The latest research, news, and reviews from the world of Medieval Art History
When: 30 May 2022, 4:00-6:00 BST
Where: Old Library, All Souls College, Oxford
A roundtable exploring events and exhibitions in the US, Spain & Italy. With Jerrilynn Dodds, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Tom Nickson.
Chaired by Gervase Rosser.
Organised by Costanza Beltrami.
Open to all, no booking required.
Dumbarton Oaks invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Fellow to work with the museum team on projects relating to cataloging, publication, and exhibition of the coin collection. The successful candidate will receive training in digital cataloging, collections management, and exhibition planning. They will catalogue the newly acquired Mansfield and Shaw collections of early Byzantine coins, describing, recording, and publishing these coins in the Online Coin Catalogue. They will also work with the Collections Manager and Registrar to accession and house the coins. Building on the work of nomisma.org the Post-Doctoral Fellow will be involved in the establishment of a federated database to catalogue and digitize Byzantine coin holdings in various collections worldwide. In partnership with the Associate Curator and the Manager of Exhibitions, they will help to create temporary exhibits of the coin collection and take part in the planning and execution of educational activities. The fellowship offers unique opportunities to build career skills in digital humanities, museum curation, and collections-based education. The Fellow will participate fully in Dumbarton Oaks’ dynamic community of scholars and programming in Byzantine Studies and will devote 20% of the fellowship time to personal research.
Major Responsibilities
Qualifications
Basic
Preferred
Term
This is a one-year fellowship, with the possibility of renewal for two additional years. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will have access to the outstanding resources of the institute and become part of the larger research community at Dumbarton Oaks.
The Post-Doctoral Fellow would report to the Associate Curator of Coins and Seals and the Registrar and Collections Manager.
How to Apply
Please send a cover letter, resume/CV, and two letters of reference to FellowshipPrograms@doaks.org by June 15, 2022.
When: Thursday, 26 May 2022, 5:30 – 7:00 BST
Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Vernon Square, and online via Livestream
Objects bearing memento mori themes were abundant in Europe in the decades immediately around the year 1500. The material properties of these objects – the matter from which they were formed, the apparent care or negligence with which they were fashioned, and the ways their physical condition betrays signs of heavy use or careful conservation – can point us toward a better understanding of the diversity of interests that inspired their creation and use. These motivations range from pious apprehensions about the fate of one’s soul to arguably less anxious ruminations on the nature of image-making and the role of an emerging sense of aesthetic engagement. Taken together, they encapsulate one of the central fascinations and anxieties of their age: in an era committed to the notion that deep truths could be conveyed through surface appearances and that individual identity could be captured, communicated, and preserved through static imagery, memento mori objects resisted the notion of a stable self, reminding their viewers of the anonymity that awaits us all in the grave.
About the speaker: Stephen Perkinson’s scholarship focuses on Medieval and Renaissance art of Northern Europe. He has published on topics ranging from the 13th to the 16th centuries. His 2009 study of the origins of portraiture (The Likeness of the King, Univ. of Chicago Press) was the recipient of the 2009 Morris D. Forkosch Prize for Best Book in Intellectual History. He has also collaborated extensively with art museums. Most recently, he was curator of The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe (Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2017; catalogue distributed by Yale University Press), a major loan exhibition that shed new light on memento mori imagery and ivory carving in Northern Europe around the year 1500. Prior to that project, he produced work in conjunction with exhibitions of material from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (Object of Devotion, 2010) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Set in Stone, 2006). He is also the author of essays that have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Speculum, Gesta, and elsewhere. At Bowdoin, he teaches courses that cover material ranging from the late antique world of the Mediterranean to the Renaissance in Northern Europe, and addressing the artistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Organised by Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld) and Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld).
This event is kindly supported by the ICMA.
This book situates the art and architecture of the stave church of Urnes within a global perspective and aims to reinvigorate scholarly interest and debate in one of the world’s most important churches.
Urnes is the oldest and best known of the Norwegian stave churches. Despite its rich sculptural program, complex building history, fine medieval furnishings, and UNESCO World Heritage Site status, Urnes has attracted scant scholarly attention beyond Scandinavia. Broadly speaking, the church has been seen to exemplify Nordic traditions, a view manifest in the frequent use of “Urnes style” to designate the final phase of Viking art. While in no way denying or diminishing the importance of local or regional traditions, this book examines Urnes from a global perspective, considering how its art and architecture engaged international developments from across Europe, the Mediterranean, and Central Asia. In adopting this alternative approach, the articles collected in this volume offer the most current research on Urnes, published in English to reach a broad audience. The aim is to reinvigorate academic interest and debate in not only what is one of the most important churches in the world, but also in the rich cultural heritage of Northern Europe.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Contributors and Editors
Introduction
Kirk Ambrose, Margrete Syrstad Andås, and Griffin Murray
List of Illustrations – The Plates
Part One: Situating Urnes
Chapter 1 Urnes Stave Church: A Monument Frozen in Time?
