New Publication: A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea edited by Samantha Kelly

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2020

Winner of the 2021 African Studies Review Prize for the Best Africa-focused Anthology or Edited Collection

A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea introduces readers to current research on major topics in the history and cultures of the Ethiopian-Eritrean region from the seventh century to the mid- sixteenth, with insights into foundational late-antique developments where appropriate. Multiconfessional in scope, it includes in its purview both the Christian kingdom and the Islamic and local-religious societies that have attracted increasing attention in recent decades, tracing their internal features, interrelations, and imbrication in broader networks stretching from Egypt and Yemen to Europe and India. Utilizing diverse source types and methodologies, its fteen essays ofer an up-to-date overview of the subject for students and nonspecialists, and are rich in material for researchers.

Contributors are Alessandro Bausi, Claire Bosc-Tiessé, Antonella Brita, Amélie Chekroun, Marie-Laure Derat, Deresse Ayenachew, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Emmanuel Fritsch, Alessandro Gori, Habtemichael Kidane, Margaux Herman, Bertrand Hirsch, Samantha Kelly, Gianfrancesco Lusini, Denis Nosnitsin, and Anaïs Wion. 

Samantha Kelly, Ph.D (1998, Northwestern University) is Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is a specialist of medieval Italian history and of Ethiopian-European relations to the mid-sixteenth century.

Readership: All interested in medieval Ethiopia, the medieval Mediterranean, global/comparative approaches to the Middle Ages, eastern Christianity (late antique and medieval), medieval Islamic history, Islam or Christianity in Africa, medieval Africa.

Reviews:

“Here we are well served by Samantha Kelly’s Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea. Each chapter conveys a sense of discovery. As Kelly reminds us, we are dealing with a field marked by “the continual expansion of the available source base” due to the ongoing digitalization of Ethiopic manuscripts in Ethiopia itself and in libraries throughout the world. Yet perhaps the most exciting contribution of the Companion is a new view of Ethiopia itself. Christian Ethiopia has tended to be treated as an isolated mountain hideaway where time stood still; Edward Gibbon, at his most sonorous and most wrongheaded, wrote, “Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Aethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten”. The reverse was true. Medieval Ethiopia (which includes much of modern Eritrea) was a frontier society, penetrated in all directions by routes that led from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean deep into Equatorial Africa. This reenvisioning of medieval Ethiopia is, perhaps, the most challenging aspect of the Companion. In the words of one contributor of Kelly’s volume, “Let us hope that the image of an archaic, never evolving and isolated country is no longer acceptable”. “The Glories of Aksum”, by Peter Brown, in The New York Review of Books, October 2021

Winner of the 2021 African Studies Review Prize for the Best Africa-focused Anthology or Edited Collection. The awarding committee made the following statement, accessible here: 
“The ASR Prize for the Best Africa-Focused Anthology or Edited Collection recognizes editors and contributors to an anthology of original scholarship, cohesive in structure and interdisciplinary in nature, that advances African studies in new theoretical and/or methodological directions. The award recognizes the editor(s) and also the contributors as a whole. In making its selection, the prize committee pays particular attention to significance, originality, and quality of writing, and the anthology’s contribution to advancing debates in African studies. […] This stellar edited volume makes available recent scholarship on the history of Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea. Comprehensive in its scope, the sixteen chapters by the international scholars Alessandro Bausi, Claire Bosc-Tiessé, Antonella Brita, Amélie Chekroun, Marie-Laure Derat, Deresse Ayenachew, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Emmanuel Fritsch, Alessandro Gori, Habtemichael Kidane, Margaux Herman, Bertrand Hirsch, Samantha Kelly, Gianfrancesco Lusini, Denis Nosnitsin, and Anaïs Wion bring to light various dimensions of the history and culture of this region. The chapters explore various dimensions of the history of the Ethiopian-Eritrean region from the seventh to the sixteenth century, including Christianity, Islam, and local religions, women, trade, literature, and visual culture. In addition to providing an insightful panorama of the religious and cultural contexts in the area, the diverse authors are very successful in articulating different textual and visual sources while employing several different methodological approaches. Innovative and based on extensive research, this is a unique edited volume that showcases the rich connections between the region of Ethiopia-Eritrea, the African continent, and the rest of the globe. This magisterial edited book is an important contribution to African Studies, which will be useful for scholars and students interested in the history of Africa, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.”

