Medieval Art Research

Lecture: ‘Crowning William the Conqueror: Archbishop Stigand and the Tiberius Psalter’ with Professor Sandy Heslop, Martindale Lecture 2022, University of East Anglia, 12th May 2022, 17:30 GMT (in person & online)

The Department of Art History & World Art Studies at UEA announces their annual Martindale Lecture 2022.

CROWNING WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR: ARCHBISHOP STIGAND AND THE TIBERIUS PSALTER
Prof Sandy Heslop (UEA)

Thursday 12 May 2022, 17:30 BST, Lecture Theatre 4, UEA (and online)

“1066 was a momentous year in English history: two invasions, two bloody battles, and two coronations. The trauma has been written into the national narrative ever since, but we rarely have much insight into the mentality of the individuals involved. The Tiberius Psalter offers an exception, illuminating the character and predicament of Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury, a leading player in the drama.”

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception to toast Prof. Heslop on his retirement from the department.

Registration is now open on EventBrite.

Lecture Series: Britain and the World in the Middle Ages: Image and Reality, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 7th April – 12th May 2022

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art announces their upcoming lecture series ‘Britain and the World in the Middle Ages: Image and Reality’. Lectures will be held every Thursday from 7th April to 12th May 2022.

From the announcement: ‘In the Middle Ages, the ‘British Isles’ were far from insular. These islands were, in fact, places of exchange, where art, ideas, rare materials and people came together from all over the world. This course examines Britain’s sense of place in that world, as well as its actual place in the world – in other words, image, and reality – by examining medieval images themselves. Each of the course’s lectures considers one of five critical themes in Britain’s global experience and imagination, through the exploration of works of medieval art.’

This series is convened by Jessica Berenbeim (University of Cambridge) and Lloyd de Beer (British Museum). Below is the list of lectures:

7th April: Introduction by Jessica Berenbeim and Lloyd de Beer
14th April: ‘Myth’ by Alixe Bovey
21st April: ‘Maps’ by Alfred Hiatt
28th April: ‘Metamorphosis’ by Tom Nickson
5th May: ‘Movement’ by Amanda Luyster (Online only)
12th May: ‘Museums’ by Rishan Majeed (Online only)

All lectures (apart from the final two) will take place at the Paul Mellon Centre and will also be livestreamed online. Registration is now open.

Scholarship: Medieval Academy/CARA Summer Scholarships 2022 (Deadline 1st April 2022)

The Medieval Academy/CARA Summer Scholarships support graduate students and and particularly promising undergraduate students participating in summer courses in medieval languages or manuscript studies. Applicants must be members of the Medieval Academy in good standing with at least one year of graduate school remaining and must demonstrate both the importance of the summer course to their program of study and their home institution’s inability to offer analogous coursework.

The stipend will be paid directly to the student and must be used to offset a portion of the tuition cost. The awards are contingent on acceptance into the program.

For more information and to apply, visit the scholarship page here.

Job Opportunity: Assistant Professor in Early Medieval History, Trinity College Dublin (Deadline 21st March 2022)

The Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, is seeking to appoint an Assistant Professor in Early Medieval History for one year from August 2022. The post-holder will maintain research and teaching interests in Early Medieval History, with demonstrable expertise and relevant publications within the period 400-1000. The successful applicant will contribute to the delivery of modules at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum, including supervision of BA dissertations, as well as the Medieval Studies MPhil programme. Within the undergraduate History programme, the holder of the post will coordinate one of the existing Freshman-level (first-year) modules. At Sophister level, the post-holder will develop and coordinate one or more advanced modules arising from their research interests. At MPhil level, the post-holder will teach either Medieval Latin or another module based on their research interests. Supervision of appropriate undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations is also expected. The post-holder will also undertake other teaching and administrative duties at the direction of the Head of Department.

To apply, visit the Trinity College job posting.

New Publication: ‘Brilliant Bodies: Fashioning Courtly Men in Early Renaissance Italy’ by Timothy McCall

From PSU Press:

‘Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.

Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.

This groundbreaking study of masculinity makes an important intervention in the history of male ornamentation and fashion by examining a period when the public display of splendid men not only supported but also constituted authority. It will appeal to specialists in art history and fashion history as well as scholars working at the intersections of gender and politics in quattrocento Italy.’

Timothy McCall is Associate Professor of Art History at Villanova University. He is a coeditor of Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe and the forthcoming six-volume series A Cultural History of Luxury.

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Brilliant Bodies and Fashionable Men at Court
1. Riddled with Gilt: Lords in Shining Armor and Shimmering Brocades
2. “Ornado d’Oro e Giemme”: Brilliant Male Bodies Adorned
3. The Contours of Renaissance Fashion
4. Fair Princes: Blanched Beauty, Nobility, and Power
Epilogue: Black is the New Gold
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

To purchase, please visit PSU Press.

