Lecture: ‘Forgotten Friars: the Visual Culture of the Gesuati’, The Murray Seminars at Birkbeck, Online, 8 June 2022, 5:00 BST

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’, John Coffin Memorial Lecture in Palaeography, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 8 June 2022

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

Call for Papers: “Burials in the Mediterranean Middle Ages”, Minima Medievalia, Deadline 15 July 2022

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.

Prize: ICMA Annual Book Prize, Deadline 31 May 2022

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.

Call for Applications: Host the 23rd Annual Vagantes Conference in 2024, Deadline 31 August 2022

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/

Job Opportunity: Part-time Research Assistant (Medieval Ukraine), Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University, Deadline 1 June 2022

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 .​

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.