Øystein Ekroll
Chapter 2 Urnes: Some Current Research Issues
Leif Ank er
Chapter 3 The Landscape of Urnes: Settlement, Communication, and Resources in the Viking and Early Middle Ages
Birgit Maixner
Part Two: The Eleventh-Century Church
Chapter 4 The Decoration of Buildings in the North in the Late Viking Age: A Tale of Bilingualism, Code-Switching, and Diversity?
Margrete Syrstad Andås
Chapter 4A Appendix: Alphabetical List of Fragments from Eleventh-Century. Decorated Buildings in the North
Margrete Syrstad Andås
Chapter 5 The European Significance of Urnes: An Insular Perspective on Urnes and the Urnes Style
Griffin Murray
Chapter 6 “Who is this King of Glory?”: The Religious and Political Context of the Urnes Portal and West Gable
Margrete Syrstad Andås
Part 3: The Twelfth-Century Church
Chapter 7 Soft Architecture: Textiles in the Urnes Stave Church
Ingrid Lunnan Nødseth
Chapter 8 Trueing the Capitals at Urnes
Kirk Ambrose
Chapter 9 Norse Encounters with the Mediterranean and Near Eastern Worlds in the Capitals of Urnes
Kjartan Hauglid
Chapter 10 Plants, Beasts, and a Barefoot Cleric
Elizabeth den Hartog
Chapter 11 Monstrosity, Transformation and Conversion: The Program of the Urnes Capitals in Its European Context
Thomas E . A . Dale
Bibliography
Index
More Info: https://bit.ly/3wuHtBb
Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/forgotten-friars-the-visual-culture-of-the-gesuati-tickets-319575578157?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
Among the least known of the later medieval mendicant orders active in Italy are the Apostolic Clerics of Saint Jerome, better known as the Gesuati, founded by the Sienese merchant Giovanni Colombini and officially recognized by Pope Urban V in 1367. Until their suppression in 1668, the Gesuati were active in the life of many Italian cities, primarily in Tuscany but also as far afield as Venice and Rome, and the order is known to have commissioned altarpieces and murals from artists as varied as Sano di Pietro, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino, among numerous others. In addition, they played a significant role in the provision of artistic materials, including both pigments and glass. This talk will introduce the visual culture of the Gesuati and explore a number of its contexts of production.
About the Speaker: John Osborne (Ph.D., Courtauld Institute 1979) is an art historian with broad research interests in medieval Italy and a special focus on the material culture of the cities of Rome and Venice. His most recent book, Rome in the Eighth Century: a history in art, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. He has held visiting fellowships at The British School at Rome; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini, Venice; and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Washington. He is currently Distinguished Research Professor and Dean Emeritus at Carleton University, Ottawa, as well as an Associate Fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Courtauld.
Lecture: ‘Mass Production of Books Before Printing’
Speaker: Professor David D’Avray, FBA, Emeritus Professor of History, University College London
Address: The Chancellor’s Hall, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Event date: 8 June 2022, 6:00PM – 8:00PM
Attendance is free; registration required.
Book here: https://sas.sym-online.com/registrationforms/iesbooking_12345655/done/
For more information: https://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/john-coffin-memorial-lecture-palaeography
Contact: IESEvents@sas.ac.uk
The act of preparing the final resting place for the mortal remains of members of medieval communities is one of the practices that found many forms of material expression and countless artistic forms in the Mediterranean world. The most salient aspects of a person’s life could be recalled in evocative apparatuses, even very complex ones, in strict adherence to the burial practices of the society in which the deceased lived. But more often it is a more restrained, even anonymous, dimension that conveys the sense of pity towards the dear departed.
The next issue of Minima Medievalia will address the implications of funerary art in the Latin, Byzantine and Islamic Middle Ages. The focus will be on burial monuments, both in their concrete and immaterial dimensions. The aim is not only to census and deepen the knowledge of monumental tombs, but also to give space to those minor, violated, destroyed, fragmentary and even devoid of material consistency contexts that make up the most widespread mosaic of this phenomenon.
