisín Astell

Sculpture of Saint Louis, photograph taken by myself at the Saint Louis Exhibition

This December, Paris will host two exciting Medieval conferences, with esteemed historians travelling to the capital to give papers. Not only will these be great opportunities to meet fellow art historians and hear interesting talks, but they are free! I will be attending both, and will blog about the contents of each.

Conférences et colloques Saint-Louis et les arts en Europe, Louvre, 6th December 2014 – 10am – 18pm

http://www.louvre.fr/saint-louis-et-les-arts-en-europe

In conjunction with the current exposition at the Conciergerie, on Saturday 6th December, the Louvre will present a conference pertaining the artistic patronage of Saint Louis, and his potential influence and relationships throughout Europe. Many may already be aware of the intense artistic patronage of King Louis IX during his reign, and it is often interpreted that his patronage was a means of asserting political agendas (this is part…

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Conference: Religion, Art and Conflict: Disputes, destruction and creation (Courtauld Institute, 5-6 December 2014)

Although not a medieval conference per se, we think our readers will enjoy these two days on Religion, Art and Conflict at the Courtauld Institute in December, with sessions on manuscripts, historiographical reception of medieval art, and more besides.

Tickets (£26, £16 students, Courtauld staff/students and concessions) can be ordered here.

Throughout history religion and belief have been the catalyst for the creation of great buildings and works of art. However, religious art has frequently been disputed, despised and destroyed. Members are sought for a research group that will examine the role of reform, ideology and conflict in the destruction and preservation of religious art and architecture. The group will also investigate how theological disputes and religious conflicts have been the impetus for new intellectual and creative approaches to the visual and material arts.

The papers presented at the conference will cover 600 years of art history, from fifteenth-century Florence to depictions of Islam after 9/11, and a breadth of topics from medieval monasticism to William Blake’s theology of art, from Bhutanese seventeenth century art to the Vatican’s relationship with contemporary art, and much more.

Friday, 5 December
13.30 – 14.00 Registration

14.00 – 14.05 Introduction and Welcome

14.05 – 15.30 Session 1: Cultural Interaction or Conflict?

María Molina Fajardo (University of Granada): Building a ‘Catholic Site’: Spaces of Encounter, the Aggression and the Creation of the Village of Nigüelas (Granada) after
the Castilian Conquest

Ariana Maki (University of Colorado Boulder): Lines and Lineages: Depicting History and Religion in 17th-Century Bhutan

David Low (The Courtauld Institute of Art): The Ruins of Ani: the Rediscovery, Destruction and Reconstruction of an Armenian City

15.30 – 16.00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK (tea /coffee provided)

16.00 – 17.00 Session 2: Word, Image and Conflict – Liturgical Books in Late Medieval and
Reformation-era England

Jayne Wackett (University of Kent): Liturgical Images in the English Reformation:
Lost, Found and Altered

Michael Carter (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Tuppence Worth: an Annotated Missal
from a Cistercian Abbey

17.00 – 17.15 COMFORT BREAK

17.15 – 18.15 Keynote Lecture: James Carley (York University, Toronto / University of Kent): ‘So myserably peryshed in the spoyle’: John Leland and John Bale on the Dissolution of the English Religious Houses

18.15 – 18.30 Summary and discussion

18.30 RECEPTION

Saturday, 6 December

09.30 – 10.00 Registration

10.00 – 11.30 Session 3: Violence, Destruction and Creation in Renaissance and Counter-
Reformation Italy

Scott Nethersole (The Courtauld Institute of Art): ‘Art came to an end’: Making and Destruction in Fra Filippo Lippi’s Medici Altarpiece

Anna Marazuela Kim (University of Virginia): Idols of Art and of the Mind: Sculptural and Spiritual Iconoclasm in Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà

Eva Papoulia (The Courtauld Institute of Art): The Cappella Gregoriana in St. Peter’s: a Catholic Response to Protestant Claims

11.30 – 12.00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK (tea /coffee provided)

12.00 – 13.00 Keynote Lecture:
Sussan Babaie (The Courtauld Institute of Art): ‘Holy’ Wars and the Visual Poetics of
Innocence; Iran-Iraq, then (1980-89)

13.00 – 14.00 BREAK FOR LUNCH (not provided, except for speakers)

14.00 – 15.30 Session 4: Religion, Conflict and Identity
Lloyd De Beer (The British Museum / University of East Anglia): Burial and Belief:
Alabaster Sculpture in Context