CFP: Gold in Renaissance Western Europe, Paris, June 2022, Deadline: 1st March 2022

Paris, Jun 9–10, 2022
Deadline: Mar 1, 2022

International Symposium:
“Gold in Renaissance Western Europe. Interdisciplinary Approaches”

In his influential book on painting and visual culture in fifteenth-century Italy (Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 1972), Michael Baxandall described the abandonment of gold in painting practices as a sensitive phenomenon both in contracts between painters and patrons, and in the writings of some authoritative art theorists. He linked this attitude to a more general movement on a European scale, consisting of the decline of some practices of display, for example the fashion for clothes embellished with precious materials such as gold. He also suggested a correlation between with the shortage of gold in fifteenth-century Europe or the growing interest in the painter’s maestria at the expense of the preciousness of the materials. Although gold backgrounds gradually disappeared from Western European painting – mainly during the fifteenth century – and art theorists condemned the use of this material, gold was not completely abandoned in practice, as shown by certain artworks produced by painters as innovative as Rembrandt and Vermeer in the middle of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the question of the subsequent use of gold has not been a major focus of early modern art historians, who have instead sought to refine Baxandall’s vision by examining the disappearance of gold backgrounds in the fifteenth century in the two main artistic areas of the time : the Low Countries and the Italian Peninsula.

Fifty years after Baxandall’s work, this symposium aims to investigate, in an interdisciplinary way, the place of gold in Western European societies during the Renaissance. As a material, gold has played an important role in the cultural and economic history of Europe and the world, in the history of science, and also in the historiography of the ‘material turn’ in art, as shown by several transchronological syntheses published in recent years [Venable 2011; Zorach & Phillips 2016]. Museums have not been left out of this renewed interest in the various uses and meanings of gold: one need only think of the exhibition that the Mucem organised in 2018 [Bouiller 2018], or the numerous physico-chemical analyses carried out on ancient artworks in research laboratories in France (e.g. C2RMF) and abroad, particularly in London (at the National Gallery).
On the basis of these recent achievements, we will focus on a limited area (Western Europe), albeit one connected to the rest of the world, and a given time (especially the period from 1450 to 1520). 

The aim of the conference is therefore to explore: 
-The economic history of gold and what the heritage science can say about it. Which deposits of the metal were exploited at that time? What is the current state of knowledge of monetary history in Western Europe at the end of the fifteenth century ? How can we characterise the origin of the gold in a work of art? 
-The social history of gold. Can we speak of a symbolism linked to this material at that time? What are the myths associated with it (the alchemical quest, Eldorado, etc.)? What place does gold have in sumptuary legislation?      
-The taste for gold (e.g. in treasures, domestic interiors, sacred spaces, etc.) and the position of civic and ecclesiastical authorities with regard to this precious metal.
-Learned and practical knowledge : metallurgy, alchemical practices, humanist thinking.
-The craftsmen who worked with gold  (e.g. goldsmiths, gold beaters, gilders) and their regulations.
-Its artistic uses (goldsmithing, sculpture, illumination, engraving, tapestry, painting, etc.).     
-The techniques for using this material as they can be reconstituted today by the physical and chemical sciences, as well as the techniques for restoring the gilding of a few artworks from this period, including the Isenheim Altarpiece (around 1515), which is currently undergoing restoration in Colmar (Musée Unterlinden).

We are inviting papers in all relevant disciplines.

Abstract submission and deadlines
Please submit your abstract of 300 words with a short biography to Romain Thomas (rthomas@parisnanterre.fr), Valentina Hristova (valqhristova@yahoo.fr), Christine Andraud (christine.andraud@mnhn.fr), Anne-Solenn Le Hô (anne-solenn.leho@culture.gouv.fr) by 1 March 2022. Notification of acceptance will be given around 15 March 2022.

Organising Committee
– Prof. Christine ANDRAUD (Professor of Physics (Optics), CRC/CNRS/MNHN)
– Dr. Valentina HRISTOVA (Post-doctoral Fellow in Early Modern Art History, Fondation des Sciences  du Patrimoine and HAR, University Paris Nanterre)
– Dr. Anne-Solenn LE HO (Research Engineer in Physical Chemistry, C2RMF/CNRS)
– Dr. Romain THOMAS (Lecturer in Early Modern Art History, HAR, University Paris Nanterre)

Scientific Committee
-Prof. Erma HERMENS (Professor, Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute and Deputy Director for Conservation and Heritage Research of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University)
-Dr Julien LUGAND (Lecturer in Early Modern Art History, CRESEM, Université de Perpignan Via Domitia)
-Prof. Philippe SENECHAL (Professor in Early Modern Art History, Université de Picardie Jules Verne)
-Dr Laurent-Henri VIGNAUD (Lecturer in Early Modern History, LIR3S, Université de Bourgogne)
-Prof. Alison WRIGHT (Professor in Italian Art c. 1300-1550, University College London)
-Prof. Rebecca ZORACH (Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History, Northwestern University)

