Medieval Art Research

Publication News: Giotto and the Flood of Florence in 1333

Giotto and the Flood of Florence in 1333 : A Study in Catastrophism, Guild Organisation, and Art Technology by Erling S. Skaug

Giotto di Bondone was the key figure in the transition from medieval to modern in European painting. It is well known that he, on 12 April 1334, was appointed architect of the cathedral of Florence, and that he made a design for the campanile. But it has never been explained why he was offered that task, and at that particular point of time. Was it just an honorary position for the aging artist, shortly before his death? Or was his actual commission to organise the rebuilding of vital parts of the city after the disastrous flood of 4 November 1333 – the worst catastrophe of its kind until the one in 1966? By this angle of approach, based upon the textual evidence of the nomination, it becomes possible to put together several pieces of a puzzle that makes up an entirely new picture of a moment in the history of Florencee. Elements as different as Giotto’s stay at the French court in Naples, the introduction of punched decoration in Florentine painting, the dating of some of his problematic altarpieces, the Florentine painters’ place int he city’s gild structure as shown by their formal titles, and a perhaps surprising glimpse into Giotto’s workshop in its late period can all be shown to be causally connected.

Call for Papers: Gothic Ivories: Content and Context

Gothic Ivories: Content and Context, which will take place on Saturday 5 July at The Courtauld Institute of Art, and Sunday 6 July 2014 at The British Museum.

Proposals are invited for papers to be presented at this two-day conference in July 2014, jointly organised by the British Museum and the Courtauld Gothic Ivories Project.
The papers will be presented in themed sessions, with contributions lasting 20 minutes.

Launched on the web in December 2010, the Gothic Ivories Project has played an important part in putting Gothic ivory carving in the limelight and over 3,800 objects are now available online, from hundreds of museums around the world. Following the landmark conference ‘Gothic Ivories: Old Questions, New Directions’ organised by the Victoria & Albert Museum and The Courtauld in 2012, this second conference aims to showcase and celebrate new research in this field.

Papers are invited on a wide range of topics arising from the study of Gothic ivory carving and related to the themes of content and context. If the former is inextricably linked to the latter, especially at the time of creation, their relationship evolves, as the meaning and uses of the objects change over time. Content can be understood as the iconography chosen for a particular sculpture or group of sculptures, and its meaning, and this will apply to medieval as well as later neo-Gothic pieces. Context can refer to the original context, i.e. makers and commissioners, questions of origin and style, relationships with artworks in other media, but also to the later context and history of these objects to the present day (history of collecting, casts and reproductions, museology, for instance), questions of use and reuse over time.

The conference also welcomes papers on artworks carved out of related materials, such as horn, walrus ivory, or bone (for instance, horn saddles, chess pieces or Embriachi work).

Proposals should take the form of a short text (max. 200 words), outlining the paper’s title, the main themes, and the object(s) on which the study will concentrate. Some indication of where the research sits within the historiography would also be of use.

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers of no more than 200 words to Naomi Speakman at nspeakman@britishmuseum.org and Dr Catherine Yvard at catherine.yvard@courtauld.ac.uk no later than Monday 18 March 2014.

For further information visit the website.

Call for Papers: Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600-1500

This conference will explore the ways in which artists and patrons in Britain devised and introduced new or distinctive imagery, styles and techniques, as well as novel approaches to bringing different media together. It is concerned with the mechanisms of innovation, with inventive and imaginative processes, and with the relations between conventions and individual expression. The conversation will therefore also address the very notions of sameness and difference in medieval art and architecture, and how these may be evaluated and explained historically.

Topics for discussion can include authorship, creativity, experimentation, envisaging, representation, and regulation by guilds or patrons, as well as case studies of particular objects, buildings, commissions or practices.

The conference will take place on 30th October – 1st November at the Paul Mellon Centre and The British Museum; it will include collaborations with the museum’s Department of Prehistory & Europe and opportunities to see works from the collection.

