Lecture: ‘Words for Images: Contemporary Vocabulary and Early Netherlandish Painting’, The Murray Seminars at Birkbeck, Online, 10 May 2022, 5:00 BST

Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/words-for-images-contemporary-vocabulary-and-early-netherlandish-painting-tickets-319521305827

The surviving works of early Netherlandish painting are a woefully inadequate representation of what once existed. Written records are therefore vital for supplementing what survives, as well as for exploring contemporary context and significance. Although the art of the past is inevitably seen through modern preconceptions, examination of past terminology may offer some insights into the preconceptions of the time.

The starting point of this enquiry was the desire to understand the written evidence, as sampled from published sources, trying to establish what the words mean. What is signified if someone is described as a painter? Is an object in an account, contract, inventory, or chronicle reliably recognisable as a painting rather than a sculpture or a work of textile art? How relevant are notions of painting as a distinct art form in the Netherlands of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries?

After investigating ‘painting’, the paper will end by considering whether distinctly Netherlandish painting was recognised in the period.

About the Speaker: Catherine Reynolds is an Affiliated Researcher of Illuminare, Centre for the Study of Medieval Art, Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), and a consultant on Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts for Christie’s. Her research brings together painting and manuscript illumination of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, chiefly in the Netherlands and France. Her publications most relevant to this topic are on: cloth paintings in The Fabric of Images, C. Villers ed., London, 2000; painters’ guilds in T. Kren and S. McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance, Los Angeles/London, 2003; landscape traditions in Patinir, A. Vergara ed., Madrid, 2007; visual art in John Lydgate’s poetry in Late Gothic England: Art and Display, Richard Marks ed., Donington/London, 2007; van der Weyden’s fame and the status of painting in Rogier van der Weyden in Context, L. Campbell et al. eds, Leuven 2012. Her career began with Lectureships in the History of Art at the Universities of Reading and then London (Westfield College) and she continued to teach at Birkbeck for some years after opting to work independently.

Call for Applications: Spring 2023 Research Residency in Naples, Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” / The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project, deadline 30 June 2022

The Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” (a partnership between the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte) and the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project invite applications for a Spring 2023 Research Residency in Naples that brings together art history, museum studies, and the digital humanities.

Over the course of the spring 2023 semester (mid-January to early June), the Research Resident will dedicate 25 hours per week on site at the Museo di Capodimonte searching for historical representations of the medieval monuments of southern Italy. This research will be carried out by mining specific areas of the Capodimonte collection (primarily works on paper, paintings, and decorative arts including porcelain) and gathering essential information about those representations to create new entries for the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database. In carrying out this research, the Research Resident will work directly with the Center Coordinator in Naples, the Head of Digitization at Capodimonte, and the Program Coordinator at the O’Donnell Institute, with the supervision of the Director of the Center; the Research Resident will also collaborate with colleagues at Capodimonte and researchers and technologists from the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project team. At the beginning of the Spring semester, the Research Resident will participate in orientations to the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database and to relevant areas of the Capodimonte collections.

Candidates should hold at least a Master’s degree or its equivalent; demonstrate a foundation in art/architectural history as well as familiarity with Naples and southern Italy; show interest or experience in the digital humanities; and possess working knowledge of databases, spreadsheets, shared cloud storage, and basic photo editing software. The strongest candidates will demonstrate professionalism and adaptability, excellent organizational skills and attention to detail, and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively. Candidates may be of any nationality, but because the database is in English, should have excellent knowledge of English and Italian.

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Research Residency at La Capraia will run from 16 January through 9 June 2023. The Research Resident will be awarded free lodging and study space at La Capraia and a stipend of 3,000 EUR, administered by the Amici di Capodimonte, to help defray the cost of living. The Research Resident will be granted privileged access to collections and research resources at Capodimonte. The Research Resident is expected to dedicate 25 hours per week to the Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project, and to participate in the organized activities, scholarly programs, and intellectual life of the Center. The Research Resident will be invited to present their work in an informal seminar at the end of the spring semester, and to contribute a short essay to the Center’s annual research report in the summer following the residency period.

The Research Resident will be responsible for obtaining appropriate visas if needed (the Center will provide official letters of support) and for providing proof of health insurance. The Research Resident must arrange their own travel to and from Naples. Because the Center is housed within an Italian institution, all residents are required to follow Italian law and demonstrate proof of vaccination against COVID-19 (pending current regulations when the residency period begins).

Candidates are invited to submit a cover letter, a CV, and a statement (1,000-1,500 words) that describes their interest in the project, how it relates to their academic and professional interests, and their academic and professional preparation to collaborate with the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project. Application materials must be in English. Materials should be sent in a single PDF file (with last name as the title of the file) to Center Coordinator, Dott.ssa Francesca Santamaria (lacapraia@gmail.com). In addition, applicants must invite three recommenders to send letters of support directly to the same email address. All materials, including letters of recommendation, are due by June 30, 2022. Finalists will be invited to Zoom interviews with members of the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project team.

