During the reigns of Kings Charles V (1364-1380) and Charles VI (1380-1422), the arts flourished in France, particularly in court circles. The sculptures, precious objects and manuscripts of this period still fascinate us. But how did the aristocrats of the time view these stunning creations? Careful reading of the most important historical works of the time – the famous chronicles of Jean Froissart, the official account of the reign of Charles VI written by the monk Michel Pintoin, the Grandes Chroniques de France – offers answers to this question. These privileged witnesses tell us that princes and nobles gave more importance and attention to goldsmiths, textiles and tapestries than to painting or sculpture, reveal the taste for multi-sensory spectacles, show the complicity of powerful people who adored what was rare and exotic, and show us how the arts were at the heart of social relations but also the object of a true aesthetic pleasure. A detailed analysis of the chroniclers’ texts and their words provides access to the representations and reveals the practices, expectations and hierarchies of the French elites in the 14th and 15th centuries. This book thus makes a contribution to the history of the reception of the arts at a key period in their history, but also outlines a protohistory of the discourse on the arts north of the Alps and sheds light on the values and customs of the nobility at the end of the Middle Ages.
Call for Papers: ‘Burgundian Sculpture of the 15th Century’, 11-13 December 2023 (Deadline 1 February 2023)
Our knowledge about sculpture in France during the long 15th century, from the International Gothic period to the early Renaissance, is in a paradoxical situation. It has been enriched by numerous studies over the last few decades, which have focused on certain issues such as the artists and the centers or regions of production, on the most significant building sites, on the commissioners, on certain forms and iconographies, not to mention the materials and techniques. All these works have underlined, if it were necessary, the dynamism and the quality of the sculpted production of the last century of the Middle Ages in the kingdom of France and, within it, particularly in the Burgundian artistic center. The product of a dense network of artists and patrons, the sculptural production of the areas under the rule of the Valois princes of Burgundy from Philip the Bold (1347-1404) to their distant imperial heirs at the beginning of the sixteenth century has long attracted the attention of art historians, who have recognized it as a veritable “melting-pot” of late medieval French and European sculpture.
However, since the works of Louis Courajod (1841-1896), André Michel (1853-1925), Paul Vitry (1872-1941), Marcel Aubert (1884-1962) or Pierre Quarré (1909-1980), the narratives of Art History have not changed much about this production: they remain structured by the artistic personalities of the sculptors of the ducal workshop (Claus Sluter, Claus de Werve, Jean de La Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier) and continue to relay the same clichés on the animated and generous draperies, supposed to give way to those of the Loire détente, which, itself, prepares the field for the innovations of the Renaissance. On closer inspection, however, numerous works of art as well as documentary sources come up frequently and persistently in contradiction with such narratives. These narratives born with the great syntheses of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the territories remained less well known than they are today, still weighs heavily on our views about 15th-century Burgundian sculpture.
This history, as it is told, is the product of ideological configurations rooted in a specific period. It has already been emphasized, but it has been less often noticed that it has made any real reappraisal of this production difficult. When André Chastel (1912-1990) makes of the art of the 15th century a milestone in the progressive constitution of a “French taste”, of a “French manner” (put in parallel with the march towards the political unification of the kingdom, scandalized by the heroic ride of Joan of Arc until 1431 then the integration of Aquitaine in 1453, Burgundy in 1477, Anjou in 1481, Provence in 1487, Brittany in 1521 or Bourbonnais in 1531), this historiographic construction is based primarily on the study of architecture and painting in its various forms rather than on sculpture, which is only marginally used. Louis Courajod had previously called upon this sculpture, but essentially to make it the vector of a northern baptism of French art, to counteract the influences, deemed as deleterious, of southern Latinity.