Papers should be of 20 minutes’ duration. Proposals/abstracts of 500 words should be submitted to Ella Fleming by 25 March 2014: efleming@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Conference organised by the Paul Mellon Centre, with Sandy Heslop (University of East Anglia), Jessica Berenbeim (University of Oxford), Lloyd DeBeer and Naomi Speakman (The British Museum)

Call for Applications: Reading Craft: Itineraries of Culture, Knowledge and Power in the Global Ecumene

Five days of interactive “Summer School” training
Reading Craft: Itineraries of Culture, Knowledge and Power in the Global Ecumene

The Summer Programme on “Reading Craft in the Long Global Ecumene” is meant for PhD Students. This means that we do not accept students other than PhD researchers.

To apply for participation in the Summer School 2014, please fill in the Application form. Registration closes Friday 14 February 2014, 9.00 am CET.

The IIAS Summer School at Chiang Mai will focus on the theoretical issue of the knowledge production, transmission and practice of culture against the backdrop of historically contingent case studies featuring transnational circulations of craft. Cartographies, itineraries and biographies of craft are windows into craft-scapes which, much like Barbara Bender’s work on landscapes, are discursively constructed, disputed, worked upon from disparate frames of value and meaning, and used to accomplish goals pertaining to identity, heritage politics, knowledge and power.

The Summer School is an occasion to problematize conceptions of culture articulated through readings of craft across territorial boundaries, temporal episodes and knowledge categories. Alternative readings of craft seek to challenge place-based rootedness of culture in colonial ‘cryptocolonial’ (Herzfeld) and postcolonial constructions in order to emphasize its circulation in global interactions and trajectories. Focusing on ‘social lives’ (Appadurai) or ‘cultural biographies’ (Kopytoff) through records of journeys undertaken and routes charted by the movement of individuals, materials, techniques, recipes, designs and objects within and across diverse epistemic regimes and contexts would allow us to ‘read’ craft from a global perspective.

There is a need for what Françoise Vergès, calls an ‘alternate cartography’, tracing the material lives and unexpected contributions of ‘the people without history’ in Eric Wolfe’s words – anonymous slaves, refugees, exiles, spies, servants and artisans, in colonial and postcolonial historiographies. Locating craft within global networks of power and knowledge at the Chiang Mai Summer School would not only help to recover subaltern micro-histories but also focus our attention upon counter hegemonic appropriations of materials, techniques, recipes, designs and objects over the long globalization. Engaging with the ‘epistemic travels’ and ‘itineraries’ of such knowledge, according to Pamela H. Smith, would expose those readings of craft which anticipated the construction of new regimes and hierarchies of intellectual authority since the beginning of the modern world. Identifying the shifting agents and sites through which craft as a discourse of culture is formulated and sanctioned in late capitalism would, moreover, spotlight the ways in which practitioners of craft are drawn into what Michael Herzfeld refers to as the ‘global hierarchy of value’.

Conversations at the Chiang Mai Summer School will revolve around critical reflections on craft in Asian contexts around the following sub-themes among others:

Craft as a knowledge system, and knowledge practices of craft since the early modern era
Circulation of craft in Eurasian networks of trade, power and cultural exchange
Craft as postcolonial and crypto-colonial national heritage
The production and reproduction of hierarchies of gender, class and race through craft – identity contestations
Interrogating the “what” of craft: disputes over origin, ownership, authenticity, aesthetics, ethics and representation
Engaging with the Local/Global dichotomy through the lens of craft

The Summer School, which will also include some hands-on experience with local artisans, therefore encourages participants whose work seeks to engage with the history and politics of craft through its reading within the long and global mobilities of science, technology, art and fashion.

Francoise Verges, Pamela Smith and Aarti Kawlra will lead the Summer School with Michael Herzfeld as guest co-convenor and Chayan Vaddhanaphuti as host co-convenor. Together they bring to the School a rich mixture of intellectual perspectives and individual trajectories to facilitate discussions with research students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in an atmosphere of openness and inquiry. Exposure to various craft discourses and practices (indigo dyeing, hand-weaving and bamboo architecture among others) prevailing in the culturally vibrant context of Chiang Mai will provide an unprecedented learning experience for the participants. The conjunction of field work with classroom exercises at the Summer School will, moreover, help them as they pursue their own research projects, to elicit and develop new theoretical paradigms of craft informed by case studies from various contexts in Asia and elsewhere.

For further information visit the website.

