Medieval Art Research

Call for Papers: Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World 1100 – 1600 (London 2014)

Call for Papers
Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World 1100 – 1600
London, Queen Mary, University of London, September 8-9, 2014
Deadline: 21 February 2014

The Leverhulme Network ‘Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World’ aims to promote comparative, cross-disciplinary scholarship on Islamic and European cartography by bringing together experts in these two fields for a two-day symposium to be held at Queen Mary, University of London, on September 8-9, 2014. Participants are invited to explore moments of contact between traditions (e.g. twelfth-century Spain; the court of Roger II of Sicily; fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian cartography; Piri Reis and post-Columban cartography of the early sixteenth century) as well as differences and divergences. Reflections on the methodology of the comparative study of maps are also welcome.

Papers may wish to address some of the following topics, but need not be restricted to them:

the contexts – material, political, spiritual, artistic – of mapmaking in Europe and the Islamic world
audiences for maps; ‘cartographic literacy’
interactions between European and Islamic mapmaking: exchange, influence, borrowing
reception of classical texts, e.g. Ptolemy’s Geographia/Jugrafiya
patronage
the cartography of al-Idrisi
nautical mapmaking in the Mediterranean
cartography in the Ottoman empire (up to c. 1600)
comparative histories of cartography

Please send proposals consisting of an abstract of c. 300-500 words for 20-minute papers to Matthew Champion (m.s.champion@qmul.ac.uk) by February 21, 2014. Proposals are encouraged from doctoral students, early-career and established scholars, and travel and accommodation for speakers will be funded.

On behalf of the conference convenors:
Alfred Hiatt (a.hiatt@qmul.ac.uk)
Jerry Brotton (j.r.brotton@qmul.ac.uk)
Yossi Rapoport (y.rapoport@qmul.ac.uk)

Newly revealed Tudor wall paintings now on view in Welsh church

The first stage of revealing the magnificent wall paintings at Llancarfan church in the Vale of Glamorgan is complete, and for the first time these important discoveries are available for viewing by the general public. A video showing these discoveries is available from the BBC.

Discovered only in 2007, these paintings have been painstakingly uncovered by the gradual removal of the limewash coating. They show a dynamic St. George saving the princess from the dragon, a full tableaux of the Seven Deadly Sins, and a youth being led by Death. They show the surprising vivacity and subtlety in late medieval British wall painting.

This is one of the most important finds in British wall paintings in many years, and present a challenge to show how our contemporary conservation attitudes can preserve them, after the disasters of both the repaintings of the nineteenth-century and the occasionally even more destructive techniques of the 1950s and 60s.

The church also recently conserved its wooden reredos, also preserving its subtle polychromy.

See more images of the splendid wall paintings in this excellent Flickr set by Nick Kaye.

Call for Papers: Looking for Leisure. Court Residences and their Satellites, 1400-1700 (Prague 2014)

Call for Papers:
Looking for Leisure Court Residences and their Satellites, 1400-1700
Prague, June 5 – 07, 2014
Deadline: Jan 31, 2014
Website: http://www.courtresidences.eu/index.php/events/workshops-and-colloquia/Prague2014/

This PALATIUM conference draws attention to small buildings in residential complexes – small in size but not in importance – which were meant only for temporary, seasonal use, unlike the permanent use
of the main palace. The role of the palazotto (‘small palace’) was to be a place of rest, leisure and repose, but sometimes it also took on a representative role similar to the main palace. As these ‘satellites’
were usually new buildings rather than rebuilt older structures, they offer a much clearer view of the incentives, intentions and concepts of the clients and can be regarded as ideal models, or miniatures, of the main palace.
This colloquium will study the relationship of the satellite to the palace and examine its function as pendant but also as counterpart or even opposite to large palatial buildings. The small palace usually made it possible to develop certain ideological and spiritual programmes that would have been difficult to achieve within the large palace. Only residential complexes that contained not just the main palace but also the palazotto, aspired to create symbolic images of the universe, the earthly paradise. There was a ‘dialectic unity’ between the main palace as the permanent residence and the smaller, temporary and occasional house; the existence of a palazotto constituted an ‘added value’ to the actual residence, the palatium.

Papers may address one or more of the following themes:

1. From Solitude and Buen Retiro to Mon-plaisir and Sans-souci:Exploring the theory of the architecture of leisure within the palace
2. Tradition and modernity: Defining the palazotto as a spatial and functional type from the late middle ages to the early modern period
3. Decorating the architecture of leisure: Interpreting the satellite’s decor between politics and nature
4. The palazotto in context: Exploring the role of the satellite in the grand design of the residence and its gardens

This colloquium is organized by the European Science Foundation Research Networking Programme “PALATIUM. Court Residences as Places of Exchange in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1400-1700)”, in collaboration with the Institute of Art History (IAH) of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and with Masaryk University Brno.