It is the whole of these accounts that the present colloquium wants to put back on the workbench. A partnership between the University of Burgundy, the University of Franche-Comté, the University of Lausanne and the Louvre Museum, led to a collective reflection undertaken since 2021 on 15th century Burgundian sculpture. This research program has already given rise to a meeting, held in Lausanne in May 2022, devoted more specifically to the European influence of this sculpture, its sources as well as its receptions. The colloquium to be held in Dijon from Monday, December 11 to Wednesday, December 13, 2023, will aim to extend this discussion by addressing the various aspects raised by this remarkable heritage: its historiographical stakes for the history of Art History as a discipline; the way in which recent discoveries and works have recently contributed to reconfiguring ancient narratives; the methodological questions raised by the willing to attach specific artworks to the great documented figures; the rethought insertion of this production into the strictly sculptural, and then more broadly artistic, panorama of the kingdom in the late Middle Ages; the phenomena of coexistence, resistance and local idiosyncrasies perceptible in the territory, notably in its vernacular production, such as the paradox (and not the least) of the numerically very reduced reception of the art of Claus Sluter, who nevertheless became a tutelary figure of Burgundian sculpture; in this respect, the way in which the geographical and political singularity of the division between the lands “de par-deçà” (Burgundy and the geographically French Franche-Comté) and the territory of et “de par-delà” (the Southern Netherlands) was taken into account to understand the building up of a specific style. We hope, on the occasion of this symposium, to bring out new works, new sculpted ensembles hitherto ignored or poorly taken into consideration by critics, as we wish to benefit from the most recent works devoted to the materials and techniques of this sculpture.
This symposium is directly linked to the project of a major exhibition to be held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon in 2026 and which will be devoted to Burgundian sculpture from the 15th century. As such, it will also be an opportunity to organize a collective brainstorming on the synopsis of this upcoming exhibition and the issues it could raise (a workshop will thus be devoted to this reflection at the end of these three days of the colloquium).
For this project, researchers should submit to the organisers proposals for papers that may concern the following aspects of this theme (non-limitative list):
Papers:
– aiming to present monographic studies on artworks that have not been worked on, or have been overlooked
– presenting monographic studies renewing our knowledge of well-known artworks
– dealing with iconographic questions specific to 15th century Burgundian sculpture
– addressing the technical and material aspects of this sculptural production
– looking at the commissioners of this sculpture and the political or devotional stakes of these commissions
– considering this 15th century Burgundian sculpture in terms of its role in the historiography of the discipline since the 19th century
– using comparisons with other territories to better highlight the singularities of this Burgundian production or its common points
Proposals should be sent to Ms. Melissa Nieto (melissa.nieto@unil.ch) and should consist of 1) a summary of the proposed paper’s rationale, not exceeding one page; 2) a short biographical presentation of half a page.
The entire proposal must be sent by February 1, 2023.
Responses will be provided by March 1, 2023.
Organizing Committee:
Thomas Flum (University of Franche-Comté)
Jean-Marie Guillouët (University of Burgundy)
Sophie Jugie (Louvre Museum)
Michele Tomasi (University of Lausanne)
For more information, click here.
Lecture Series: Oxford Medieval Visual Culture Seminar Michaelmas Term 2022
All lectures take place in person at University of Oxford’s St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building at Thursdays 5 p.m.
Convenors: Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk) and Gervase Rosser
Week 2 , 20 October 2022
Sandy Heslop, University of East Anglia: Reconfiguring the Cloisters Cross: Art and crusading in Cnut VI’s Denmark
Week 4 , 3 November 2022
Laura Cleaver and Danielle Magnusson, University of London: The market for medieval illuminated manuscripts and the making of a canon, c. 1900-1925
Week 6 , 17 November 2022
Spike Bucklow Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: The Seven Ages: a medieval theory of growing up and aging, as illustrated by artists’ lives
Week 8, 1 December 2022
Julian Luxford, University of St Andrews: The iconography of the Mass of St Gregory in England
Lecture: ‘Networks, Transcultural Entanglements, and the Power of Aesthetic Choices: Artistic Encounters in the Medieval Afro-Eurasian World’ with Dr Vera-Simone Schulz, Wednesday 26 October 2022, 5pm – 6.30pm (BST)
Speaker: Dr Vera-Simone Schulz, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Studies of networks, entanglements, and artistic connections have been key approaches in the discipline of art history during the past twenty years, and the role of portable artifacts has been particularly in the center of scholarly attention. This talk will contribute to these discourses by focusing on two case studies: on the itineraries of metal artifacts from Mamluk Syria and Egypt to regions as distant as West Africa, the Apennine peninsula, the Horn of Africa and China, and their impact on artists working across media and materials where the objects arrived, as well as on the mobility of ceramic objects and artistic responses to them from Italy to East Africa and further regions. The talk will shed new light on complex intersections between short-distance and long-distance entanglements across the medieval Afro-Eurasian world. It will show the benefits and the necessity of wider horizons beyond traditional subdisciplines such as European, Islamic, African etc. art histories, and it will address the overcoming of subdisciplinary boundaries and traditional disciplinary hierarchies as one of the challenges of transcultural art histories of the ‘global middle ages’, much discussed in the humanities and social sciences today.