Conference: Moving Body Parts: Their Transcendence of Time and Space in Pre-Modern Europe

Moving Body Parts: Their Transcendence of Time and Space in Pre-Modern Europe
Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, April 11 – 12, 2014

Organizers
Urte Krass (Institut für Kunstgeschichte der LMU München)
Romedio Schmitz-Esser (Historisches Seminar der LMU München)
Münchner Forschungszentrum Fundamente der Moderne

According to Jean-Claude Schmitt, “the dead have no existence other than
that which the living imagine for them” – and sometimes, the living not
only force them to exist in their memory but also to persist materially.
By keeping the mortal remains above the earth, by dividing them,
manipulating them and moving them to different places, the deceased are
assigned a very active role within the world of the living. The title of
this workshop includes, however, also a second “species” of migrating
bodily fragments, namely body parts that are imagined to be moving by
themselves. This workshop asks for the reasons why body parts were
moved, in which way this happened, how they were visualized, and what
the nature, both visual and material, of their transport media was. It
asks for the benefits of body parts transcending space and time, and
which body parts could be imagined to be moving.

Program

Friday, April 11

1.15-2pm
Introduction
Romedio Schmitz-Esser and Urte Krass (LMU Munich)

2-2.30pm
Body Parts in / as Pictures
Kristin Marek (Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe)

2.30-3pm
Discussion

Coffee break

3.45-4.30pm
Moving Hearts and the Rise of Individualism in the 13th Century
Immo Warntjes (Queen’s University, Belfast, UK)

Heart Burials in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Estella Weiss-Krejci (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)

4.30-5pm
Discussion

Coffee break

5.30-6.15pm
Dead Leg Walking. A Miraculous Transplantation and its Medico-Ethical
Dimension
Kay Peter Jankrift (TU Munich, Germany)

Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Shady Hands and Feet of Executed Criminals
Sergius Kodera (New Design University, St. Pölten, Austria)

6.15-6.45pm
Discussion

Break

19.30 Public Lecture:
Wandering Genitalia
Ann Marie Rasmussen (Duke University, USA)

Saturday, April 12

9.15-10am
Reviving the Corpse of Quintilian: Humanist Texts and the Language of
Relics
Hester Schadee (LMU Munich, Germany)

Migrating Martyrs: The Visual Presentation of Whole-Body Roman Catacomb
Saints in Counter-Reformation Bavaria
Noria Litaker (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

10-10.30am
Discussion

Coffee break

11-11.45am
The Triple Movement of St Adalbert’s Head
Masza Sitek (Jagiellonian University Kraków, Poland)

Moving the Saints Through Texts
Henrike Haug (TU Berlin, Germany)

11.45-12.15
Discussion

Call for Papers: 3nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE TAO-KLARJETI

3nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE TAO-KLARJETI
17-21 October, 2014

The National Center of Manuscripts warmly invites scholars from different fields of research to submit proposals for the International Conference “Tao-Klarjeti”. This is the third conference on the issue.

Rich history and cultural significance of Tao-Klarjeti, which had established herself among the most prominent monastic centers of Eastern Christendom, has generated scholarly interest to the historical province.

In early middle ages Tao-Klarjeti was the flourishing principality and a significant center of the Georgian monastic movement. A big number of ruins of fortresses, churches and monasteries scattered throughout the area corroborate the above. Local religious centers, which drew intellectual resources from entire Georgia, had close cultural contacts with the most significant monastic centers of the Byzantine realm.

Strategic location of Tao-Klarjeti made it a target of neighbouring empires, contributing to political fate of the province and to creation of a multicultural environment.

WORKING SECTIONS

• History / Source study / Archival study
• History of art
• Philology / Codicology /
Textual criticism
• Linguistics
• Ethnology/Archaeology
• Restoration/Conservation
• Tourism and management of
cultural legacy
• Geography

WORKING LANGUAGES
• Georgian
• English
• Turkish

PROPOSAL NOTES
To submit a paper proposal for the conference, please com- plete the attached Proposal Form and send it by e-mail to conference@manuscript.ac.ge.
Deadline for a proposal: 30 April, 2014

ABSTRACT
Deadline: 25 May
Type: Acadnusx, Sylfaen, Times New Roman Number of symbols at maximum: 2.000-4.000 Confirmation for participation by the organizing group before 25 June

PAPER
Deadline of submission following reception of confirmation, within 1 month (25 July)
Type: Acadnusx, Sylfaen, Times New Roman Number of symbols at maximum: 13.000
• The paper should not neither be published, nor pre- sented at any other conference
• The abstract should clearly indicate the results of the study

Conference: Boundaries in Art & Architecture, 19th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Student Colloquium, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1 February 2014

10.00-17:30, Saturday 1 February 2014 (with registration from 09.30)

Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

Ticket/Entry details: Admission free, all welcome. No booking is necessary.

