Conference: ‘Roman and Medieval Art, Architecture, and Archaeology in Pembrokeshire’, British Archaeological Association Annual Conference (15th July-19th July), deadline 20 April 2024

Monday 15th July – Friday 19th July 2024
Pembrokeshire College, Merlin’s Bridge, Haverfordwest

Lectures

Lectures will include papers on a variety of subjects ranging from:

Roman & Early Medieval Pembrokeshire
Norman monasticism
Archaeology, architecture and sculpture of St Davids Cathedral
14th-century bishops’ palaces
Local parish churches and castles
16th and 18th-century manor houses
Screens
Manuscripts and bishops’ croziers at St David’s Cathedral.

Speakers include:

David Austin, Robert Boak, Richard Brotherton, Janet Burton, Eric Cambridge, Chris Caple, Nichola Coldstream, Ross Cook, Jaycie Corbett, John Crook, Richard Gem, Richard Halsey, Stuart Harrison, Sophie Kelly, Neil Ludlow, Julian Luxford, Mark Merrony, Fran Murphy, Ken Murphy, Phil Poucher, Sian Rees, Matthew Reeve, Andy Seaman, Roger Stalley, Zachary Stewart, Richard Suggett, Liz Walder and Jonathan Wooding.

Site Visits

A walking tour of Haverfordwest will include the major remaining medieval sites. There will be three coach excursions (one full & two half-days) outside Haverfordwest. These will encompass:

St Davids (cathedral, cathedral close and bishop’s palace)
Picton Castle
Carew Castle
Tenby (Tour of medieval walled town with an 18th-century seaside resort, including St Mary’s Church and a 15th century Merchant’s House)
Manorbier Castle
Lamphey Bishop’s Palace
Pembroke Castle
Monkton Priory

Student Scholarships

A limited number of scholarships will be available for students, covering the conference fee and accommodation. Please email catherinemilburn@madasafish.com for further details if you wish to apply. The deadline for student scholarship applications is 20th April, 2024
We continue to be very grateful indeed to attendees who add donations for the student scholarships. The booking form shows you how this can be done.

Cost

The conference fee is £350.00 which includes 3 dinners, 2 lunches, 2 receptions, tea & coffee refreshments during the lectures, coach travel, admissions, and site donations.

Booking and next steps

Booking forms should be sent to Kate Milburn at 34 Latimer Road, London, SW19 1EP by 20th April, 2024. Attendees can pay by cheque, bank transfer or request a PayPal form if an overseas member. Full details regarding payment are on the booking form. We will use email for further contact. If you do not have email, please send two SAEs with your Booking Form.
Booking for the Conference is on a first come, first served basis and is open to BAA members only.
We will email or post confirmation of your booking. Joining instructions, with a provisional programme, will be sent out in the middle of June. If you have any questions regarding the conference please email Kate Milburn – catherinemilburn@madasafish.com

Find out more and download relevant forms from the British Archaeological Association website.

Exhibition: ‘Arts in France During the Time of Charles VII (1422-1461)’, Musée de Cluny, Paris, from 12 March to 16 June 2024

Under the reign of Charles VII, art experienced an extraordinary rebirth. The exhibition “Arts in France during the time of Charles VII (1422-1461) ”, presented at the Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Âge from 12 March to 16 June 2024, highlights this pivotal moment in the history of art.

From the 1420s, during the Hundred Years’ War, the Kingdom of France underwent profound political and artistic changes. In the north of the kingdom, occupied by the English and the Burgundians, multiple artistic centres emerged. When the dauphin Charles managed to win back his throne, thanks in particular to Joan of Arc, followed by his kingdom, all the conditions for a revival were met. Key patrons, such as Jacques Cœur, called on a new generation of artists, who converted to Flemish realism – known as ars nova – which was on the rise with Jan van Eyck in particular, while through the Italian influence, they drew on the classical heritage developed by artists such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Giovanni Bellini. Artistic creation gradually broke away from international Gothic and shifted to a new vision of reality, foreshadowing the Renaissance.

After an initial section for historical contextualisation, the exhibition demonstrates the diversity of the arts in the key geographical centres, often associated with major patrons. In the third and final section, the route provides an analysis of the specificities of this art in France, between Burgundian and Flemish ars nova and Italian innovations. A key chapter is devoted to Provence and the role of René d’Anjou, patron and one of the early champions of northern art, exploring the figure of the artist Barthélemy d’Eyck among others.