Vera-Simone Schulz is an art historian working at the crossroads of African, Islamic and European art histories, and postdoctoral research associate at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – MPI in Florence, Italy. She holds a PhD from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, her first monograph “Infiltrating Artifacts: Florence and Tuscany in their Mediterranean and Global Entanglements” is in preparation for publication, and she is currently working on her habilitation (second book) project on “Liminal Spaces in Coastal East Africa: Archipelagic Thinking and Transcultural Art Histories”. She has been visiting lecturer at the University of Stuttgart, the University of Zurich, the University of Düsseldorf, and is currently visiting lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. Her research has been supported by the German Research Foundation, the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, the Bard Graduate Center in NYC, and the University of Cambridge, among others.
New Publication: ‘Other Monasticisms: Studies in the History and Architecture of Religious Communities Outside the Canon, 11th – 15th Centuries’, edited by Sheila Bonde and Clark Maines
More Info: https://bit.ly/3e6L6HW
Monasteries contributed to every aspect of life during the middle ages, from the structures monks built, to land management, craft production to the intellectual and spiritual life of the medieval world. There were more than 300 orders or congregations in existence during the middle ages, yet scholarship considers only a small number of them (notably Cistercians and Cluniacs), and privileges selected sites, such as Mont Saint-Michel, San Francesco in Assisi or Christ Church in Canterbury. This volume considers the history and architecture of other congregations that are essential to a more complete understanding of monasticism in the European middle ages: Augustinians, lesser known Benedictines, Carthusians, Celestines, Clarissans, and Tironensians in France, as well as the Camaldolese and Vallombrosans in Italy.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Other Monasticisms and the Question of Representivity
Sheila Bonde (Brown University) and Clark Maines (Wesleyan University)
2. The French Celestine “network” (ca. 1350-1450): cross-order and lay collaboration in late medieval monastic reform.
Robert Shaw (Independent Scholar)
3. Sainte-Croix-sous-Offémont: An archaeological and architectural perspective on the Celestine order.
Arthur Panier (University of Paris I and Free University of Brussels)
4. The abbey of Tiron in the later middle ages: some observations
Kathleen Thompson (University of Sheffield)
5. La Sainte-Trinité de Tiron in the Context of Eremitism in Western France
Sheila Bonde (Brown University) and Clark Maines (Wesleyan University)
6. The Illumination of the Eye, and the Rhetoric of Sanctity and Contemplative Prayer in the Early to Central Middle Ages.
Susan Wade (Keene State University)
7. The Archdiocese of Reims: Tradition, and Benedictine Reform in the Twelfth Century.
Kyle Killian (Florida State University)
8. Overlapping Space and Temporal Access in the Chartreuse de Champmol.
Laura Chilson-Parks (Brown University)
9. Reconstructing an Order: The Architecture of Isabelle of France’s Abbey at Longchamp.
Erika Kinias (Brown University)
10. Vallombrosan and Camaldolese: Architecture and Identity in Two Italian Reform Orders.
Erik Gustafson, (Washington and Lee University)
11. Augustinian Architecture in France: Aesthetic Restraint within a Regional Frame.
Sheila Bonde (Brown University) and Clark Maines (Wesleyan University)
Scholarship: Rare Book School Scholarship, deadline 1 November 2022
Rare Book School (RBS) provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and skill levels to study the history of written, printed, and digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the field.
Rare Book School is an independent, non-profit, and tax-exempt institute supporting the study of the history of books and printing and related subjects, governed by its own board of directors. Founded in 1983, it moved to its present home at the University of Virginia in 1992.
At various times during the year, RBS offers about 40 five-day, non-credit courses on topics concerning old and rare books, manuscripts, and special collections. The majority of courses take place in Charlottesville, but courses are also offered in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Bloomington, New Haven, and Washington, DC.
There are several types of scholarships awarded by RBS each fall, all of which are conducted through a single application process. Applicants who submit a completed application by the 1 November deadline will be considered for all of the awards for which they are eligible. Scholarships are awarded without reference to admission to any particular course. Once a student is admitted to an RBS course, the scholarship award may be redeemed.
Applications are due 1 November 2022. To begin the application process, please log into your myRBS account (or create a new myRBS account). On the Home screen, click the “Apply for a Scholarship or Fellowship” button on the left side of the page. If you have trouble with myRBS, see the FAQ page or email rbs_scholarships@virginia.edu. Participation in the scholarship program implies acceptance of the scholarship/fellowship Terms and Conditions. If you have questions about the scholarship application process, please email rbs_scholarships@virginia.edu.