Ágnes Kriza (University of Cambridge): Representing Destruction: Medieval Russian
Visualisations of Byzantine Iconoclasm

Emily Pegues (The Courtauld Institute of Art / National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.): To die for an ideal’: Three Wars, One Retable and the Foundations of a Belgian History of Art

15.30 – 16.00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK (tea /coffee provided)

16.00 – 17.30 Session 5: Religion, Art and Conflict in the Modern and Contemporary World

Naomi Billingsley (University of Manchester): Knock, Knock, William Blake’s Here: Creative Conflict in Blake’s Illustrations of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts

Anna Messner (University of Munich): In Search of Jewish Art and Identity: The Munich Artist Rudolf Ernst (1896-1942)

Lieke Wijnia (Tilburg University): Religion’s Reclaim of Contemporary Art: The Vatican
at the 2013 Venice Biennale

17.30 – 17.45 Concluding comments and discussion

17.45 END

Visit here for further information and abstracts of the papers.

CFP: Agency of Things: New Perspectives on European Art of the Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries (Warsaw, 11 – 12 June 2015)

Call for Papers:
Agency of Things: New Perspectives on European Art of the Fourteenth – Sixteenth Centuries
Warsaw, 11 – 12 June 2015
Deadline: 30 November 2014

Co-organized by Institute of History of Art, University of Warsaw and National Museum in Warsaw.

Invited speakers:
Prof. Susie Nash (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
Prof. Andrew Morrall (The Bard Graduate Center, New York)
Prof. Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)
Prof. Wim François (KU Leuven)
Prof. Elina Gertsman (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland)
Prof. Jacqueline E. Jung (Yale University)
Dr. Peter Dent (University of Bristol)
Dr. Robert Maniura (Birbeck, University of London)
Dr. Kathryn Rudy (University of St Andrews)

This two-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to investigate whether agency of things as a new research model more accurately than traditional theories and methods informs our understanding of religious, social, political and ideological systems or networks which shaped various communities (court, city, convent, pilgrim) during the period under investigation. We invite proposals from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, provided that they present innovative insights into the realm of agency of artistic and non-artistic objects. Acceptable topics may include, but are by no means limited to, the following topics:

* Scale and size of things as conditions of their agency
* Physical and sensory agency of things
* Animated things and things for manual handling
* Objects actively defining and operating within a space
* Things used in performances, rituals, recitations and sermons
* Craftsmanship and its role in agency of things
* Human subjects in a process of dissemination of objects
* Emotional and psychological agency of things.

Papers should be twenty minutes in length and will be followed by a ten-minute Q&A session. Please e-mail an abstract of no more than 300 words to Ika Matyjaszkiewicz and Patrycja Misiuda-Ramlau to agencyofthings@uw.edu.pl. Along with your abstract please include your name, institution, paper title and a brief biography of no more than 150 words.

The conference proceedings will be published after the event, therefore please indicate whether you would be interested in further developing your paper for a publication.

Deadline: 30 November 2014. Successful applicants will be notified by 30 January 2015.

CFP: Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 9-11 July 2015)

Call for Papers:
Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World, 1400-1800.
University of Cambridge, 9-11 July 2015
Deadline: 7 January 2015

Across faiths and regions and throughout the world, the home was a centre for devotion in the early modern period. Holy books, prayer mats, candlesticks, inscriptions, icons, altars, figurines of saints and deities, paintings, prints and textiles all wove religion into the very fabric of the home. While research into religious practice during this period often focuses on institutions and public ceremonies, it is clear that the home played a profound role in shaping devotional experience, as a place for religious instruction, private prayer and contemplation, communal worship, and the performance of everyday rituals.

The ERC-funded research project Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home will be hosting this three-day international interdisciplinary conference in July 2015. The project team invites proposals for 20-minute papers that explore domestic devotions in the early modern world. Papers may consider this theme from a variety of perspectives, including material culture studies, art and architectural history, gender studies, theology, religious studies, economic and social history, literary studies, musicology, archaeology and anthropology. Topics may include, though are not limited to

– Religion, ritual and belief in the home
– The use of images, objects or books in private devotion
– Daily life and life cycles
– The relationships between collective (e.g. institutional or non-familial) devotion and private devotion
– The role of the senses in spiritual experience
– The production and ownership of religious objects found in the home
– Gender, race or age and devotional life
– Policing and regulating household religion
– Encounters between different faiths and traditions in domestic context
– Domestic devotional spaces
– Music in domestic devotion
– Devotional literature

Plenary speakers will be Debra Kaplan (Bar-Ilan University), Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center) and Virginia Reinburg (Boston College).