Throughout the visit, the exhibition explores the diversity of artistic production during the reign of Charles VII. It brings together prestigious illuminated manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, gold and silversmithery, stained glass and tapestries. It includes exceptional works, such as the canopy of Charles VII (Musée du Louvre), the manuscript of the Rohan Hours (Bibliothèque nationale de France) or the Aix Annunciation (Aix-en-Provence) by Barthélemy d’Eyck, a painter for Duke René of Anjou who illuminated his Tournament Book (Bibliothèque nationale de France). For the first time, the Parisian triptych of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ by André d’Ypres will be fully reconstructed (Musée du Louvre, Getty Museum, Musée Fabre). Finally, an entire section will be dedicated to Jean Fouquet, one of the greatest French painters of the 15th century. A genius of illumination, he produced the famous portrait painted on wood of Charles VII (Musée du Louvre), presented in its rightful place in the exhibition.

The exhibition “Arts in France during the time of Charles VII (1422-1461)” is organised by the Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Âge and the GrandPalaisRmn. Several curators from major national institutions have been brought together for the exhibition, including Mathieu Deldicque, Chief Heritage Curator, Director of the Musée Condé in Chantilly,

Find out more about the exhibition on the Musée de Cluny website.

Heures de René d’Anjou, Barthélémy d’Eyck, 1459-1460, Enluminure (Paris, BnF, département des Manuscrits, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Latin 17332), f. 15v

CFP: ‘Unruly Iconographies? Examining the Unexpected in Medieval Art’, deadline 1 April 2024

Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University, 9 November 2024

Modern study of medieval iconography inevitably entails grappling with exceptions and the rupture of expectations. No sooner might scholars settle on an expected visual formula—Cain killing Abel with his farmer’s hoe, Saint George riding his snowy steed—than we’re pulled up by an image that flouts those rules. In the fifteenth-century Alba Bible, Cain sinks his teeth directly into his brother’s neck, arguably in reference to Jewish exegesis, while in some Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons of St. George, a small boy carrying a cup rides with the saint, inspiring a semi-serious modern tradition concerning George’s love of coffee. Other iconographic traditions seem to emerge out of the blue, as did the distinctive type known as the Virgin of Humility, which flowered suddenly in Mediterranean cities in the 1340s. Such unruly iconographies both intrigue and disappoint us: they engage yet disobey our expectations, and we are left to wonder why.

The culprit in such cases is less often a rogue medieval work of art than the rigidity of modern scholarship. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the assumption that medieval iconographic norms were formulaic, authoritative, and above all universally obeyed still shapes the way modern scholars analyze the imagery they study. Even after the poststructuralist turn, art historians have continued to wrestle with expectations deeply embedded in the discipline: that medieval artists preferred to copy or turn to text rather than to innovate; that unprecedented iconography must be based on a lost original; that patrons or learned advisors must have directed artists’ work; that traditions translated smoothly across media, formats, and contexts; that all viewers read and understood the images they saw in the same way. Underlying many of these assumptions has been a wider one: that the ideas of greatest value must be tracked to artists rooted in cosmopolitan centers, rather than to artists and works of art that circulated freely throughout their peripheries.

The conference “Unruly Iconographies? Examining the Unexpected in Medieval Art” aims to open a new conversation about medieval images that don’t follow the rules. We call for papers that ask both speakers and audience to rethink the unspoken paradigms that have decided which iconographic motifs are canonical and which are “singular,” “exceptional,” or even “mistakes.” At the broadest level, we seek to problematize the binaries on which these paradigms were founded: tradition versus invention, canon versus exception, and center versus periphery. At a more specific one, we invite deeply researched case studies whose particularities can lead scholars to a more effective, contextually sensitive, and historically informed approach to the study of images and image-making in the Middle Ages.

“Unruly Iconographies?” will take place on November 9, 2024 at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University, following the Weitzmann Lecture by Dr. Brigitte Buettner, held on November 8 and hosted by Princeton’s Department of Art & Archaeology. It also will constitute the first of two internationally linked events, the second of which will be a site-based seminar at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” in Naples in June 2025. Whereas the Index conference will consider broadly disciplinary questions about methodology, theory, and models, the Naples conference, hoped to be the first of several site-based conferences of this kind, takes southern Italy as a laboratory for exploring the relationships between iconography and place within a geographically expanded Middle Ages, focusing on the potentials and limits of the study of iconography in southern Italy. Details about this conference will be available in Summer 2024.Submissions for the Princeton-based conference are invited by April 1, 2024. They should include a one-page abstract and c.v. and be sent to fionab@princeton.edu. Travel and hotel costs for the eight selected speakers will be covered by the Index. Speakers will be informed of their selection no later than May 1, 2024.