Scholarship recipients will be announced in January or February. Scholarship recipients must claim their award within two years (e.g., scholarships awarded in January 2022 must be claimed by 31 December 2023).
New Publication: ‘Alabaster Sculpture in Europe (1300-1650)’, edited by Marjan Debaene
The popularity of alabaster is illustrated by the many masterpieces preserved and on permanent display in major museums such as the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the British Museum and the V&A in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Staatliche Kunstsammelungen in Berlin.
More Info: https://bit.ly/3UKPH3s
Alabaster was a popular material in European sculpture, especially from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Its relative availability and easy to sculpt characteristic made it a highly suitable material for both large monuments and small objects, for mass production and individual works, from England to Spain and France to the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. This material has been the subject of multidisciplinary research in various European countries for several decades. The research combines material analyses with historical and art-historical approaches. This publication, made for the occasion of the large exhibition on the theme at M Leuven opening on October 14th, brings together all renown specialists on the material and sheds light on the many facets of alabaster, such as its physical and chemical properties as well as its translucency, its whiteness, its softness, and its beautiful sheen, all of which made it a popular material used in different types of sculpture from the middle ages to the baroque, all throughout Europe, ranging from bespoke tombs, funerary monuments and commissioned sculptures and altarpieces to commercially interesting formulas such as English or Mechelen alabaster reliefs.
Job: Assistant Professor in Art History, Rice University, deadline 15 November 2022
The Department of Art History at Rice University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the history of medieval art and/or architecture, broadly defined. We are interested in scholars working on art from roughly 400-1400, without restriction to culture or region. Successful candidates will have a record of publication and service commensurate with their career stage and be alert to diverse methodological approaches to the study of art and/or architecture from this period.
Scholars working within transcultural frameworks are particularly encouraged to apply, as are those whose work might intersect with that being done in interdisciplinary programs and centers at Rice, including (but not limited to) those in Medical Humanities, Medieval & Early Modern Studies, Environmental Studies, African and African American Studies, and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
The department offers programs of study leading to both the BA and PhD degrees. The new hire will teach four courses each academic year, covering a range of topics from area surveys to graduate-level courses on specialized subjects of their choice. The hire will also supervise undergraduate independent studies and honors theses, and mentor doctoral students.
Rice University is a highly selective private research university located in Houston, Texas, the nation’s fourth largest city. It is located in the heart of Houston’s dynamic museum district, where nearby museums including the Menil Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston offer ample opportunities for collaboration. Rice offers undergraduate and graduate degrees across eight schools and has a student body of approximately 4,000 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate students. It consistently ranks among the top 20 national universities and the top 10 in undergraduate teaching (US News & World Report); its endowment ranks among the top 20 of US universities.
A PhD in Art History or related field is required by the position’s start on July 1, 2023. To apply, please submit a letter of interest, CV, three letters of reference, and two samples of scholarly work online via Interfolio. For fullest consideration, application materials should be submitted by November 15, 2022.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Rice University is an Equal Opportunity Employer with commitment to diversity at all levels, and considers for employment qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status.
Rice University Standard of Civility Serves as a representative of the University, displaying courtesy, tact, consideration and discretion in all interactions with other members of the Rice community and with the public.
CFP: ‘The Wall Painting Cycle on the Sciences and Arts in the Brandenburg Cathedral Cloister in its Context: Art Production and Organization of Knowledge around 1450’, Brandenburg an der Havel (29–30 March 2023), deadline 15 November 2022
Organizers: Chair of Medieval and Early Modern Art History at the Institute of Art | Music | Textiles – Department of Art, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Heinrichs, and Curator of the Brandenburg Cathedral Chapter, Dr. Cord-Georg Hasselmann
Project Lead: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Heinrichs
On the occasion of the completion of the art historical DFG funded project ‘The Wall Painting Cycle on the Sciences and Arts in the Brandenburg Cathedral Cloister. Art Production and Organization of Knowledge around 1450’ (project number 346774044) an interdisciplinary symposium is organized by the Chair of Medieval and Early Modern Art History at the Institute of Art | Music | Textiles – Department of Art, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Paderborn University, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Heinrichs and the Curator of the Brandenburg Cathedral Chapter, Dr. Cord-Georg Hasselmann.