Please email abstracts of no more than 300 words to Maya Corry at mc878@cam.ac.uk, Marco Faini at mf531@cam.ac.uk, and Alessia Meneghin at am2253@cam.ac.uk by 7th January 2015. Along with your abstract please include your name, institution, paper title and a brief biography. Successful applicants will be notified by 7th February 2015.

For further information on Domestic Devotions see our website http://domesticdevotions.lib.cam.ac.uk/

The conference will take place at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. College accommodation will be bookable nearer the time. Registration fees (tbc) will be kept as low as possible and graduate bursaries will be available to help with costs.

Conference: Faltbilder/Foldable Pictures (Zürich, 21-22 November 2014)

Conference:
Faltbilder. Medienspezifika klappbarer Bildträger.
Foldable Pictures. Implications of Mediality.
University of Zürich, 21-22 November 2014

Organisation
David Ganz (Universität Zürich)
Marius Rimmele (NCCR Mediality, Universität Zürich)

Book pages, diptychs, and triptychs were popular formats for the presentation of images in the medieval and early modern periods. In addition to their ubiquity, these objects also share one essential material feature: the supports that carry the images are movable. The most obvious consequence of the mobile presentation is the consecutive progression of different views.

Only in recent years did scholars begin to consider the processes of transformation that the opening and closing of pictured surfaces generate, for example the strategies of layering or folding images and the production of tacit knowledge caused by such formats. Using foldable pictures leads to a metaphorical coding of entire object classes, but also to a semantization of specific object areas (the dichotomy of inside and outside as, for example, “secular” versus “sacred”, or “accessible” versus “secret”). Furthermore, also structural features such as borders or thresholds, hinges, and cleavages play a decisive role in these processes. Thanks to the viewer’s memory, images “hidden” beneath other images begin to “gleam through” and become virtually present nonetheless. Movability also creates multiple lines of vision or additional moments of contact between represented persons.

It appears that artists have paid much more attention to these issues as has been hitherto recognized. It may also be noted that this is not a phenomenon restricted to artistic problems. In religious images, such effects were harnessed to draw attention to other functions, such as
didactic or mnemonic purposes.

This conference will explore the range of recently observed phenomena, and discuss their implications for the concept of the image in medieval and early modern period.

Programme

Friday, 21 November 2014

10.00-10.30 Einführung (David Ganz/Marius Rimmele, Zürich)

(Moderation: Mateusz Kapustka, Zürich)

10.30-11.15 The Thresholds of the Winged Altarpiece: Altarpiece-Exteriors as Liminal Spaces (Lynn F. Jacobs, Fayetteville)

11.15-11.45 Coffee

11.45-12.30 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Approaches to Diagrams and Double-Page Spreads (Adam S. Cohen, Toronto)

12.30-14.00 Lunch Break

(Moderation: David Ganz, Zürich)

14.00-14.45 Klappbare Bilder als Form der Ordnungs- und Sinnstiftung im Kostbaren Evangeliar Bischof Bernwards von Hildesheim (Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Bonn)

14.45-15.30 Transforming Pages: Parchment and Ornament as Passages in Medieval Manuscripts (Anna Bücheler, Zürich)

15.30-16.00 Coffee

(Moderation: Marius Rimmele, Zürich)

16.00-16.45 Now you see me – Klappbilder als Medienwunder (Roland Krischel, Köln)

16.45-17.30 Dynamik und Semantik des Öffnens (Heike Schlie, Berlin)

Keynote lecture
18.00 Im Grunde die Falte (Bernhard Siegert/Helga Lutz, Weimar)

Saturday, 22 November 2014

(Moderation: Britta Dümpelmann, Berlin)

9.00-9.45 Hybrid Identities Displayed in Motion. Folding Altarpieces by Hans Süss von Kulmbach and the Boner Chapel at the Church of Our Lady in Krakow (Masza Sitek, Krakau)

9.45-10.30 Hinwendung zum Heil – Medienspezifisches Erzählen in Bartlme Dill Riemenschneiders Dreikönigsretabel von 1545 aus dem Dom von Brixen (Hanns-Paul Ties, München)