Conference: ‘Refinement and/or Reduction? Gothic Art, Architecture and Culture, c. 1250 to 1350’ (Halle, 23-25 May, 2024)

International conference, Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Archäologien Europas, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

Cncept and organization:

Prof. Dr Ute Engel (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
Prof. Dr Christian Freigang (Freie Universität Berlin)

The international conference aims at an interdisciplinary reassessment of Gothic art and architecture between c. 1250 and 1350 in a broad European perspective. With an increased diversity of patrons and new technical facilities, the design options for artists and architects alike extended to a virtuoso refinement across media, on the one hand. On the other hand, new modes of reduction emerge, probably originating in economic, technical or programmatic tendencies of the time. The conference elucidates and discusses the cultural background of this paradoxical situation. Additionally, the conference intends to honour Paul Frankl (1878–1962), professor of the History of Art at the University of Halle 1921–1934. Forced into American exile, he became one of the leading scholars of the Gothic, based at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton from 1940 onwards.

Conference Location

The conference will take place at Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle: On 23 and 24 May 2024 at Universitätsplatz, Löwengebäude, Aula and Historischer Sessionssaal, Universitätsplatz 11, 06108 Halle (Saale); on 25 May 2025 at Steintor-Campus, Hörsaal II, Emil-Abderhalden-Straße 28, 06108 Halle (Saale).

Additionally, there will be the chance to listen to the lectures online via web-link.

Conference Registration

Please register for the conference until 12 May 2024, using the email address below.

Please note whether you will take part in presence or online: sekretariat@kunstgesch.uni-halle.de

The conference is co-sponsored by:

Fritz Thyssen Stiftung Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Energie, Klimaschutz und Umwelt Sachsen-Anhalt Saalesparkasse

Contact: ute.engel@kunstgesch.uni-halle.de | Website

Conference Programme

Thursday, 23 May 2024

15.00 – Registration

16.00 – Welcome

Panel 1: Gothic Art and Architecture c. 1250 to 1350, and its Historiography (Chairs: Prof. Dr Ute Engel and Prof. Dr Christian Freigang)

16.15 – Prof. Dr Ute Engel (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg): “Refinement and/or Reduction c. 1250 to 1350: An Introduction”
16.45 – Prof. Dr Christian Freigang (Freie Universität Berlin): “‘Doktrinäre Gotik – Reduktionsgotik‘. Architectural History between Criticism of Academicism and Theory of Space”
17.15 – Prof. Dr Beatrice Kitzinger (Princeton University): “Encountering Paul Frankl in the Princeton Archive”
17.45 – Discussion

19.00 – Keynote Lecture: Prof. Dr Paul Binski (University of Cambridge): “Subtlety and Gothic Architecture”

20.00 – Reception

Panel 2: Paris and Court Culture (Chair: Dr Antje Fehrmann)

9.00 – Prof. Dr Dany Sandron (Sorbonne Université, Paris): “Opus parisianum? Architecture in Paris c. 1250–1350”
9.30 – Prof. Dr Lindy Grant (University of Reading): “The Aesthetics of Asceticism: Louis IX and Court Culture after the Return from the 1248–1254 Crusade”
10.00 – Prof. Dr Michael T. Davis (Mount Holyoke College): “Synthesis, Invention and Transformation in French Gothic Architecture, 1250–1320 “
10.30 – Discussion

10.45 – Coffee/Tea

Panel 3: Beyond Paris (Chair: Prof. Dr Ute Engel)

11.15 – Prof. Dr Michaelis Olympios (University of Cyprus, Nicosia): “Architecture and Ritual at the Laon Cathedral Chapels”
11.45 – Prof. Dr Christoph Brachmann (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill): “The Simultaneity of the Non-Simultaneous”
12.15 – Prof. Dr Etienne Hamon (Université de Lille): “The Updating of Graphic Models from the 1300s in 15th-century Architecture and Decorative Arts: Some Examples from Central France”
12.45 – Discussion