Lecture: IHR Seminar Europe 1150-1550: ‘Making Late Medieval Urban History “British”: Networks, Comparisons, and Scale, 3rd March 2022 17:30 GMT

The IHR Europe 1150-1550 seminar returns this Thursday 3^rd March at 5.30 pm. Dr Eliza Hartrich (UEA) will speak on ‘Making Late Medieval Urban History ‘British’: Networks, Comparisons, and Scale.’

‘Research into late medieval English towns over the last thirty years or so has demonstrated that no urban centre should be studied in isolation: as a site of exchange and administration, a town is inextricably linked to the countryside and to other urban centres. This paper considers, however, the methodological, conceptual, and practical questions that arise when attempting to ‘scale up’ urban history to encompass multiple towns over an extended geographic area: in this case, when constructing a history of towns in Britain and Ireland between 1350 and 1500. Did insular towns operate within a shared political and economic framework in this period, or do attempts at a ‘British’ urban history impose anachronistic identities on the past and obscure other influences on urban experiences?’

This seminar will take place in hybrid form. Those meeting in person should assemble at UCL Cruciform LT2. It will also be possible to join the meeting online Please register online here. (The online form will prompt you to specify whether you are attending in person or online). Those attending in person should wear face coverings for the talk.

Please send any enquiries to Andrew.Jotischky@rhul.ac.uk or emily.corran@ucl.ac.uk

Recorded Lecture: ‘Renaissance Lives- Erasmus of Rotterdam: the Spirit of a Scholar,’ William Barker, Micha Lazarus and François Quiviger

Erasmus of Rotterdam came from an obscure background but, through remarkable perseverance, skill, and independent vision, became a powerful and controversial intellectual figure in Europe in the early sixteenth century. He was known for his vigorous opposition to war, intolerance, and hypocrisy, and at the same time for irony and subtlety that could confuse his friends as well as his opponents. His ideas about language, society, scholarship, and religion influenced the rise of the Reformation and had a huge impact on the humanities, and that influence continues today. This book shows how an independent textual scholar was able, by the power of the printing press and his wits, to attain both fame and notoriety. Drawing on the immense wealth of recent scholarship devoted to Erasmus, Erasmus of Rotterdam is the first English-language popular biography of this crucial thinker in twenty years.

Speakers: William Barker (University of King’s College & Dalhousie University), Micha Lazarus (Warburg Institute & University of Cambridge), François Quiviger (Warburg Institute)

William Barker is the Inglis Professor and former president of the University of King’s College as well as professor emeritus of English at Dalhousie University. He is the editor of The Adages of Erasmus.

Micha Lazarus is Associate Fellow of the Warburg Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

Renaissance Lives is a series of biographies published by Reaktion Books as well as a series of conversations discussing the ways in which individuals transmitted or changed the lives of traditions, ideas and images.

This event was filmed on 20 January 2022

New Publication: ‘Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamicate World – ‘Abdīshō’ of Nisisbis and the Apologetic Tradition’ by Salam Rassi

Oxford Oriental Monographs

First book-length history of Syriac and Christian Arabic apologetic literature
First intellectual biography of an influential Syriac author
An in-depth analysis of the entangled worlds of medieval Christian and Islamic theology
A detailed study of a much-neglected period of social and intellectual history in the Middle East

Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamicate World: ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis and the Apologetic Tradition is the first monograph-length study and intellectual biography of ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis (d. 1318), bishop and polymath of the Church of the East. Focusing on his works of apologetic theology, it examines the intellectual strategies he employs to justify Christianity against Muslim (and to a lesser extent Jewish) criticisms. Better known to scholars of Syriac literature as a poet, jurist, and cataloguer, ʿAbdīshōʿ wrote a considerable number of works in the Arabic language, many of which have only recently come to light. He flourished at a time when Syriac Christian writers were becoming increasingly indebted to Islamic models of intellectual production. Yet many of his writings were composed during mounting religious tensions following the official conversion of the Ilkhanate to Islam in 1295. In the midst of these challenges, ʿAbdīshōʿ negotiates a centuries-long tradition of Syriac and Arabic apologetics to remind his readers of the verity of the Christian faith. His engagement with this tradition reveals how anti-Muslim apologetics had long shaped the articulation of Christian identity in the Middle East since the emergence of Islam. Through a selective process of encyclopaedism and systematisation, ʿAbdīshōʿ navigates a vast corpus of Syriac and Arabic apologetics to create a synthesis and theological canon that remains authoritative to this day.

Introduction: ‘A Constant but not Frozen Tradition’
1:Authority, Compilation, and the Apologetic Tradition
2:The Life and Times of a ‘Most Obscure Syrian’
3:The One is Many and the Many Are One: ʿAbdīshōʿ’s Trinitarian Thought
4:Debating Natures and Persons: ʿAbdīshōʿ’s Contribution to Christology
5:Christian Practices, Islamic Contexts: Discourses on the Cross and Clapper
Conclusion: A Tapestry Woven from Many Cloths

Salam Rassi, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oxford, UK

Salam Rassi earned his D.Phil. in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford and has held teaching and research positions at Royal Holloway, the American University of Beirut, and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. His primary interest is medieval intellectual and social history with a focus on scholarly exchange between Christians and Muslims. He is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford.