10.30-11.00 Coffee

11.00-11.45 Wandelbares Mobiliar. Studien zu schließbaren Bildträgern im Spätmittelalter (Pavla Ralcheva, Köln)

11.45-12.30 Beobachtung eines liturgischen Flügelobjekts in statu nascendi: Die Kanontafel (Peter Schmidt, Heidelberg)

12.30-14.00 Lunch Break

(Moderation Roland Krischel, Köln)

14.00-14.45 Plural und Singular des Bildes um 1490. Zu impliziten und expliziten Faltungen bei Carpaccio und Giambellino (Stefan Neuner, Basel)

14.45-15.30 Rubens’ Aktualisierung des Wandelaltars im Barock (Ulrich Heinen, Wuppertal)

15.30-16.00 Discussion

For further information, see: http://www.khist.uzh.ch/chairs/mittelalter/veranstaltungen/faltbilder.html

Book roundup: New art history books from Brepols

Here are some new medieval art history books on manuscripts, architecture and sculpture from publisher Brepols that we have been alerted to, and we think will prove very exciting to a number of our readers.

King’s College Chapel 1515-2015: Music, Art and Religion in Cambridge, edited by J. M. Massing, N. Zeeman

This lavishly illustrated, interdisciplinary volume encompasses many aspects of the Chapel’s history from its foundation to the present day. The essays all represent new research, with a particular emphasis on areas that have not been investigated before: Chapel furnishings and art; the architectural engineering of the building and current state of the glass; the history of the Choir and the life of the Chapel, not least in recent centuries. Essays will engage with politics, drama, music, iconoclasm and aesthetics. This will be a serious academic book, but also a visually stimulating and beautiful one. It will contain two hundred and fifty colour reproductions of images of the Chapel – prints, watercolours, oil paintings, photographs, architectural drawings, plans, maps and even postcards, reflecting the many and varied responses that the Chapel has elicited over time.

Jean Pucelle: Innovation and Collaboration in Manuscript Painting, edited by K. Pyun, A. Russakoff
This book focuses on the works and legacy of Jean Pucelle, a French 14th-century artist.
Jean Pucelle (fl. ca. 1319-d. 1334) was one of the most prominent artists of the first half of the fourteenth century, an influential illuminator who worked closely with a number of collaborators both known and anonymous. A large number of lavishly-illuminated manuscripts have been attributed to him based on stylistic analysis.

Scholarly essays in this book explore issues crucial to the establishment of his distinctinve style: originality, technique, color palette, influence, levels of resemblance, the relationships between artistic media, and patronage. The contributors to this volume analyze the major works associated with Pucelle or the Pucellian style, and interpret pictorial elements in the tradition of artistic collaboration. This is the first collective work devoted entirely to Jean Pucelle and his legacy.

With contributions by Barbara Drake Boehm, Pascale Charron, Marc Gil, Joan A. Holladay, Marguerite A. Keane, Mie Kuroiwa, Domenic Leo, Kyunghee Pyun, Anna D. Russakoff and Roger S. Wieck.

Rogier Van der Weyden and Stone Sculpture in Brussels by B. Fransen
The activities of Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1464) were much wider in scope than the well-known painted oeuvre that has been the subject of so many publications. This book, with its focus on stone sculpture in Brussels at the time that Rogier was established there, an area of art history that to date has been little explored, offers a fresh and fascinating look at the context in which Brussels’s famous city painter operated. Bart Fransen leads you through a network of stoneworkers and craftsmen, from the stone quarry to the sculptor’s workshop, to discover a number of remarkable but unknown or misjudged sculptures now in churches, an abbey, a béguinage, a museum’s reserve collection and a castle chapel. With the various case studies in mind he goes on to examine Rogier van der Weyden’s direct involvement in sculptural projects, turning to the evidence revealed by archival documents, drawings and sculpture itself. The result is a highly readable and plentifully illustrated book that re-establishes the close relationship between the various art forms that existed in the fifteenth century.