13.00 – Lunch break

Panel 4: Centres in the South (Chair: Prof. Dr Christian Freigang)

14.30 h Dr Markus Schlicht (Université Bordeaux Montaigne): “Refinement to Reduction: The Choir of Bordeaux Cathedral (from 1252)”
15.00 h Dr Alexandra Gajewski (Burlington Magazine, London): “Becoming a Papal Residence: Churches and Chapels in Avignon, from John XXII to Clement VI”
15.30 h Dr Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute of Art, London): “Two for One? Berenguer de Montagut, Manresa, and Catalan Gothic”
16.00 h Discussion

16.15 h Coffee/Tea

Panel 5: Cross-Media Figurations (Chair: Prof. Dr Juliane von Fircks)

16.45 – Prof. Dr Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz (Universität Zürich)/Prof. Dr Peter Kurmann (Université de Fribourg): “French Architecture and Stained Glass in Dialogue (1250–1350)“
17.15 – Prof. Dr Tim Ayers (University of York): “More or Less? The Chapter House and its Vestibule at York Minster”
17.45 – Prof. Dr Evelin Wetter (Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg/Universität Leipzig): “Embroidered Image and Surface. On the Reduction of the Background to Colour and Material in the Works of the Opus anglicanum”
18.15 – Discussion

Saturday, 25 May 2024

Panel 6: Innovation and Invention (Chair: Dr Sascha Köhl)

9.00 – Prof. Dr Marc Carel Schurr (Universität Trier): “Less is more – Strasbourg Cathedral and the ‘Avant-garde’ of Architecture around 1300”
9.30 – Prof. Dr Jacqueline Jung (Yale University, New Haven): “Refinements of Time in Monumental Narrative Relief Sculpture after 1250”
10.00 – PD Dr Christian Kayser (Technische Universität, München): “The Western Tower of Freiburg Minster and the Invention of the Gothic Openwork Spire”
10.30 – Discussion

10.45 h Coffee/Tea

Panel 7: Cityscapes (Chair: Prof. Dr Markus Späth)

11.15 – Dr Tobias Kunz (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin): “Not Only Paris. Foreign Innovations and their Consequences in Cologne Sculpture”
11.45 – Dr Zoe Opacic (Birkbeck College, University of London): “Erfordia turrita: ‘Reduktionsgotik’ and Urban Refinement in Fourteenth-century Erfurt”
12.15 – Dr Zoltán Bereczki (University of Debrecen): “Franciscan Monasteries in the Medieval Cityscape. A Case Study of Sopron (HU) and Bratislava (SK)”
12.45 – Discussion

13.00 – Lunch break

Panel 8: European Transfer (Chair: Prof. Dr Christian Freigang)

14.00 – Prof. Dr Robert Bork (University of Iowa): “Reflections on Refinement: Plasticity versus Planarity between France and Germany, 1250–1350”
14.30 – Prof. Dr Jakub Adamski (University of Warsaw): “Strasbourg – Wrocław – Cracow. On the Transfer of Modern Architectural Design from the Upper Rhine Valley to Southern Poland from c. 1280“
15.00 – Prof. Dr Yves Gallet (Université Bordeaux Montaigne): “Refinement versus Reduction? A Showcase of Paradoxical Coexistence in 14th-Century Architecture: Matthias of Arras´s Work in Prague”
15.30 – Discussion

Conclusion (Chair: Prof. Dr Ute Engel)

15.45 – Prof. Dr Bruno Klein (Technische Universität, Dresden): “Conclusion and Perspectives on Gothic Art, Architecture and Culture c. 1250 to 1350”

16.15 – Coffee/Tea, End of conference

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, deadline 3 April 2024

As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for Mary Jaharis Center-sponsored sessions at the 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, which will be held in New York City from October 24 to 27, 2024. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website by April 3, 2024.

If the proposed session is accepted, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 5 session participants (presenters and chair) up to $800 maximum for scholars based in North America and up to $1400 maximum for those coming from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/50th-bsc

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

CFP: ‘Marginalia: Frontiers of Connection’, University of São Paulo, deadline 30 April 2024

XIV International Seminar, The Medieval Image: History and Theory
7-9 August 2024, University of São Paulo

Margins are not mere blank spaces: they can bear various marks of the actions of manuscript producers and consumers. In them, for example, the colouration of the parchment becomes more evident, and sometimes holes for ruled lines can be seen. More importantly, annotations and images of various kinds may have been included there. The margins thus could function as spaces of multiple exchanges both within and outside of the book.

