Lecture: ‘Reflections on the Cushion Capital’ with Dr Richard Plant, Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) Annual Lecture, Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square Campus, 24th April 2023, 6.30pm-8.30pm (BST)

The cushion capital, in its simple form a cubing of the sphere, is a feature found in a number of areas of Europe. While the focus of this talk will be on England, the early development of this feature in the Holy Roman Empire will be addressed, as well as its broader geographical distribution, to parts of Italy as well as the British Isles. The means and reasons for this spread will be considered, as well as the question of the date of the first appearance of the capital in the British Isles. The way in which the capital was modified, through the addition of carving, stucco or paint, and the transformation of the capital into scalloped capitals and other variants will form the concluding part of the talk.

Dr Richard Plant is an architectural historian and lecturer specialising primarily in the Middle Ages He has taught at a number of institutions, and was Deputy Academic Director at Christie’s Education. He has published on English and German medieval architecture, and co-edited a number of volumes in the British Archaeological Association’s Romanesque series.

The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland is an internationally recognised project engaged in recording all the Romanesque sculpture produced and still surviving in these islands, making scholarly descriptions and photographs freely available on the web. It was founded as the initiative of former Courtauld Deputy Director George Zarnecki with the help and support of former Director Peter Lasko, its first chairman. It is supported by The British Academy.  Find out more: https://www.crsbi.ac.uk

Organised by the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, and by Dr Xavier Dectot, Dr Ron Baxter, and Dr Rose Walker. 

Find out more here and book your ticket using this link.

Hybrid Lecture: ‘Maintenance Work & the Long Life of Materials in Medieval Art’ with Dr Jessica Barker, University of York, King’s Manor, Tuesday 9 May 2023, 5.30pm (BST)

Find out more here.

Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute)

Historians have rarely worried about the maintenance of things and materials, leaving this apparently mundane problem to conservators. This overlooks the simple fact that, just as we are surrounded by objects that are scuffed, scratched, dirty, or worn, so people in the past were required to confront the gradual material deterioration of the things they encountered in their everyday life.

Works of art are not necessarily any less subject to the processes of physical decay than more prosaic objects, although their pristine presentation in museums today masks such material vulnerability.

Then, as now, slowing this process of deterioration could only be achieved through protective measures and regular maintenance. But whereas today this work typically takes place in the relative seclusion of the conservation studio, in the Middle Ages maintenance work often occurred in full public view, within the space of the church and sometimes even integrated into religious rituals.

In this lecture Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute) will explore an extraordinarily detailed set of maintenance instructions set down by an early sixteenth-century English bishop which offer a remarkable window onto the practicalities of historical conservation procedures, as well as metaphysical ideas about the transience of the material world.

Drawing out some of the key themes from this maintenance program (its ritual performance, its analogies with medicine, its philosophical stakes) and placing them in dialogue with surviving artworks, Dr Barker argue that maintenance work offers an instructive new perspective from which to consider the material turn, as well as a deeper point of connection between history, art history and conservation.

Further information about our speaker Dr Jessica Barker

Registration details

Location: Philip Rahtz Lecture Theatre, K/133, King’s Manor

Admission: Hybrid event – free lecture via eventbrite ticket or zoom registration.

Email: cms-office@york.ac.uk

Job: Full Professor of History of Art and Architecture (500-1500), Radboud University, deadline 2 May 2023

Are you an innovative, experienced and inspiring scholar in the field of the history of art and architecture between 500-1500? Do your research and teaching explore cross-cultural connections and expand or complicate the geographical and cultural boundaries of the ‘medieval’? As a full professor at Radboud University, you will join and lead a diverse group of dedicated scholars, shape the field of art and architectural history, and flourish in a friendly and vibrant academic community.

We warmly invite you to browse our vacancy and apply! You would preferably begin employment between 1 September 2023 and 1 January 2024.

Find out more and apply here.

Colloquium: Revisiting the Cloisters Cross: A One-day Colloquium, Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, London, Friday 12th May 2023, 10.30am-6.30pm (BST)

The Cloisters Cross is widely recognised as a masterpiece of late Romanesque art. Carved of walrus ivory, it appeared after World War II in a private collection and was subsequently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The earliest scholarly publications identified it as English, and that probably remains the majority opinion. However, over the years, other attributions have been suggested. What has become clear in the process is that the Cross merits study in the broad intellectual and artistic context of northern Europe, from the Ile de France up to Scandinavia, and England across to Germany.

This one-day colloquium, jointly held by the British Archaeological Association and The Courtauld, will review and extend the debates about the origins and history of the Cloisters Cross. Speakers include Charles T. Little, Sabrina Harcourt-Smith, Robyn Barrow, Miri Rubin, Neil Stratford, Cecily Hennessy and Sandy Heslop.