The Making of Hispano-Flemish Style: Art, Commerce, and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Castile by R. Kasl
This book examines the phenomenon of “Hispano-Flemish” style in fifteenth-century Castile, providing an account of its most important monuments and describing the ways in which it is embedded in specific social and cultural settings. Trade, diplomacy, and immigration account for the widespread presence of art and artists from northern Europe in Castile during the period and these mechanisms of international contact and exchange are the starting point for this inquiry. Chapter one details commercial relations between Castile and the art-producing centers of northern Europe, stressing the dominant role of merchants from Burgos and documenting the prevalence of imported luxuries like tapestries, paintings, and sculpture. The presence of imported artworks in Castile was paralleled by a similarly robust number of immigrant artists, some itinerant and others attached to permanent workshops. Their influence is discussed in chapter two, with emphasis on the establishment of multi-generational family workshops under the direction of immigrant masters. Such workshops rooted foreign styles on Castilian soil and decisively influenced the ways in which visual conventions were learned, transformed, and transferred. The receptivity of patrons to the visual qualities of the imported style is analyzed in relation to its capacity to assert emerging social, political, and spiritual values.

The adoption of northern forms in Castile, first detected in the sculptural decoration of funerary chapels of the mid-1430s, was sustained for the rest of the century, culminating in the completion of the monastery of Miraflores under the patronage of Isabel of Castile. Chapter three outlines the religious, commemorative, and political motives that informed the foundation of the monastery by Juan II and those that animated his daughter’s efforts to complete it. It establishes the chronology of works in relation to historical events and details the intervention of Juan and Simón de Colonia, Gil de Siloe, Juan de Flandes, and others. The reelaboration of Siloe’s northern European sculptural idiom at Miraflores was a distinctive process, stimulated by the demands of his royal patron, conditioned by the practices of a heterogeneous workshop, and obliged to visualize a new concept of royal sovereignty.

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Exhibition: Communities in Communication: Languages and Cultures in the Low Countries 1450-1530 (John Rylands Library)

The John Rylands Library is an extraordinary neo-Gothic building to which no tourist visit to Manchester is complete without. The architectural experience is supplemented by many fine exhibitions making use of its special collections, although due to their small, studious nature, they can often be overlooked. Communities in Communication is one such exhibition taking place in its cloistral vaulted corridors. Drawing on the Rylands’ large collection of books from the late medieval Netherlands, this small show forms part of a larger AHRC-funded project to understand the interplay of literary cultures in the late medieval Low Countries.

Guided by the excellent little exhibition booklet, the cases are grouped by themes that elucidate how the objects represent a window into the intellectual and linguistic cultures of their age. Trilingual phrase books show that individuals from urban burghers to the nobility were keen to improve their vocabularies. The new technology of printing had begun make written culture more accessible to a world burgeoning with literacy and an appetite for the word, and the majority of books here are printed rather than manuscripts written by hand. The books are beautifully displayed in shallow cases that allow you to appreciate the clarity of the printed text by actually reading the words, appreciating them as works of art and craft in themselves rather than simply vehicles for illumination. Perhaps the most significant object on show here is William Caxton’s Recuyell of the historyes of Troye, the first book printed in English.

I was fortunate enough to visit the exhibition on the occasion of a study day led by the exhibition curator, Adrian Armstrong. Our group was assigned a wonderful copy of Caxton’s English translation of the Golden Legend. First we studied the book as a physical object: assessing how the paper had been folded into bifolios and bound into quires. A copy that appears mint at first belies a fascinating object history: on close inspection showed how pages had been bookmarked by a neat reader. After a short break we looked at the book in a different way: how we might consider transcribing the text for a modern critical edition. Does one insert modern punctuation and expand contractions, or go the whole way and modernise the often archaic spelling? These are no doubt issues Caxton himself faced when sitting down with English, Latin and French versions of the Legenda Aurea back in Westminster in the 1480s.

The prologue from Caxton''s Golden Legend: the largest woodcut he ever produced — The prologue from Caxton”s Golden Legend: the largest woodcut he ever produced

These dual themes of material codicology and the linguistics of the text helped illuminate the texts on display outside, be it historical writing, poetry or phrasebooks. All these texts are material artefacts that can make manifest the essentially ephemeral speech of daily life in the late medieval Northern Europe: be it in diplomacy, trade, or leisure. This is certainly an exhibition to see if you are interested in the future aims of the project to unravel the interplay of literary cultures in this dynamic environment: both the autumn of the Middle Ages and the springtime of the Northern Renaissance.

Communities in the Communication: Languages and Cultures in the Late Medieval Low Countries is on at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester until 21 December 2014. Admission is free.