However, margins are not exclusive to manuscripts: they can be physical spaces on a geographical scale or in an architectural sense, as well as symbolic spaces. Travelers, the hungry, prostitutes, lepers, and other marginalised individuals inhabit the margins of the city, not only subverting social norms [1] but also reinventing them, becoming vehicles for the circulation of cultural practices between the center and the periphery and among different peripheral regions. They constituted spaces for the production of counter-hegemonic discourses and resistance [2], while simultaneously producing, disputing, and defining the center as a “social field” [3]. As borders of connection, margins were the first territory to be reached by famine, epidemics, outsiders, and commercial exchanges. It was the space where intentional marginalised individuals – such as the pauperes Christi – could build connections with unintentional marginalised individuals – such as the pauperes inviti.

[1] HOOKS, Bell. Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, n. 36, p. 15-23, 1989.
[2] BOURDIEU, Pierre. Razões práticas: sobre a teoria da ação. São Paulo: Papirus, 1996.
[3] SCHMITT, Jean-Claude. A história dos marginais. In: LE GOFF, Jacques. A História Nova. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1990. p. 261-290.

Aim of the conference

The Conference “Marginalia, Frontiers of Connection” aims to be, through the study of images and their modes of production in the Middle Ages, a space for discussion about margins and marginality as connected frontiers. The event will welcome papers that analyze strategies of connection between center/periphery and among different peripheral spaces, as well as the center-margin dichotomy. The fundamental question to be addressed is: How did the margins both produce and reveal spaces of connection in the Middle Ages?

Find out more here.

Call for Paper Submission instructions

Paper proposals must be submitted to the email lathimm.usp@gmail.com by April 30th, 2024. Written as expanded abstracts, they are to be published in a specific booklet, having to include a title, a summary of 5,000-7,000 characters (with spaces), 3 keywords, an indication of 4 essential bibliographic references, and the intended axis for the presentation.

Presentations can be delivered in Portuguese, English, or Spanish. The minimum academic level required for paper submissions is to be a Master’s graduate student.

Based on a specific or comparative case study, all presentations should aim to answer the same question: How did the margins produce spaces of connection in the Middle Ages? Presentations will be arranged into three axes, as detailed below:

MARGINAL TERRITORY: the margin as space

Marginal regions on maps or georeferencing data in digital maps.
Manuscript margins as spaces of creativity or interaction with center-page contents or other works. Studies on illuminations, ornamented margins, glosses, or doodles.
Frames, binding, and/or architectural features with supportive functions and their interactions with the image.
Images of travelers, modes of transportation, informal trade, and commercial routes in spaces of marginality.

MARGINAL NONCONFORMITY: the margin as strangeness

Marginal/dissident iconographies. Survivals of Antiquity in the Middle Ages.
Images of marginalized groups: sick or disabled individuals, gender and sexual minorities, prostitutes, drunkards, wanderers, the poor, the famished, charitable institutions, or of voluntary poverty.
Tools, practices and evidence regarding fixing material defects in image production (cuts, holes, scars, etc.).

MARGINAL SUBVERSION: the margin as dispute

Images of groups in dispute against hegemonic powers: enslaved individuals, minorities, and political oppositions. Heretical movements, religious disputes, criminalities, and the justice system.
Images and revisions/notes in manuscripts supplementing/altering the content of the center of the page.
Graffiti, iconoclasms, scrapings, erasures subverting the content of the text/image.

Schedule

Proposal submission until April 30th, 2024.
Announcement of approved submissions and program details by May 10th, 2024.
Publication of the abstract booklet by July 31st, 2024.
Event to be held from August 7th to 9th, 2024.

PARTICIPATION MODALITIES
The event will take place in person at the Nicolau Sevcenko Auditorium – Department of History – FFLCH, USP, São Paulo. In-person attendance is mandatory for researchers in Brazil. Remote participation will be allowed only for researchers in other countries. Questions, clarifications, and requests for remote participation should be sent to the email lathimm.usp@gmail.com.