Lecture: ‘Museums – Britain and the World in the Middle Ages: Image and Reality’, Paul Mellon Centre, Online, 12 May 2022, 6:00 BST

Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/museums-britain-and-the-world-in-the-middle-ages-image-and-reality-tickets-287817458767

Roots and Routes: Medieval Art in the Global Museum

This lecture will examine the role of display in shaping our ideas about the medieval period. By looking at permanent collections alongside important recent exhibitions, we address the following questions: How do we communicate a shared Roman heritage for Islam, Judaism and Christianity? What can ancient trade routes tell us about the interaction of different ethnic groups? Can we reveal a plurality of audiences for a single object through display? What is the role of political agendas foreign to the medieval period in portraying a deceptive sense of uniformity for the time? It ends with new directions in curating the art of the Middle Ages, to show an audience that this distant time was always dynamically and deliberately inter-reliant with the known world.

No prior art historical knowledge is necessary.

Registration is required. Please book tickets in the link above. This lecture will take place online only.

About the speaker: Risham Majeed (PhD, Columbia University) was born in Lahore, Pakistan and grew up in Saudi Arabia and London. She specialises in medieval art in Western Europe and the historical arts of Africa. Her research has revealed the parallel reception of the two fields during the emergence of art history as a discipline. Current projects include an examination of sub-Saharan Africa in conversation with Europe during the medieval period, which also seeks to re-examine what the term “medieval” might mean when extended to other parts of the world. Majeed has taught courses on the history of museums, the political complexities of non-western arts in western museums and medieval art from a global perspective. She has curated two exhibitions, Made to Move: African Nomadic Design and Get Real: Seeking Authenticity in African Art, with her students at Ithaca College. Her most recent publications are: a review essay on the exhibitions “Caravans of Gold and Sahel” in the Art Bulletin (March 2021); “Against Primitivism: Meyer Schapiro’s Early Writings on African and Medieval Art”, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 71/72 (2019), pp. 295–311; and “Just Being”, Art Journal Open (May 22, 2020). She is currently completing her book, Primitive before Primitivism: Medieval and African Art in the Nineteenth Century.

Lecture: ‘Movement – Britain and the World in the Middle Ages: Image and Reality’, Paul Mellon Centre, Online, 5 May 2022, 6:00 BST

Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/movement-britain-and-the-world-in-the-middle-ages-image-and-reality-tickets-287813807847

The movement of art objects both into and out of medieval Britain was significant not only in itself, but because of the impact that those imported objects had. In my lecture I hone in on a remarkable group of English tiles, called the Chertsey tiles, and their extraordinary textual inscriptions, as an avenue through which to explore this theme. These ceramic tiles were discovered in the nineteenth century in the heart of the English countryside, at Chertsey Abbey. Two of the best-known tiles, roundels showing King Richard I of England, called the Lionheart, fighting Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, are currently on display in the British Museum. These roundels are part of a group known as the combat series and were probably commissioned for the Royal Palace of Westminster. My recent reconstruction of the layout of the Chertsey tiles reveals connections far beyond England. I will highlight their debt to the global movement of luxury textiles. Silk medallion textiles with figural compositions were traditionally woven in the Islamic and Byzantine Mediterranean, but were valued and imitated across a much broader geographical area, from medieval Japan to, as I will show, the British Isles.

No prior art historical knowledge is necessary.

Registration is required. Please book tickets in the link above. This lecture will take place online only.

About the Speaker: Amanda Luyster is Senior Lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, USA. She has published in journals including Speculum, Word & Image and Gesta, has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society, and has served on the Board of Directors of the ICMA, the International Center of Medieval Art. Her work on the Chertsey tiles and the roles of imported Islamic and Byzantine objects in medieval England is connected to her current book project as well as to an exhibition she is co-curating for Spring 2023.

Conference: ‘Meta, Matrix, Mater. Renaissance Metaphors of the Matrix’, Paris and Online, 13 June 2022

The female sex has become the core of an increasing number of early modern studies since the rise of a gender-sensitive feminist viewpoint in art history. Many have dealt with images of a hairless and polished vulva, sometimes ostensibly eroticized. Pending this approach, the 2022 CHAR Workshop, Meta, Matrix, Mater. Renaissance Metaphors of the Matrix, wishes to re-explore the imaginary of the female sex from within and focus on the metaphors of the matrix in images and material culture in the Renaissance.

Free entrance within the limit of the number of places available. Please note there will be a live stream to allow those outside Paris access to the event. Communications in French and in English.