Detailed application modalities can be found here.

Call for Papers: Emblems and Enigma: the Heraldic Imagination (London 2014)

Call for Papers:
Emblems and Enigma: the Heraldic Imagination
An Interdisciplinary Symposium at the Society of Antiquaries of London
London, Burlington House, April 26, 2014
Deadline: Jan 10, 2014
Conference website: http://heraldics2014.wordpress.com

‘Time has transfigured them into / Untruth’ (Philip Larkin)

In his 1844 short story ‘Earth’s Holocaust’, Nathaniel Hawthorne sees heraldic signs reaching ‘like lines of light’ into the past, but also as encrypted and obsolete. Proliferating and arcane, unique, ubiquitous, and inscrutable, the heraldic has been a major presence across the arts since medieval times; yet it remains, culturally and
critically, enigmatic. The organisers of this interdisciplinary symposium, Professor Fiona Robertson (St Mary’s University College) and Dr Peter Lindfield (University of St Andrews) invite proposals for twenty-minute papers on any aspect of the employment and perception of the heraldic in literature, history, art, architecture, design, fashion, and contemporary and historical practice. The programme will include a keynote address by Professor Vaughan Hart (University of Bath); a special session on the heraldry of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill and William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey; and papers on eighteenth-century antiquaries’ exploration of the heraldic, and on heraldry in nineteenth-century British and American literature.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

– the languages and grammar of heraldry
– armoiries parlantes, allusions and puns
– imaginary and fantastical heraldry
– decoration and display
– blazonry and identity: nations, groups, individuals
– mock- and sham-heraldics; parody and subversion
– practices of memory and memorialisation
– history, development, and modern practice
– blazon and the body
– heraldic revivalism; medievalism; romance
– enigma, error, and absence: the bar sinister and the blank shield
– individual designers, writers, and collectors
– gendered identity
– hierarchies of signs
– international and interdisciplinary perspectives

Proposals of 200 words should be sent to heraldics2014@gmail.com by 10
January 2014.

Fiona Robertson and Peter Lindfield plan to edit a collection of essays
arising from the symposium.

Television review: Tudor Monastery Farm

Currently airing on BBC Two is Tudor Monastery Farm, a rather gentle, post-reality-era bit of television, continuing the popular franchise of Victorian, Edwardian and Wartime Farm. Although a little guilty of choosing the National Curriculum-friendly “Tudor” label over “Medieval” (admittedly however, Late Middle Ages Farm or Circa Fifteen-Hundred Farm lack a certain marketability), it remains a rather interesting little programme for a Medievalist Art Historian to have a look at on the iPlayer.

Unlike the modern-era Farms, authentic-looking locations are tougher to find. Mostly it is filmed at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Sussex, a collection of relocated historic vernacular buildings that has a hyperreal theme-park fantasy feel of a Tudor Westworld. The Monastery itself is Downside Abbey in Somerset, a post-Reformation foundation of a Catholic Benedictine community with a spectacular (although unfinished) Gothic Revival church of 1882-1925. Perhaps as a concession to its post-Harry Potter magic, there is much filming of mysterious monkish goings-on in the cloisters of a former medieval abbey, Gloucester Cathedral.

St Teilo's church, Welsh National History Museum. (picture by Jacqueline Sheldon) — St Teilo’s church, Welsh National History Museum. (picture by Jacqueline Sheldon)

Finally, there is the reconstructed church of St. Teilo at St Fagans National History Museum near Cardiff, which after being moved had a full cycle of wall paintings reinstated, which while helpful in conveying both the gaudiness and crowded imagery of a late medieval church, it is ultimately a rather strangely sanitised facsimile.

Peter Ginn makes a wattle fence with a "Tudor fence expert" (inset, detail from Robert Campin's Seilern Triptych) — Peter Ginn makes a wattle fence with a “Tudor fence expert” (inset, detail from Robert Campin’s Seilern Triptych)

Joining the established presenter Ruth Goodman and stalwart from Victorian Farm Peter Ginn is the excellently-named Tom Pinfold, and together they demonstrate farming, cooking and craft processes, as well as taking part in the ritual of the late medieval Catholic church. In some ways, the programme is more interesting for an art historian to watch than the many medieval art programmes aired on BBC Four in the past decade (increasingly predictably hosted by Dr Janina Ramirez). For instance, making a wattle fence immediately reminds one of its depiction in medieval art, such as in the Seilern Triptych by Robert Campin in the Courtauld gallery, and the process of bell-founding of the stained glass window donated by that profession’s guild to the Cathedral of York Minster in the fourteenth century. The re-enactment of Christian rituals such as holy loaf and lay-led Palm Sunday processions, partway between Church and folk tradition, are also a lot of fun to see. All is done in good Blue Peter-fun with pristine make-up throughout: no diary-room style “I can’t stand another day on the Monastery Farm!” angst here, thankfully.