Online Lecture: ‘Luxury handguns at the Renaissance courts,’ Catherine Fletcher, The Warburg Institute via Zoom, 24th May 2002, 15:30-17:00 (BST)

Catherine Fletcher (Manchester Metropolitan University): ‘Luxury handguns at the Renaissance courts’

By the early sixteenth century, handguns had become an important technology of warfare. European cultural attitudes towards these new objects were ambivalent. In literature firearms were often described as diabolical and unchivalrous. Yet at the same time a gift culture developed around guns. They were assimilated into the world of the court, where designs of firearms and accessories echoed those of fashionable clothes, textiles and furniture. Using a series of examples from museum collections, this talk will investigate the ways that sixteenth-century guns became ‘civilized’.

This event is part of the A Material World: Ritual, which brings together academics and heritage professionals from a wide range of disciplines to discuss issues concerning historical objects, their materials, forms, and functions, as well as their conservation, presentation, display, and reconstruction.

Organisers: Rembrandt Duits (Acting Curator, The Photographic Collection, The Warburg Institute) and Louisa McKenzie (PhD student, The Warburg Institute).

All sessions during 2021-2022 will be delivered online.

FREE VIA ZOOM WITH ADVANCE BOOKING. CLICK HERE TO BOOK.

New Publication: ‘Illuminating Metalwork: Metal, Object, and Image in Medieval Manuscripts,’ edited by Joseph Salvatore Ackley and Shannon L. Wearing

The presence of gold, silver, and other metals is a hallmark of decorated manuscripts, the very characteristic that makes them “illuminated.” Medieval artists often used metal pigment and leaf to depict metal objects both real and imagined, such as chalices, crosses, tableware, and even idols; the luminosity of these representations contrasted pointedly with the surrounding paints, enriching the page and dazzling the viewer. To elucidate this key artistic tradition, this volume represents the first in-depth scholarly assessment of the depiction of precious-metal objects in manuscripts and the media used to conjure them. From Paris to the Abbasid caliphate, and from Ethiopia to Bruges, the case studies gathered here forge novel approaches to the materiality and pictoriality of illumination. In exploring the semiotic, material, iconographic, and technical dimensions of these manuscripts, the authors reveal the canny ways in which painters generated metallic presence on the page. Illuminating Metalwork is a landmark contribution to the study of the medieval book and its visual and embodied reception, and is poised to be a staple of research in art history and manuscript studies, accessible to undergraduates and specialists alike.

Joseph Salvatore Ackley, Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, USA; Shannon L. Wearing, Pontifical Inst. of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Canada.

Contents:

I INTRODUCTION
Preciousness on Parchment: Materiality, Pictoriality, and the Decorated Book Joseph Salvatore Ackley and Shannon L. Wearing	1
II TECHNIQUE
Surface Effect and Substance: Precious Metals in Illuminated Manuscripts Nancy K. Turner	51
III REPRESENTATION
Metal Labor, Material Conversions: Goldsmiths in the Life of St. Denis and in Parisian Life, ca. 1300 Brigitte Buettner	113
Copying, Imitation, and Intermediality in Illuminated Ethiopic Manuscripts from the Early Solomonic Period Jacopo Gnisci	139
The Colors of Metalworks: The Painted Materials of Machinery in Byzantium Roland Betancourt	167
IV MATERIAL TRANSLATIONS
Metal, Materiality, and Maṣāḥif: Ornamentation in Abbasid Qur’ans Beatrice Leal	199
Manuscript as Metalwork: Haptic Vision in Early Carolingian Gospel Books Beth Fischer	223
A “Multimedia” Manuscript: Metalwork and the Siegburg Lectionary Heidi C. Gearhart	247
Illuminating Luxury: The Gray-Gold Flemish Grisailles Sophia Ronan Rochmes	275
V TREASURIES IN BOOKS, BOOKS AS TREASURIES
The Golden Spaces of the Uta Codex Eliza Garrison	303
The Matter of Memory: Illuminated Metalwork in the Vita of St. Albinus of Angers Sasha Gorjeltchan	333
Packaging the Sainte-Chapelle Relic Treasury, Paris ca. 1500 Julia Oswald	361
VI PHENOMENOLOGY AND PIETY
Pilgrimage across Borders: Painted Pilgrim’s Badges in Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts Megan H. Foster-Campbell	393
Peripheral Primacy: Metallic Illumination and Material Illusion in the Aussem Hours Susan Barahal and Elizabeth Pugliano	421
A Curator’s Note: The Tarnished Reception of Remarkable Manuscripts Lynley Anne Herbert	443
Bibliography	463
Index of Manuscripts	505
Index of Names	511
Index of Places	515
Subject Index	519