Organised by Cecily Hennessy and Sandy Heslop on behalf of the British Archaeological Association.

Registration cost includes lunch and refreshment

More information can be found here.

Purchase your tickets here.

Programme

10.30 to 11.00 Coffee and registration (Reception and Research Forum Seminar Room)

11.00-11.10 Welcome: John McNeill and Tom Nickson (Lecture Theatre 2) 

11.10-12.40 Session 1, Chair: Lloyd de Beer

Charles T. Little: ‘Through a glass darkly’: Seventy Years of Understanding and Misunderstanding the Cloisters Cross

Sabrina Harcourt-Smith: Reflections on the Cloisters Cross in a preaching context

12.40—1.40 Lunch (provided – Research Forum Seminar Room)

1.40-3.20 Session 2, Chair: Jessica Barker

Robyn Barrow: Split Tooth: The Cloisters Cross and the Walrus Tusk

Neil Stratford: The British Museum and the Cloisters Cross

Miri Rubin: ‘Synagoga, agnus dei’ and the Cloisters Cross

3.20-3.40 Tea break (Research Forum Seminar Room)

3.40-5.10 Session 3: Chair: Richard Plant

Cecily Hennessy: The Cloisters Cross and the Sphere of Henry the Lion and Matilda of England

Sandy Heslop: The Oslo Corpus and the Cloisters Cross Revisited

5.10-5:40 Final Discussion

5.40-6.30 Drinks (Research Forum Seminar Room – generously supported by Sam Fogg)

Online Lecture: ‘Chôra and the Creation of Sacred Space in Byzantine Architecture’ with Jelena Bogdanović, Thursday 30 March 2023, 12pm (EDT)

Thursday, March 30, 2023 | 12:00 PM EDT | Zoom

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.

Can we talk about Byzantine architecture beyond buildings? What is at stake?

This presentation engages with the scholarly opportunities for theoretical considerations of sacred architecture in light of Byzantine intellectual and creative practices. Primarily focusing on principles of architectural design, sacred space is highlighted here not as an abstract category nor as a specific sacred place or location but rather as a combination of the two. As such, sacred space points to a historical and evocative locale and associated events; yet it remains inseparable from its essential qualities. By revisiting the architectural design of Byzantine churches, this talk will demonstrate the meaningful relations between created sacred space and the faithful, between physical objects in space, and the significance of non-material aspects of built structures in communicating the vitality of architectural form as a kind of participatory icon of space. Especially important is the philosophically and architecturally suggestive concept of chôra (χώρα) and its cognate hypodochē (υποδοχή), originally introduced by Plato in his instrumental text Timaeus. This presentation will analyze the relevance of chôra and hypodochē for understanding the modes of creation of sacred space and religious architecture in the late antique and Byzantine Mediterranean.

Jelena Bogdanović (Ph.D. Princeton University) is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. She studies cross-cultural and religious themes in the architecture of the Balkans and Mediterranean.

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/chora-and-the-creation-of-sacred-space

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Online Lecture: ‘Divine King or Sacrilegious Upstart? The Portrait of Emperor Yǝkunno Amlak in Gännätä Maryam’ with Jacopo Gnisci, Tuesday 21 March 2023,12:00pm (EDT)

East of Byzantium is pleased to announce the next lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.

In the third quarter of the thirteenth century Yǝkunno Amlak led a rebellion against the Zagwes – a line of Christian rulers who had been in control of most of the Empire of Ethiopia since at least the first half of the twelfth century. He initiated a line that would rule the country until the twentieth century: the Solomonic dynasty. Apart from these general facts, we know relatively little about the life of the first emperor of this dynasty. In this paper I hope to further our understanding of Yǝkunno Amlak’s reign and visual strategies by focusing on his only known contemporary portrait in the church of Gännätä Maryam. By analysing this image in its wider setting, I aim to shed some light on its socio-political background and reflect on the reactions it might have triggered.

Jacopo Gnisci is a Lecturer in the Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at University College London and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the America at the British Museum. He is the co-Principal Investigator of the projects Demarginalizing medieval Africa: Images, texts, and identity in early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270-1527) (AHRC Grant Ref. no. AH/V002910/1; DFG Projektnummer 448410109) and Material Migrations: Mamluk Metalwork across Afro-Eurasia (Gerda Henkel Stiftung).

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

An East of Byzantium lecture. EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center that explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 49th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, deadline 3 April 2023

As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 49th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference to be held at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, October 26–29, 2023. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

The conference will be in-person only.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is April 3, 2023.

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. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement. Participants must participant in the conference in-person to receive funding. The Mary Jaharis Center regrets that it cannot reimburse participants who have last-minute cancellations and are unable to attend the conference.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/49th-bsc.

Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

CFP: ‘Visualizing Drugs & Dyes: Art & Pharmacology in (Early) Medieval Worlds (600–1400)’ conference at Basel University, deadline 2 April 2023

International Conference, Basel University, 4-6 September 2023

Organized by:

  • Theresa Holler (Basel University)
  • Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut/Berlin)
  • Andrew Griebeler (Princeton University)

Plants have long shaped the material practice and imagination of pharmacy. Far more than animals or minerals, plants and their products were central to medicine in premodern epistemologies. Over centuries, images and imaginings of vegetal materia medica played a profound role in human conceptions of and interactions with the natural world. In many ways, they continue to do so. Conversely, the therapeutic efficacy of plants and their products impacted broader visual and material cultures and practices. Thus, premodern pharmacological techniques interacted with the practices of image-making, artistic processes, and art.

Notwithstanding this close, underlying relationship between art and pharmacology in surviving medieval texts on healing and pharmacy produced between the 7th- 14th century, visualizations of medical substances have not yet sufficiently been the focus of art historical studies. Images of plants and their pigments and dyes, invite further investigations into their epistemic status as well as their therapeutic, and mimetic capacities. What forms of knowledge do these images, materials, and substances provide? What audiences do they address? How can they be situated, between the practices and interests of scribes/painters, scholars, nuns and monks, physicians, apothecaries, gardeners, rhizotomes, and also readers – while taking into consideration the changing status of these human actors across society, gender, time, and space? What can such images, materials, and substances tell us about the interconnections between human and vegetal worlds? What role do colors, pigments and dyes, scent or the incorporation of prayers and charms play in the creation of images of healing? Moreover, how does medicinal, pharmacological or toxicological, plant-related knowledge circulate across vast (plant) geographies? The conference wants to connect the representations of simplicia such as ginger, plantain, pennyroyal, saffron, artemisia, liquorice, or strawberry from cities, rural communities, courts, and religious congregations in the Indo-Pacific, the so-called Levant, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Medieval West.

Visualizing Drugs & Dyes seeks a dialogue among scholars engaged in the history of science, literary studies, history of medicine, art history, and the burgeoning field of plant studies and related disciplines. We welcome papers from all geographical regions, within a premodern, medieval timeframe. We are particularly interested in studies focused on before 1200. We invite contributions which might relate, but are not be limited, to the following topics:

• Pharmacological geographies in early medieval worlds
• Circulation of materia medica and economic history
• Drugs & dyes and transmitting knowledge
• Color and medicine
• Taxonomies
• Drugs & dyes in poetry and literature
• Nomenclature and translations
• The aesthetics of plants and of medicinal substances
• Painting/writing and healing
• Mimesis in medical practice
• Interconnections between human and vegetal worlds

Abstracts for 30-minute papers (max 2000 characters including spaces), together with a brief biography (max 1500 characters including spaces) should be submitted to: Theresa Holler (theresa.holler@unibas.ch). Travel expenses (up to 400CHF) and accommodation costs will be covered. The event will by hybrid and we accept online participation, please indicate whether you wish to attend remotely. More information here.

Abstracts’ language accepted: English, German, Italian, French, Spanish

Call for Journal submissions: ‘De coloribus: Material, Symbolic and Social Crossroads of Medieval and Renaissance Painting’, Dossier CAIANA #23, deadline 29 May 2023

Coordinators: Nadia Mariana Consiglieri (Universidad de Buenos Aires – Universidad Nacional de las Artes- CONICET, Argentina); and María Cristina Correia Leandro Pereira (Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil)

Colour, both in its material and light dimensions, played a leading role in Medieval and Renaissance visual culture. Taking part in altarpieces, sculptures, architecture, tapestries, wall paintings and illuminated manuscripts, colour embraced multiple variants. Likewise, the translucent, ethereal but also brilliant and changing tones of enameled pieces and goldsmiths, gems, mosaics and stained glasses acquired an equally vital importance. Far from the imaginaries built during the nineteenth century about a Middle Ages plunged into dark and monochromatic grey buildings, the language of colour and light was a constant factor in the visual cultures of this period. Since the last decades of the past twentieth century, the investigations of Michel Pastoureau reconsidered colour as an object of historical study plausible itself to be approached as a visual code from its multiple symbolic, social, cultural and religious dimensions. Moreover, Herbert L. Kessler stressed the dynamic and material performance of colours and Jean- Claude Bonne emphasized their diverse roles within ornamentation. In addition, specific investigations began to be carried out on typologies, modes of application and commercial routes of pigments used for the production of illuminated manuscripts, as well as collective studies on the diversity of techniques and the relationships between makers and patrons.