Tom Pinfold tries his hand at bell-making. Inset, the fourteenth-century Bell Founders' window at York Minster. — Tom Pinfold tries his hand at bell-making. Inset, the fourteenth-century Bell Founders’ window at York Minster.

It is somewhat surprising to see such a jolly evocation of a pre-Reformation Merrie England on the BBC at the moment. Recently, with Diarmaid MacCulloch’s documentary on Thomas Cromwell and Melyvn Bragg on William Tyndale, the BBC seems to have been rather consistently painting the sixteenth century as the point when the intellectual glory of the English Renaissance swept away broken old Catholic England and its greedy monasteries. After seeing Diarmaid stand in the ruins of Hailes Abbey trying to convince us that its destruction was “a good thing” it is welcoming to see Tudor Monastery Farm as showing life under a monastery in late Medieval England as a happily functioning society rather than rotten and awaiting Dissolution. But then, we still have three episodes to go…

Tudor Monastery Farm is airing at 21:00 on BBC Two. The whole series is currently available on series catch up on the BBC iPlayer until one week after the last episode, i.e.: until the 25^th December.

Publication News: New Issue of Journal of Art Historiography

Number 9 of the Journal of Art Historiography is online! Of particular interest to the medieval art researcher is this issue’s focus on Travelling Artists in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, as well as a review of the 2012 publication Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Therese Martin. See below for links to these contributions. In order to access all content of the journal’s new issue, please click here.

Travelling Artists in Medieval and Renaissance Europe:
Sandra Cardarelli, ‘Travelling Artists in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: An Introduction’ (PDF)
Sandra Cardarelli, ‘Antonio Ghini and Andrea di Francesco Guardi: Two 15^th-century Tuscan Artists in the Service of Local Governments’ (PDF)
Katja Fält, ‘Locality, nation and the ‘primitive’ – notions about the identities of late medieval non-professional wall painters in Finnish historiography from 1880 to 1940’ (PDF)
Michelle Moseley-Christian, ‘Confluence of Costume, Cartography and Early Modern European Chorography’ (PDF)
Cinzia Maria Sicca, ‘Vasari’s Vite and Italian artists in sixteenth-century England’ (PDF)

Review:

Kathryn A. Smith, ‘Medieval women are “good to think’ with”. Review of: Therese Martin, ed., Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, Visualising the Middle Ages, volume 7, 2 vols, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012, 1, 280 pp., 287 b&w illustrations, 32 colour plates, ISBN: 978-90-04-18555-5 (hardback), E-ISBN: 978-90-04-22832-0, Euro 215.00 / US$ 299.00. (PDF)

Forthcoming Exhibition: Charlemagne. Power, Art and Treasure (Aachen 2014)

Forthcoming Exhibition:
Charlemagne. Power, Art and Treasure
Aachen, 20 June – 21 September 2014

Charlemagne died in Aachen on 28 January 814. 1200 years later, the City of Aachen will be putting on three special exhibitions on the life and works of this legendary Emperor of the Francs. Under the title “Charlemagne. Power, Art and Treasure”, the three exhibitions will run from 20 June to 21 September 2014 as part of the “Year of Charlemagne” celebrations. At three different locations within the boundaries of the former imperial palace, they will offer visitors the chance to see artistic masterpieces from Charlemagne’s court workshops, medieval church treasure, and a cultural history presentation on Charlemagne’s seats of power.

In the former King’s Hall, today’s Town Hall, the focus will be on Charlemagne’s palaces. Visitors will learn about courtly life in Carolingian times. The exhibition will portray how the king and military leader Charlemagne travelled from palace to palace and will display archaeological and cultural-historical evidence to outline the basis of his reign. It will illustrate what power meant in those days, and will trace the boundaries between historical fact and the myth of Charlemagne, a myth to which Aachen owes its status as the birthplace of modern Europe.

In the Centre Charlemagne, a new museum located at the heart of his original palace and due to open its doors in early 2014, visitors will be able to marvel at works of art from Charlemagne’s “Palatine School of Aachen”. Here, choice exhibits will offer an insight into the golden age of Carolingian culture. After centuries of being scattered all over Europe, priceless manuscripts, ivory carvings and goldsmith’s works originating from Charlemagne’s workshops in Aachen will once more be reunited in the Centre Charlemagne.