Medieval art and architecture are often misconceived as being governed by categories and boundaries, be it geographical, social, or artistic. This colloquium will aim to question and challenge these assumptions by highlighting the fluidity and flexibility extant within art and architecture at the time. Boundaries will be interpreted in the wider sense of the word, encompassing geographic location and artistic media as well as questions of in-betweenness and hybridity. The papers will explore the issue of the creation and articulation of boundaries, the question of the validity of scholarly categories, and how art ventured to transgress visual, architectural, and cultural divisions.

PROGRAMME

9.30-10.00:

10.00-10.10

10.10-10.30:

10.30-10.50:

10.50-11.10:

11.10-11.30:

11.30-12.00:

Registration

WELCOME

SESSION 1 – The Problem of Categories in Medieval Art and Architecture. Chair: Michaela Zöschg

Sophie Dentzer (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Beyond Geographical and Stylistic Boundaries: an Approach to the Study of English Decorative Vaulting

Dragoş Năstăsoiu (Central European University, Budapest):Transgressing Boundaries: Mural Painting in the Orthodox Churches of Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Transylvania

James Hillson (University of York): Architectural Interaction Post-Bony: Regions, Centres and Archetypes in the English Decorated Style

Discussion

Tea Break

12.00-12.20:

12.20-12.40:

12.40-13.00:

13.00-13.20:

13.20-14.30:

14.30-14.50:

14.50-15.10:

15.10-15.30:

15.30-15.50:

15.50-16.20:

16.20-16.40:

16.40-17.00:

17.00-17.20:

17.20 – 17.30

17.30

SESSION 2 – Transgression and Transition. Chair: Joost Joustra

Federica Gigante (The Warburg Institute and SOAS): Islamic Textile as Boundary in Fourteenth-Century Italian Art and Architecture

Veronica Dell’Agostino (La Sapienza, Rome): Ornamental Painting as Limit of the Painted Space: the Case of ‘San Pietro al Monte di Civate’ Fresco Fragments

Maria Alessia Rossi (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Inbetween Text and Image: the Case of Christ’s Miracle Cycle

Discussion

Lunch break (not provided)

SESSION 3 – Structures of Power. Chair: Maeve O’Donnell

Cristina Dagalita (University of Paris IV, Sorbonne): Illustrating Dissidence: the Fool among the Foolish Virgins

Antonino Tranchina (La Sapienza, Rome): Inscriptions at the Martorana in Palermo: Performing Monumental Speeches across Materials and Languages at the Times of Roger II

Karl Kinsella (Oxford University): Doors as Portals: Structures of Power in Anglo- Saxon Art

Discussion

Tea Break

SESSION 4 – The Visualisation of Marginality. Chair: Jack Hartnell

Monika Winiarczyk (University of Glasgow): Marginal and Intricate: Synagoga and the Medieval Christian Conception of Judaism

Andrea Mattiello (University of Birmingham): Katechoumena/gynaikites: Upper Galleries in Late Palaiologan Churches in Mystra

Niamh Bhalla (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Asserted Binaries and Ambiguous Borders: Gender and the Image of the Last Judgment in Byzantium

Closing Remarks (Dr Antony Eastmond, The Courtauld Institute of Art)

RECEPTION

Conference: The Paradigm of Vasari. Reception, Criticism, Perspectives

Conference: The Paradigm of Vasari. Reception, Criticism, Perspectives
Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence (Max-Planck-Institut)
14-16 February, 2014

Organized by Fabian Jonietz und Alessandro Nova

The ‘Lives’ of Giorgio Vasari, published in 1550 and 1568 respectively, must be acknowledged as an inevitable center of all European art-historiographical discourses of both the early modern period and modernity. As a purposeful continuation, implicit model of reference or counterpoint to new approaches, Vasari serves as paradigm not only to the older art historical writings; the theories, concepts, methods, aims and self-reflections of current studies of art history are also deeply linked to the model of the ‘Lives’. This conference reviews historical modes of the reception of Vasari, but asks likewise what relevance his concepts still hold for today’s interests of art historical studies, and whether the ‘Lives’ might open new perspectives for the future practice of art historiography.Programme PDF.