This dossier aims to open a new field of debate on the ways in which colour appears and acts on pictorial surfaces of different images, objects, devices and spaces produced between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Within this broad temporal spectrum, it is not intended to focus only on the Medieval and Renaissance West, but also on chromatic objectualities from the East and from groups considered the “otherness” from Western Christianity perspective, in order to rethink the diversity of processes, exchanges, assimilations and overlaps. How did colours circulate in their different versions? ; how were material and symbolic exchange networks woven?; what were the roles of the itinerant and permanent painters, circles and workshops of artisans?; how did the technical and material knowledge of colour spread among them?; how did patrons and receivers interact?; what iconographic and ornamental relationships can engage colours with images?

We invite to submit papers related at least to one of the following topics:

  1. Qualities of pictorial matter: diversity of supports, pigments, materials and techniques. Plurality of materials as interaction devices with the pictorial surface: pastiglia reliefs, use of gold leaf, etc.
  2. Painting and praxis: recipe books, treatises and model compilation notebooks.
  3. Medieval theories on colour, light, materiality and their symbolic dimensions.
  4. The roles of artisans and patrons: miniaturists, painters and enamellers’ ways of making. From monastic environments to secular workshops. Regulations, the action of guilds, contracts.
  5. Reception and agency of the pictorial matter: changes, interventions, damages, outrages.
  6. Iconographic, constructive, syntactic, symbolic, aesthetic and rhythmic roles of ornamentation.
  7. The pictorial materiality in objects and Islamic environments: their interactions with the Christian sphere.
  8. Details and features in Medieval and Renaissance pictorial works (paintings, illuminated manuscripts) belonging to the Latin American artistic heritage. Collecting, museographical links and historiographical perspectives.

Find out more here.

ABOUT THE SUBMISSIONS


Articles must be original and not be simultaneously evaluated by other publications. To be submitted to peer review modality, the articles must be sent to the email: revistacaiana@gmail.com, indicating in the subject: “LAST NAME_Dossier caiana #23”

Deadline for papers submission: May 29, 2023.

Issue publication date: November – December, 2023.

CAIANA is indexed in the catalog of the Latindex information system, the European Reference Index for Humanities (ERIH PLUS) and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journal).

Papers must comply with the publishing standards of the journal: Normas para la publicación – Caiana

CFP: ‘En femenino: Art and Women in the Middle Ages’, XVI Jornadas Complutenses de Arte Medieval, deadline 30 April 2023

During the last decades, references to women’s participation in medieval artistic processes have ceased to be the story of an absence. Similarly, studies of medieval female iconography have transcended their mere representation as wives, mothers, lovers, sinners and sin-inducers, or nuns. Throughout the Middle Ages, women projected, enjoyed and created art; there is no doubt about it. An increasing number of works focus on female patronage, sometimes shared with her husband but often practised autonomously and with incalculable value as a self-affirmation mechanism. Other proposals highlight female identities hidden among the list of male practitioners of any of the arts or give names to faces represented in sacred and profane episodes. Through the testimonies of material and visual culture linked to women, social realities different from the power relations established in those times are being outlined more straightforwardly and precisely. Even so, artistic studies still lag behind those focused on other disciplines such as history, philosophy or literature.

In its sixteenth edition, the Conference will be devoted to highlighting the role of Women in medieval artistic creation. This role will be understood in the broadest possible way: from patronage to creation and reception, as a channel for power strategies, a transmitter of science or a generator of specific iconographic types, regardless of their active or passive role in all this creative dynamic. Women and Gender will serve as the priority vectors to articulate the scientific content of Conference sessions.

We invite the academic community to submit abstracts in Spanish, English, Italian and French consisting of a 500 words summary highlighting the innovative nature of the paper together with the chosen session and a brief curriculum vitae (max. 300 words) before the 30th of April 2023 to the following address: enfemenino@ucm.es

Proposed topics:
● Women and artistic creation: artists, trades, textiles
● Depictions and portraits, identity
● Female spaces and architecture
● Art and female spirituality
● Patronage and Memory management
● Costume and textile trade
● Cross-cutting gender issues: prostitution, transsexuality, marginalisation, otherness, old-age
● Science, techné, art and women

Confirmed keynote speakers: Verónica Abenza (UCM), Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute of Art), Bárbara Boloix (Universidad de Granada), Irene González (UCM), Jitske Jasperse (CCHS-CSIC), Elizabeth L’Estrange (University of Birmingham), Diana Lucía (UCM), Therese Martin (CCHS-CSIC), Ana Maria Rodrigues (Universidade de Lisboa), and Marta Poza (UCM).

The organising committee shall acknowledge receipt of submissions and select those considered most closely aligned with the meeting objectives, responding before the 25th of May. Following peer review, these will be published in a monograph.

Scientific-organising Committee: Marta Poza, Elena Paulino, Laura Rodríguez, Alexandra Uscatescu, Irene González, Diana Lucía, Diana Olivares, Verónica Abenza, Ángel Fuentes and Alba García-Monteavaro.

More information: https://www.ucm.es/historiadelarte/en-femenino