The volume therefore intends to address issues of various kinds related to the world of burials: the addressee (sepulchers of saints, of religious, of laymen); the types of messages conveyed by the funerary practice and the cultural values of reference; the methods of display; the forms and typologies used around the Mediterranean; the linguistic and material expressions translated through various artistic (sculpture, architecture, monumental art, painting, epigraphy) and documentary media (sources, liturgy, worship, devotion); the areas of destination and conditions of use; the role of patrons, artists, communities; and much more.
The general features of the volume can be summarised as follows:
– the topic is tombs and funerary monuments built between the 4th and 15th centuries;
– the cultural areas of reference are the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic world;
– the fields of investigation are architecture, sculpture, painting, epigraphy, sources, liturgy, etc;
– five main European languages are accepted (Italian, English, French, German and Spanish); any other options must be agreed with the scientific committee;
– the text must be between 5 and 25/30 pages of 2000 characters long (notes included, bibliography excluded);
– each author may include between 2 and 15 figures.
Slight deviations in length and number of figures are possible, but only if previously agreed with the editor and the scientific committee.
Submission of abstracts
In order to contribute to the volume it is necessary to send an abstract to the scientific committee, which will evaluate its content and congruence with the topic of the current issue:
– the proposal must be 300-700 words;
– the case study and the author’s thesis must be clearly described and the logical structure of the topic to be addressed must be provided;
– a minimum bibliographical reference must be included;
– photographs for reference and comparison may be provided.
Each text will be peer-reviewed.
Proposal deadline: 15 July 2022.
Please send the material to: fabio.coden@univr.it.
Volume features
Selected proposals will be included in a collective volume, edited under the patronage of the University of Verona and published by Silvana editoriale, which guarantees international distribution. For past issues of Minima Medievalia series, please visit these links:
– www.minimamedievalia.it
– Minima medievalia (academia.edu)
– https://www.silvanaeditoriale.it/libro/9788836649211
The deadline for submission of the final version is due June 2023. The volume is expected to be published at the end of the same year.
The ICMA invites submissions for the annual prize for best single- or dual-authored book on any topic in medieval art. To be eligible for the 2022 competition, books must have been printed in 2021. No special issues of journals or anthologies or exhibition catalogues can be considered.
The competition is international and open to all ICMA members. To join or renew, click here. A statement of current membership is required with each submission.
Languages of publication: English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish
Prize: US $1,000 to a single author, or $500 each to two co-authors
Submission of books: only printed books with one or two authors are eligible for the prize. A statement of current ICMA membership must accompany each submission.
Presses and self-nominations: books must be sent directly to the jury members. Please fill out this form here. After the form is submitted, an email with addresses will be sent.
For more information, visit www.medievalart.org/book-prize.
The Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies is now accepting applications for their 2024 host institution. The conference is an interdisciplinary graduate student conference focusing on the Middle Ages. It is entirely organized and run by graduate students. Vagantes is a unique opportunity to showcase the Medieval Studies community at your institution, as well as to gain valuable professional development experience in planning and organizing the event, and to meet and interact with top medievalist graduate students.
Applications will be accepted until Wednesday, August 31st 2022 and will be reviewed by the Vagantes Board of Directors. Applications will be discussed at the Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, at which point the Board may have additional questions for the applicants before reaching a decision. E-mail submissions are required.
To apply to host the 23rd Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, visit: http://vagantesconference.org/hosting-vagantes/
The Index of Medieval Art invites applications for a four-month, remote, part-time research position to assist in incorporating key mosaics and paintings of medieval Kyiv into the Index database. This position is made possible by a 2022 Flash Grant from the Princeton University Humanities Council and consists of a $5,000 honorarium to be directed to the scholar.
The successful applicant should have relevant training in art history, preferably with a medievalist background, and should hold a doctorate or have completed all but the dissertation. Applicants may be of any nationality, but preference will be given to a scholar whose work has been disrupted by the crisis in Ukraine. A reading knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian is preferable.
The work position will require roughly two days a week of remote work over a four-month period, beginning in summer of 2022. The successful applicant will work with the Index research staff to catalogue Ukrainian monuments, beginning with the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv. They will be trained in Index norms in cataloging the monumental structure, describing the iconography of its paintings and mosaics, transcribing inscriptions, and adding bibliographic citations, Index subjects, and other metadata. Staff guidance and scans of the relevant print material will be provided. The timeline for this work is somewhat flexible but must be completed by the end of the funded period, December 31, 2022.
To apply, please send a CV and letter of interest to marossi@princeton.edu and ppatton@princeton.edu by June 1, 2022 .
Medieval Art Research