Call for Papers: Culture, Power and Identity in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Seminar is seeking proposals for panels on “Culture, Power and Identity in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean,” organized by Brian Catlos [Religious Studies CU Boulder/Humanities UC Santa Cruz] and Sergio La Porta (Armenian Studies, CSU Fresno) to be submitted for consideration for the annual meeting of the American Historical Association to be held January 2-5, 2015 in New York City.

Mediterranean Studies represents an approach that is transforming our view of the history of Pre-Modern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East by taking an inter-disciplinary and comparative approach to the history of the Medieval West (ie.: the area west of the Indus), by “provincializing” Europe, eschewing grand teleological narratives, and by interrogating essentializing categories that have dominated historical analysis when deployed uncritically and universally (e.g.: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Europe, Byzantium, the Near East…).

We are seeking proposals that focus on the intersection of culture, power and religious and ethnic identity, on communal relations, and/or on processes of acculturation, translatio, and conflict in the broader Mediterranean.

In principle we will propose two panels: “Ideals” and “Action” — the former focusing on the ideology of pre-Modern identity politics and its expression, and the latter on the outcomes of policy and practice in this regard.

Papers focusing on social, political and economic history are welcome, but we are particularly interested in papers that are interdisciplinary in nature and/or that focus on art history, musicology, architecture, philosophy, history of science and medicine, the construction of class and/or gender identity, material culture or literature, and/or that focus on traditionally understudied groups (e.g.: Berbers, Copts, Armenians) and/or that combine approaches or take a chronologically or regionally comparative approach.

Please submit a proposals for 20-minute papers to be presented in person to Brian Catlos (bcatlos@ucsc.edu) and Sergio La Porta (slaporta@csufresno.edu) on or before Thursday, February 6 for consideration. Include a 150-200 word abstract and a 2-page CV, and indicate whether you will need to request AV equipment, and put “AHA Proposal” in the subject line.

Call for Papers: Eating Anatolia: Remembered Histories and Forgotten Foods

Eating Anatolia: Remembered Histories and Forgotten Foods
Koç University Department of Archaeology and History of Art’s
2nd annual Graduate Student Symposium, May 3, 2014 in Istanbul.

“First we eat, then we do everything else.” MFK Fisher

Koç University’s department of Archaeology and History of Art is pleased to announce “Eating Anatolia: Remembered Histories and Forgotten Foods”. Few aspects of our shared human experience are more fundamental than food. The act of preparing, serving and eating food in both historic and contemporary contexts spans low and high culture, encompassing social and cultural practices. Food functions as utility and pleasure, exposing social dynamics between producers and consumers and the wealth of material and cultural references that can be drawn from these interactions. In its breadth and diversity, the topic presents a provocative opportunity to examine this most basic feature of history from a multi-disciplinary perspective, remembering that there is no single narrative to explain the story of food over time.

This symposium seeks to encourage a diverse range of perspectives and disciplines concerned with a span of topics, areas and periods as they relate to food and food production in Anatolia and its surrounding regions, including agriculture, feasting, cooking methods and technologies, and food culture manifested in migration and exchange. Fellow graduate students are encouraged to consider alternative perspectives and how they contribute to a richer understanding of food-related practices and implications in Anatolia from the earliest prehistory until the end of the Ottoman Empire. Anatolia and surrounding regions from prehistory to the end of the Ottoman Empire, suggested topics include:

– Food production & agriculture Domestication of crops and animals
– Wine & viticulture
– Tools & technologies
– Ingredients, recipes and diets
– Spices and their distribution
– Feasting & rituals
– Visual or textual representation of food
– Migration & trade
– Food as cultural heritage
– Architecture related to food production and distribution

Applicants should submit a 250-word abstract by February 14th, 2014 to: arhasymposium@gmail.com Graduate students from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.