Call for Journal Submissions: Hortulus (Spring Issue 2015)

Call for Journal Submissions
Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies (Spring Issue 2015)
Deadline: 13 February 2015

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies is a refereed, peer-reviewed, and born-digital journal devoted to the culture, literature, history, and society of the medieval past. Published semi-annually, the journal collects exceptional examples of work by graduate students on a number of themes, disciplines, subjects, and periods of medieval studies. We also welcome book reviews of monographs published or re-released in the past five years that are of interest to medievalists. For the spring issue we are highly interested in reviews of books which fall under the current special topic.

Our upcoming issue will be published in the spring of 2015, and is an open issue with no theme. We particularly encourage the submission of proposals that take a strongly theoretical and/or interdisciplinary approach, and that examine new and previously unconsidered aspects of these subjects within medieval studies. Articles may be from any discipline: history, art history, archaeology, literature, linguistics, music, theology, etc. Work from every interpretive angle is encouraged. Most importantly, we seek engaging, original work that contributes to our collective understanding of the medieval era.

Contributions should be in English and roughly 6,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and citational apparatus; book reviews are typically between 500-1,000 words but cannot exceed 2,000. All notes must be endnotes, and a bibliography must be included; submission guidelines can be found here. Contributions may be submitted to hortulus@hortulus-journal.com and are due February 13, 2015. If you are interested in submitting a paper but feel you would need additional time, please send a query email and details about an expected time-scale for your submission. Queries about submissions or the journal more generally can also be sent to this address.

Source: http://hortulus-journal.com/2014/11/02/call-for-papers-spring-2015-open-issue/

Conference: In centro et oculis urbis nostrae. La chiesa e il monastero di San Zaccaria (Venice, 27-29 November 2014)

Conference:
In centro et oculis urbis nostrae. La chiesa e il monastero di San Zaccaria
Venice, 27 – 29 November 2014

Curated by Bernard Aikema, Massimo Mancini, Paola Modesti

The Studium Generale Marcianum is proud to present the symposium dedicated to the Church and Monastery of San Zaccaria in Venice. This is the fourth of a series of conferences related to the project “Chiese di Venezia. Nuove prospettive di ricerca” (The Churches of Venice. New Research Perspectives) aimed at studying some selected Venetian churches. During these conferences, groups of scholars participate to discussions and activities related to the churches and their history, exchanging comparative researches on different fields. The results of each symposium enhance new direction of research and are yearly published in a new series of volumes edited by Marcianum Press. The Benedictine Monastery of San Zaccaria, founded by the Doge of Venice before the church of St. Mark and close to the political and religious centre of the city, was one of the wealthiest Venetian ecclesiastical institutions. The art and architecture of the two fifteenth century paired churches, many aspects of the history of the monastery and the life and artistic patronage of the nuns have been the subject of several researches in the past. The goal of this conference is to integrate and update those contents with new contributions, to address some specific questions which have not been sufficiently investigated yet and to critically analise the events, issues and critical works from a comparative point of view. The focus of this study will be the life of the monastery during the period between the ninth and the sixteenth century: its wide and central urban “territory”; the construction phases of the ancient church; the architecture of the “new” church and monastery; the magnificent wooden choir of the nuns; the rituals, traditions and transformations of the two churches occurred between the fifteenth and seventeenth century and the seventeenth and eighteenth century decoration of the church with some paintings representing the splendor of the monastery.

The last session of the conference will be held in the church of San Zaccaria and in the former monastery (now headquarter of the Comando Provinciale dei Carabinieri) which will be open to the public for this special occasion.

Thanks to the presence and contribute of a group of respondent-guests, some key issues and problems regarding the art and architecture will be taken up and discussed in situ. The officer of the Sovrintendenza, together with some restorers, will illustrate the conservation interventions carried out recently or still going on. For a wider audience than that of the “insiders” a side event will be organized: the concert of the Reverendissime Gentildonne, during which music and readings will alternate in the church of San Moise.

The church and the monastery of San Zaccaria will be open to the public thanks to the contribution of the students of the degree course in Cultural Heritage of the Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose San Lorenzo Giustiniani, who will do some guided tours for the participants.

For the full conference programme, see:
http://www.marcianum.it/studi-ricerche/chiese-venezia/chiesa-e-monastero-san-zaccaria

Info:
http://www.marcianum.it
chiesedivenezia@marcianum.it