The thematic framework of the symposium is based on the recent open access project publication ‘Der Wandmalereizyklus zu den Wissenschaften und Künsten in der Brandenburger Domklausur. Kunstproduktion und Wissensorganisation um 1450` [The fragmentary wall paintings from the time of Bishop Stephan Bodeker and Provost Peter von Klitzke in the late medieval cathedral library in Brandenburg an der Havel and their inscriptions. A monumental cycle consisting of figural paintings, texts and ornaments in two library rooms] by Ulrike Heinrichs and Martina Voigt, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/artdok.00007730. A brief overview of the topics addressed here as well as further information on the project are available on the project homepage of the Chair of Medieval and Modern Art History at the University of Paderborn: https://kw.uni-paderborn.de/fach-kunst/mittlere-und-neuere-kunstgeschichte/projekte/der-wandmalereizyklus
For a long time, art history preserved the memory of “the very beautiful images of the seven liberal arts and the crafts, theology and medicine (…) listed in sequence in the Brandenburg Library, in the March, outside the city, where the White Canons are” (Hartmann Schedel, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 418) thanks to a descriptive text from the 15th century. However, the picture cycle was considered lost until the precious wall paintings in the so-called Oberer Kreuzgang (Upper Cloister) at the former Cathedral of Brandenburg an der Havel were discovered and uncovered in 2000/05 during renovation works in the north wing.
After initial publications on the new find had established connections to manuscripts from the library of the Nuremberg humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514) and to the highly learned and literarily productive Bishop of Brandenburg Stephan Bodeker (tenure 1421–1459), the way was paved for the exploration of the probably oldest surviving example of a study library of the “modern” type developed in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with a variety of use for collecting books, study and teaching. In the Brandenburg Cathedral Cloister it appears as a hall completely painted with murals – a monumental allegory to the canon of Sciences and Arts under the supremacy of Theology, which at the same time gives wide scope to the social and technical realities of the artes mechanicae, with opulent ornamentation and imagery as well as an extensive corpus of inscriptions resembling a learned treatise. The art historical DFG project at Paderborn University seized this great opportunity and began its work in autumn 2017 in tandem with the conservation science DFG project based at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hildesheim / Holzminden / Göttingen (HAWK) and in cooperation with the Brandenburg Cathedral Chapter, the Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeological Museum (BLDAM) as well as the architects in charge of preservation of the building – pmp Projekt GmbH-Architekten Brandenburg an der Havel.
In the light of the latest research findings, the symposium provides a new idea of the thematic core and function of the wall paintings as well as of the original extent and shape of the Brandenburg Cathedral Library of the late Middle Ages. From this perspective, it develops an expanded spectrum of questions reaching into European cultural spaces of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Conservational research of the DFG tandem project partner, the HAWK under the lead of Prof. Dr. Ursula Schädler-Saub, has proven the in situ visible wall paintings to be an authentic, albeit fragmentary ensemble of a high quality multi-layered secco painting with protean binding. Results of art historical research on the history of style identify it as an artistic ‘flagship project’ of regional origin with references to a variety of genres of painting exemplifying the transition between the International Style of the decades around 1400 and the Late Gothic Style.
The original manuscript of the descriptive text in the Codex Clm 650 at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, which has previously been attributed to Hermann Schedel (1410–1483), Hartmann’s older cousin, proves to be authentic on the one hand and selective on the other when compared with sources and findings: the preserved murals show far more and, in addition to ornamental paintings of exceptional quality, also include coats of arms, by means of which Provost Peter von Klitzke (tenure 1425/26–ca. 1447) and Bishop Stephan Bodeker could be identified as commissioners and those responsible for the ambitious project. Further, epigraphically and iconographically so far unknown texts and figures could be secured, referring among other things to the treatise Lignum vitae (‘Tree of Life’) by Bonaventura di Bagnoregio (1221–1274) and the salvation-historical basis for the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom under the patronage of the Brandenburg bishopric run by Premonstratensians. As latest findings on building history reveal, the libraria Brandenburgensi[s], as mentioned in the copy of Hermann Schedel’s description by his cousin Hartmann, is to be understood not only as a large study hall, but as a library complex created by striking architectural changes to a large hall in the north wing of the cathedral cloister dating from the 13th to 14th centuries. The pronounced canonistic position and the sophisticated overview of the current educational canon with its roots in antiquity and scholasticism touch on relations with the Margrave and Elector of Brandenburg from the rising House of Hohenzollern as well as the self-conception of ecclesiastical rule in the midst of tense processes of negotiating power after the schism, under ecclesiastical reform efforts and economic consolidation pressure. Not least, they shed light on the role of the Premonstratensian Order within the development of ecclesiastical rule as well as the history of art and culture in the central and northern areas of the Circaria Saxoniae.