ORGANISATION

Laboratory of Theory and History of Medieval Media (LATHIMM-USP).
Thematic Project “A Connected History of the Middle Ages: Communication and Circulation from the Mediterranean Sea” (FAPESP 21/02912-3).
Supplementary aide:
Faculty of Philosophy, Letters, and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo

CFP: ‘Carving Collective Practice: Working Against Monolithic Scholarship on Stone’, deadline 5 April 2024

We seek participants for Thinking with Stone, an interdisciplinary, experimental roundtable exploring collaborative methods and conversational approaches to studying stone in the medieval period. We welcome five- to ten-minute presentations on ideas for a work in progress on a stone object or structure, a particular methodological approach to stone, or new pedagogical ideas for engagement with stone. The session provides a forum for collaborative development of these projects in a way that looks outside traditional modes of single-authored expertise.

Thinking with Stone is Session III of a three-part series at IONA 2024 on Carving Collective Practice. Session I: Viewing Stone is a site visit and discursive workshop on early medieval stone sculpture, introducing questions about these multivalent and polyvocal monuments that will be further explored in Sessions II and III. Session II: Handling Stone is an immersive and interactive lab on the haptic qualities of stone. Used as we are to thinking about stone monuments as things not touched or moved, this hands-on lab focuses on the physical, material, and tactile properties of stone as a worked substance that was handled, carved, and subject to changes from weather and use.

Please include in the following Google form:

Google Form
Name, contact details, a short CV, and a 200-word max abstract & title of a project that you would like to share in a five-minute roundtable discussion in Session III.
- This should focus on your ideas for a work-in-progress, an object of focus, and your methodological approach to the stone object/architecture of your choice.
Any questions may be sent to Dr Jill Hamilton Clements at jclements@uab.edu.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: Friday 5 April 2024

We intend to inform participants of their participation by April 15th. We welcome applicants from postgraduates, non-traditional scholars, independent scholars, those holding non-faculty positions, and those underrepresented in the field of medieval studies.

More information can be found here.

New Publication: ‘A Spectacle for a Spanish Princess: The Festive Entry of Joanna of Castile into Brussels (1496)’, ed. by Dagmar H. Eichberger

This volume introduces the reader to the festive entry of princess Joanna of Castile into Brussels (1496) that marks the dynastic union between Spain and the Burgundian Netherlands.

Based on the Berlin manuscript 78 D5, the first illustrated report of an entry concentrating on one single lady. This study includes a reproduction of this manuscript in full colour with sixty-three folios.

On the evening of 9 December 1496, Princess Joanna, Infanta of Castile, reaches the outskirts of Brussels where a procession of secular and ecclesiastical dignitaries welcomes her. After having been married to Philip the Fair in Lier, Joanna travelled to Brussels by herself. Equipped with torches and processional crosses, the citizens accompany her all the way to the heart of the city, the large market square with its magnificent town hall. The Berlin manuscript 78 D5 is the first illustrated report of an entry concentrating on one single lady. The manuscript is a treasure to all those interested in urban culture of the Early Modern period. The author of the festival booklet compares the well-lit city with the splendours of Troy and Carthage. Twenty-eight stage sets, or Tableaux Vivants, and an elaborate procession mirror the costly intellectual program presented to the sixteen-year-old princess. The carefully planned theatrical productions underscore themes of marriage, female virtues and the politics of war and peace. The program includes entertainments, soundscapes, and pyrotechnic amusements. The Latin texts are made available in English translation. The entire manuscript, with its sixty-three folios, is reproduced in colour. Eleven leading scholars present their new findings on this spectacular entry from an interdisciplinary approach.

Editor Biography:

Dagmar H. Eichberger taught at the Universities of Canberra, Melbourne, Heidelberg, Jena, Konstanz, Paris, Giessen and Vienna. She is the leading expert on Margaret of Austria, Joanna of Castile’s sister-in-law. She has published on Renaissance culture in the Netherlands and Germany and co-edited several volumes on Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, Religion and Visual Culture, Burgundian Women and Visual Typology. Further research on art objects as material culture and the history of early collections is in progress.

Find out more about the book here.