PROGRAM

09h45 Présentation de la journée
Fiammetta Campagnoli, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Florence Larcher, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

10h00 Conférence inaugurale
Concetta Pennuto, Université François Rabelais – Tours

10h45 Discussion

*

SESSION 1
THE POWER OF THE MATRIX IN (PRO)CREATION
Chair: Baptiste Tochon-Danguy, École Pratique des Hautes Études

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11h00 Womb, Print, Imprint: Early Modern Birth Figures and their Uses
Rebecca Whiteley, University of Manchester

11h30 Michelangelo’s Matrix: The Childbirth Metaphor in Italian Renaissance Art Theory
Jordan Troeller, Freie Universität Berlin

12h00 Discussion

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SESSION 2
FROM MATERIAL TO MATERIALITY, FROM MINERAL TO VEGETAL
Chair: Florence Larcher, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

*

14h30 Madder, Matter and Matrix: Stained Ivory Virgins from the Fourteenth Century
Marian Bleeke, Cleveland State University

15h00 Au-delà de l’humain. La matrice et ses images végétales (XVIe-XVIIIe s.)
Sara Petrella, Université de Neuchâtel

15h30 Le monde de Cérès : allégorie de la matrice végétale et humaine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles
Cassandre Herbert, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

16h Discussion and break

*

SESSION 3
BETWEEN THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER
Chair: Fiammetta Campagnoli, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

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17h00 La matrice de Dieu le Père : la mandorle comme lieu de filiation
Clémence Légoux, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

17h30 Begotten, not Made: Authenticity inside the Body of the Virgin Mary
Melissa Katz, Independent Scholar

18h00 Discussion and conclusion

Free Registration at https://vu.fr/atelierduchar2022

Call for Participants: ‘Revoicing Medieval Poetry’, Online, May-June 2022

Revoicing Medieval Poetry will offer a workshop-conversation space for researchers, artists and practitioners who are engaged in exploring how, why, and to what effects medieval poetry is translated, reused, and resourced in twentieth- and twenty-first-century creative practices.

This summer, we are hosting four workshops for practitioners and researchers who are interested in the ‘revoicing’ of early medieval literature in all its creative forms.

The first three workshops will be hosted online by the University of Reading, King’s College London, and the University of York and will see invited speakers collaborate with a host researcher (Fran Allfrey, Carl Kears, and Fran Brooks) to lead the session. In the fourth and final online session we will hear from Professor Clare Lees on her wealth of experience in devising and developing collaborative, creative-critical projects, before turning the space over to participants to share works-in-progress.

Although participants won’t be asked to prepare anything in advance, the workshops are designed to be generative for ongoing research and practice: you might be a researcher working on medieval/modern literary and/or visual culture, or you might be a writer or an artist with an interest in reworking medieval materials.

We hope that the online format will make these workshops accessible to researchers and practitioners from across the world, but ask that prospective participants send a short expression of interest to sign-up for the limited workshop places. Although you are welcome to join us for any one of the sessions, we hope that many will return to develop the conversation with us across all four events.

All events bookable at https://tinyurl.com/medievalrevoicing 

View more details and the full programme of events here/ in the attached PDF https://medievalmodernscrapbook.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/revoicing-medieval-poetry-cfp.pdf

Call for Papers: ‘Women, Agency, and Architecture in the Premodern World’, 78th Annual Meeting of SECAC, 26th-29th October 2022 (Deadline 19th May 2022)

The Maryland Institute College of Art is excited to act as the institutional host for the 78th annual meeting of SECAC in Baltimore, MD, from October 26-29, 2022. Based at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel and informed by the theme Watershed, the conference seeks to foster thoughtful analyses of the myriad intersections between art, art history, education, and social and environmental justice. All submissions must be made through the SECAC submission portal: https://secac.secure-platform.com/a

This session invites proposals taking a panoramic view of women and architecture prior to the eighteenth century, and welcomes work on a broad range of geographies and temporalities. Although current scholarship continues to reveal the nuanced ways in which premodern women across socioeconomic strata engaged with architecture and the built environment, many critical facets of their engagement remain unstudied. The papers in this session move beyond updating the art historical canon to expanding our knowledge of how premodern women meaningfully contributed to their physical environments, from rural to urban and suburban. Topics of interest may include: women as architects or contributors to architectural design, women as patrons and benefactors of architecture, and women’s administration of architecture and communal spaces. Bringing these and related topics into conversation will further establish the significant role of women in shaping their surroundings across time and space.