The questions raised are manifold and concern the artistic sources and strategies of dealing with traditions and innovations of decorative and figurative painting and calligraphy as well as with the multi-layered fields of allegoresis, performance, diagrammatics and mnemonics in areas of scientific literature and monumental painting. Possible topics range from questions related to the building and its spatiality, including specifics of style, construction technologies and functions, to questions regarding any integrated or adjacent rooms of the episcopal administration and jurisdiction or aspects of everyday life in and with the library, the safekeeping of books, the practice of study and the regulation of light.
Future perspectives to be discussed at the conference also concern methods of sustainable archiving and innovative use of project data as well as opportunities for presentation and mediation of this valuable ensemble of wall paintings within the framework of the Brandenburg Cathedral Museum. Based at the Chair of Medieval and Early Modern Art History at the University of Paderborn and supported locally by the Centre for Information and Media Technology (IMT) together with the University Library, the project database was jointly developed by the DFG project tandem and its cooperation partners using the data archiving system MonArch launched by the IFIS Institute at the University of Passau (since 2021 part of AriInfoWare GmbH). Designed for cooperation in its form and connectable to future projects, this medium aims at a building-based, interactively usable archiving of different types of documentation and visualization, and offers the opportunity to discuss comparable or alternative approaches within research on wall paintings in their architectural setting. The museological part of the conference is dedicated to the question of suitable presentation formats in museums, focusing the communicability of hybrid genres in historical spaces, including inscriptions and medieval sources as well as states of preservation that are difficult to access.
There are no thematic constraints. However, contributions to the following research areas are particularly welcome, and in any case both a regional and a European perspective are encouraged:
• Material culture, pictorial equipment and imagery of late medieval and Renaissance libraries
• Allegories and narratives of Sciences and Arts in images and texts
• The imagery of Theology, Wisdom, Jurisprudence and the wise Rule
• Representation of patrons and donors in medieval and Renaissance libraries in images, inscriptions or coats of arms
• Source tradition on antique library buildings in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
• The architecture and topography of late medieval and Renaissance libraries, i.a. at episcopal sees and in White Canons chapters
• Book collections, educational programs and forms of use of ecclesiastical libraries, i.a. at episcopal sees and White Canons chapters
• Politics, education and visual arts in the Diocese Brandenburg and the Circaria Saxoniae in the Late Middle Ages
• Comparative studies on production, aesthetics and dissemination of secco painting
• Perspectives of data archiving: Interactive digital access to medieval and Renaissance wall paintings as subject matter of databases
• Perspectives for museum presentation: Medieval buildings featuring wall painting cycles and their image-text corpora
Proposals for a 30 minutes talk (followed by a 15 minutes discussion) should be no longer than 400-500 words (excluding bibliography and footnotes), accompanied with a short CV (max. 150 words). The bibliography should reflect the scope and methodology of the research.
Please send your proposal to irina.hegel@upb.de
Deadline: November 15, 2022
The organizers will notify you by December 15, 2022
Conference languages: English and German
A publication of the contributions is planned.
Please note that hotel and travel expenses of the lecturing participants will be covered within the framework of the applicable reimbursement guidelines (train 2nd class / economy flight).
Lecture: ‘Were Franciscan Churches a Betrayal of St. Francis?’, Dr Erik Gustafson, Murray Seminar Series, Birkbeck, Tuesday 18 October, 5pm (BST)
Booking link on Eventbrite for online seminar, 18 Oct 2022
Booking link on Eventbrite for in-person seminar, 18 Oct 2022
Erik Gustafson addresses two fundamental problems with regards to Franciscan churches: the question of poverty and architecture, and the issue of the role of dividing screens for the friars’ lay constituency. Both topics hang on the problematic legacy of Francis himself in relation to the development of Franciscanism as a functioning religious order across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Was the clericalization of the order a betrayal of Francis forced by the papacy or the logical development of Francis’s idiosyncratic, charismatic spirituality, and how did these issues play out in the central Italian churches of the order? Such questions have potential ramifications for how painting and sculpture might have been experienced within Franciscan churches, as well as broader socio-religious connotations for the development of medieval religious spaces.
Medieval Art Research 