CFP: ‘Moving Pictures, Living Objects’ , CAA Conference 2025, deadline 22 April 2024 (5pm GMT)

ICMA (International Center for Medieval Art)-sponsored session at CAA (College Art Association)
New York City, 12-15 February 2025
(Travel expenses will be reimbursed)

Organisers:

Prof. Heather Pulliam, University of Edinburgh
Prof. Kathryn Rudy, University of St. Andrews

Many premodern objects require human interaction to animate them and reveal their contents: turning the pages of manuscripts, moving the hinged limbs of figurative sculpture, unrolling scrolls, or opening screens. Others involve the dynamic effects of natural light. Like films or music, many medieval works invite sequential viewing that incorporates repetition and revelation. In art historical research, images do not merely illustrate arguments, they evidence them as much as written text does. Art historians abandoned their slide projectors long ago and have recently embraced e-publishing, but static imagery remains the dominant format for illustrating conference talks and academic publications. However, static images fail to capture aspects of performance essential to the function and meaning of many medieval objects. This session proposes to experiment with a shift in format, one that uses videos or the many tools now available for the analysis of artworks: rotational 3D scans, IIIF, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 3D reconstructions. The session will be the first on premodern art to be exclusively illustrated with moving pictures, testing the boundaries of performativity and reception and questioning how we analyse, discuss, illustrate, and display artworks. This conversation is timely, as we move away from art histories that prioritised European fine art—traditionally static and displayed in galleries—to a more inclusive and diverse definition of art.  We are planning a special-issue journal on this theme, illustrated by moving images. 

The 90-minute session will consist of an introduction by the session organizers; 5 speakers each presenting a 5-minute video and a 7-minute analysis/discussion; and a Q&A. Those who go over the time limit will be publicly shamed and removed from the stage. We have hired a bouncer.

To apply to be one of the speakers, please send a 250-word abstract to Heather Pulliam h.pulliam@ed.ac.uk and Kathryn Rudy kmr7@st-andrews.ac.uk with ‘ICMA-CAA Abstract’ in the subject line. Deadline: 22 April at 17:00 GMT. In your abstract, be sure to tell us why the academic argument you are making can only be illustrated by moving images.

The ICMA through the Kress Foundation is able to offer reimbursements for domestic travel to New York for up to $600; overseas travel for up to $1200. For the full description of qualified travel expenses, please check the full Kress Travel Grant site: https://www.medievalart.org/kress-travel-grant.

Call for Submissions: ‘White and Whiteness in the Medieval Period, 400-1400 AD’, deadline 1 April 2024

The editors for the upcoming book Deep White: Unsettling White in Western Art History and Aesthetics (Brill, 2025) are seeking contributions concerning examination of white and whiteness from the period 400-1400 AD. The notion of Western will be interpreted broadly and contributions that focuses on material or locations that have traditionally been considered peripheral are particularly welcome. This could include histories of material exchange, cultural and religious encounters and the circulation of objects and techniques.

About the book:

The book Deep White: Unsettling White in Western Art History and Aesthetics will delve into an examination of the different entanglements of whiteness in western art. Whiteness is one of today’s key societal and political concerns. Within and beyond academia worldwide, actions of revolt and regret seek to cope with past and present racist mindsets and structures. In the pivotal works in whiteness studies within art and architecture history, whiteness is understood as cultural and visual structures of privilege. This book, however, addresses a distinctively different battleground for politics of whiteness in art and architecture. Deep White critically investigates the cultural, ideological, and aesthetic preconditions of an ambivalent and challenging segment of Western art history, namely the colour white itself.

While numerous scholars have engaged with the colour white in art history, few systematic research has been carried out to unfold the correlations between materiality and ideology of the colour white in Western art history. Two core premises underpin the book: Whiteness is not only a cultural and societal condition tied to skin color, privileges, and systematic exclusion, but materializes everywhere around us. Second, this materialization is intimately linked to Western arts and aesthetics.

The aim of this book is to uncover how the myths, materialities, and ideologies of white colour in Western art history has been caught up in different unsettling ambivalences and to map and disentangle these different transhistorical frameworks. The book is written with an experimental methodological approach that merges art history, artistic research, and research-by-design (the chapters are written by art historians, artists, and designers). In addition to conventional academic book chapters, the book also induces shorter artistic essays and photographic essays which explore and contextualize white in art history with and through contemporary art and design practices.

The book is edited by Ingrid Halland, Tonje Haugland Sørensen, and Helene Engnes Birkeli and will be published as part of Brill’s book series Studies in Art & Materiality. It is set to be published in 2025 and funding for the book is secured.

Interested authors are asked to send a max 800 word abstract and biographical details before 1. April 2024 to tonje.sorensen@uib.no

Notification of acceptance will be given within the first week of April. Deadline for full chapter (5000 words) will be 1. October 2024.