Lecture: ‘Orality – Literacy – Digitality: Medieval Perspectives on the Digital Age’, IHR Europe 1150-1550 Seminar, 5th May 2022, 17:30 GMT

The Institute of Historical Research is delighted to invite you for the final seminar of this academic year. Professor Torsten Hiltmann will speak on ‘Orality – Literacy – Digitality: Medieval Perspectives on the Digital Age’. Join us in person or online on Thursday 5th May at 5.30pm. The in-person lecture takes place in our usual venue: LT2, Cruciform Building, UCL, on Gower Street. The Zoom link will be sent to online participants on registration

This talk argues that, rather than the invention of the printing-press, the processes of digitalisation in the present resemble the rise of the written word in the Middle Ages, which reshaped all aspects of society, from institutions and law to education and trade. Our knowledge of this medieval transition allows us to better understand our own, modern-day engagement with digital media. Intermediary steps such as recording and emulating the spoken word in the medium of text show how new media remained initially tied to customary ways, but would soon enable entirely new practices of use that alter culture and society irrevocably.

Please note that there is a limited capacity on campus. If you have not selected an ‘in-person ticket’ please do not go to UCL, but join online. You are requested to wear masks at UCL.

Book here.

Conference: ‘Death and Dying’, Harlaxton Medieval Symposium 2022, 15th-18th August 2022

The Harlaxton Symposium is an interdisciplinary gathering of academics, students and enthusiasts which meets annually to celebrate medieval history, art, literature and architecture through a programme of papers selected around a chosen theme. This year’s symposium will be convened by Dr Christian Steer and Dr Jenny Stratford.

Speakers will focus on death in the later Middle Ages in both its practical and devotional aspects. Among themes to be explored are the ways in which death occurs (sickness, accident and murder), preparations for death (wills, testaments and executors’ papers), and devotional practices in lifetime and after death. Rituals and ceremonies associated with the moment of death and its aftermath will include funeral practices, chantries, monuments and monumental sculpture. Papers will relate both to England and to Continental Europe before the Reformation.

Speakers are: Ann Adams, Amy Appleford, Richard Asquith, Julia Boffey, Jane Bridgeman, Clive Burgess, Trevor Dean, Tony Edwards, Nicholas Flory, Lydia Hansell, Andrew Kirkman, Julian Luxford, Michael Michael, Lisa Monnas, Ann Payne, Henry Summerson, Linda Voigts and Nicholas Watson. This year’s Pamela Tudor-Craig Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Julian Gardner.

Please see our website for details, including a provisional programme and booking form.

We are also pleased to continue our commitment to encouraging scholars in the early stages of their careers with two Dobson Scholarships available to PGRs or ECRs (within two years of completing a PhD) to cover conference costs. Awards will be made based on the academic excellence of applicants and the relevance of the symposium theme to their research. The application form can be downloaded on our website and the deadline for applications is 31st May 2022, to allow unsuccessful applicants the opportunity to source funding from elsewhere.

We will also be continuing our annual postgraduate poster competition, to allow PGRs and ECRs to share aspects of their research with delegates at the symposium. This has been a great success in previous years, allowing for the exchange of ideas in a friendly and academically-rigorous environment. Posters can relate to any area of Medieval Studies and do not necessarily have to connect to the theme of the symposium. Awards of the Dobson Scholarship are contingent upon presenting a poster, but we urge all PGRs and ECRs attending the symposium to take this opportunity. Again, further details are available on our website.

We look forward to welcoming you back to the beautiful Harlaxton Manor in August for what promises to be an excellent week of scholarly discussion on all things relating to medieval death and dying.

New Publication: ‘Riemenschneider in Rothenburg: Sacred Space and Civic Identity in the Late Medieval City’, by Katherine M. Boivin, PSU Press

The concept of the medieval city is fixed in the modern imagination, conjuring visions of fortified walls, towering churches, and winding streets. In Riemenschneider in Rothenburg, Katherine M. Boivininvestigates how medieval urban planning and artistic programming worked together to form dynamic environments, demonstrating the agency of objects, styles, and spaces in mapping the late medieval city.

Using altarpieces by the famed medieval artist Tilman Riemenschneider as touchstones for her argument, Boivin explores how artwork in Germany’s preeminent medieval city, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, deliberately propagated civic ideals. She argues that the numerous artistic pieces commissioned by the city’s elected council over the course of two centuries built upon one another, creating a cohesive structural network that attracted religious pilgrims and furthered the theological ideals of the parish church. By contextualizing some of Rothenburg’s most significant architectural and artistic works, such as St. James’s Church and Riemenschneider’s Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, Boivin shows how the city government employed these works to establish a local aesthetic that awed visitors, raising Rothenburg’s profile and putting it on the pilgrimage map of Europe.

Carefully documented and convincingly argued, this book sheds important new light on the history of one of Germany’s major tourist destinations. It will be of considerable interest to medieval art historians and scholars working in the fields of cultural and urban history.

Click here to order.