The Cathedral Treasury will not only be exhibiting the most important pieces from its own church treasure. For the exhibition, curator Georg Minkenberg will be bringing back to Aachen precious objects from the church treasures of Carolingian and medieval times, objects which originally belonged to the Aachen Cathedral Treasury but which fell into other hands in the course of history. The selection of sacred works of art will even feature objects said to be from Charlemagne’s grave.

Information and contact: http://www.charlemagne2014.eu

Call for Papers: Embodied Identities: Figural and Symbolic Representation of the Self in Anatolia (Istanbul 2014)

Call for Papers:
Embodied Identities: Figural and Symbolic Representation of the Self in Anatolia
Istanbul, 7-8 June 2014
Deadline: Feb 10 2014

This two-day workshop will be hosted at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Koç University, in Taksim. The organizers invite the submission of abstracts presenting excavation data relating to identity, territoriality and artistic expression of Anatolian personalities or groups, as well as investigations into the creation and manipulation of identity through material culture. The focus of the first day will be on theoretical and methodological approaches to identity in prehistoric Anatolia, while the second day will be open to papers concerning identity and self at any time period in Anatolian studies.

The main objective of the workshop is to investigate the embodiment of identity markers in literal and representative media; such as mortuary practices, personalization of tools, location of petroglyphs, and changing contexts of settlement planning. The archaeological focus of this workshop will enhance our perspectives on the relations between the self-determination of ancient Anatolians and their material context in Anatolia.

Abstracts of 300 words or fewer should be sent to ehughes@ku.edu.tr no later than midnight on February 10, 2014.

Call for Journal Submissions: “Cultural Heritage” (Middle East – Topics & Arguments)

Call for Journal Submissions: “Cultural Heritage”
Journal: Middle East – Topics & Arguments
Deadline: January 15 2014

The peer-reviewed online journal “Middle East – Topics & Arguments” is calling for papers for its next issue to appear in November 2014.

In order to bridge the gap between ancient and modern Near Eastern studies, the issue will deal with the tangible and intangible “cultural heritage” of the Near and Middle East, and its treatment from the invention of writing (or even before) until the modern era.

We are happy to accept articles from a broad array of disciplines which involve the Near and Middle East, including cultural studies, archeology, history, philology, anthropology, literature studies, sociology, political science, and economics. With regard to the interdisciplinary and debate-oriented culture of META, innovative approaches and controversial hypotheses are particularly welcome.

For more detailed information on the topic see http://www.meta-journal.net/announcement
Aims and scope of the journal are explained on http://meta-journal.net/about

Call for Papers: Galloping History (Ankara, 2014)

Call for Papers: Galloping History
Ankara, 16-19 April 2014
Deadline: Dec 20, 2013

There would hardly be any exaggeration in assuming that horses have been one of the most important companions to humankind since the development of civilized societies. Horses and equine culture have played great many roles in almost all historical epochs. Thus, historical inquiry has encountered this phenomenon in a diverse spectrum of fields, including but not limited to military, social, economic, cultural, and literary aspects of human life and its historical evolution. However, since the Industrial Revolution and the technological progress it brought about, especially in transportation, horses and equine culture gradually digressed from the realm of everyday life. The perception of horses and the culture associated with an interest in horses in the contemporary world, as being distinctive of a certain socio-economic class, undermines the true significance of humankind’s relationship with these animals.

For the purpose of elucidating this point, I. D. Bilkent University Department of History and Bilkent Historical Society, are jointly organizing a symposium entitled “Galloping History,” whose scholarly framework utilizes “horses” and “equine culture”. The panels to take place on the 17th and 18th of April, will specifically focus on “horses” and “equine culture” in Ottoman, European and American History. Researchers in the field, graduate students of all levels and history
enthusiasts are welcome to submit abstracts, to be evaluated by a board comprising of the Department of History faculty.

Galloping History Symposium welcomes abstracts that relate to the history of horses and equine culture, irrespective of any topic and field of study, so long as they have an Ottoman, European and/or American focus. The organisation committee welcomes history papers borrowing from various fields, related but not limited to:

– Socio-economic, military, diplomatic, cultural history
– Sociology
– Literature
– Art History
– Anthropology
– Philosophy
– Psychology
– Media, Modern Art
– Social and daily life

Abstract submissions are accepted either in Turkish or English. There
will be no simultaneous translation service. Abstracts of no more than
350 words should be sent to gallopinghistory@gmail.com, accompanied by
a short biographical note, no later than December 20, 2013.

During the course of the four-day-long event, all expenses at I.D. Bilkent University (accommodation and meals) will be covered but the participants are otherwise responsible for their own travel expenses. The finalized schedule of events and panels, will be shared with the
participants soon after the evaluation of abstracts is completed.

For further information and questions, please contact: gallopinghistory@gmail.com