Summary bibliography
Aix-en-Provence 1983 – L’Or au Moyen Age : monnaie, métal, objet, symbole (proceedings from the international conference in Aix-en-Provence, February 1982), Aix-en-Provence, 1983
Berzock 2019 – Caravans of gold, fragments in time. Art, culture, and exchange across medieval Saharan Africa, exh. catalogue ed. by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Princeton, 2019
Bouiller et al. 2018 – Or , exh. catalogue ed. by Jean-Roch Bouiller, Philippe Jockey, Myriame Morel-Deledalle & Marcel Tavé (Marseille, Mucem, 24 april-10 september 2018), Vanves, 2018.
Duits 2008 – Rembrandt Duits, Gold brocade and Renaissance painting, London, 2008
Eveno et al. 2014 – Myriam Eveno et al., ”The Louvre Crucifix by Giotto – Unveiling the original decoration by 2D-XRF, X-ray radiography, Emissiography and SEM-EDX analysis”, Heritage Science 2014 2:17 [online]
Eveno-Ravaud 2021 – Myriam Eveno, Elisabeth Ravaud, ”Early occurrences of the use of smalt and shell gold in the Madonna of humility by Jacopo Bellini at the beginning of the fifteen century”, EPJ-P 136, 685 (2021) 
Kroustallis et al. 2016 – Stefanos Kroustallis et al., ”Gilding in Spanish panel painting from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries”, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2016.
Le Hô et al. 2021 – Anne-Solenn Le Hô et al., ”A l’origine des couleurs et éléments matériels d’œuvres peintes des XIVe-XVIe siècles – un aperçu des “brocarts appliqués” et d’autres décors d’imitation et d’enrichissement des vêtements”, CeROArt (2021)
Linden 2007 – Mystical metal of gold essays on alchemy and Renaissance culture, ed. by Stanton J. Linden,  NYC, 2007
MacLennan et al. 2019 – Douglas MacLennan et al., ”Visualizing and measuring gold leaf in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian gold ground paintings”, Heritage Science, 2019, 7, 25 [online]
Minvielle Larousse et al. 2019 – Les métaux précieux en Méditerranée médiévale. Exploitations, transformations, circulations (proceedings from the international conference in Aix-en-Provence, 6-8 October 2016), ed. by Nicolas Minvielle Larousse, Marie-Christine Bailly-Maître, Giovanna Bianchi, Aix-en-Provence, 2019
Nuechterlein 2013 – Jeanne Nuechterlein, ”From Medieval to Modern : Gold and the Value of Representation in Early Netherlandish Painting” [online]
Schmitt  2018 – Lothar Schmitt, « Farbe, Gold und Teig : druckgraphische Experimente im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert », in Chiaroscuro als ästhetisches Prinzip, ed. by Claudia Lehmann, Norberto Gramaccini, Johannes Rößler & Thomas Dittelbach, Berlin, 2018, p. 241-262
Shelton  1987 – Lois Shelton, Gold in Altarpieces of the Early Italian Renaissance. A Theological and Art Historical Analysis of its Meaning and of the Reason of its Disappearance, Ann Arbor, 1987
Turner 2018 – Nancy K. Turner, ”Reflecting a heavingly light. Gold and other metals in medieval and Renaissance manuscript illumination”, in Manuscripts in the Making : Art and Science, ed. by Stella Panayotova & Paola Ricciardi, II, London, 2018, p. 81-96
Venable 2011 – Shannon L. Venable, Gold. A cultural encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, 2011
Wright 2015 – Alison Wright, ”Crivelli’s divine materials”, in Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice, ed. by Stephen J. Campbell, London, 2015, p. 57-77
Wright 2020 – Alison Wright, ”The politics of the gilded body in early Florentine statuary”,  The Sculpture Journal, 29, 2, 2020, p. 131-158
Zorach-Phillips 2016 – Rebecca Zorach & Michael W. Phillips, Gold. Nature and Culture, London, 2016

The AORUM project
This symposium is organised in the wake of the AORUM project (Analyse de l’OR et des ses Usages comme Matériau pictural / Analysis of Gold and its Uses as a Painting Material in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries), directed by Romain Thomas (HAR, University Paris Nanterre), Christine Andraud (CRC/CNRS/MNHN), Anne-Solenn Le Hô (C2RMF) and Dan Vodislav (ETIS, CYU Cergy Paris Université). AORUM, which started on 1st October 2021, is an interdisciplinary project (art history, physical chemistry of painting techniques, optics), whose aim is to study gold as a painting material in artistic practices in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. Its objective is thus to explore a new historiographical field by gathering a corpus of artworks and analysing them from a triple perspective (historical, technical and optical). Indeed, contrary to the prescriptions suggested by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century painting theorists (e.g. Alberti and Vasari), gold continued to be used well beyond the Renaissance. This is evidenced by the paintings of such famous artists as Rembrandt and Vermeer. Many other examples exist, and yet, among the painter’s materials, gold is the great absentee from the literature on European painting of the early modern period. 
The objectives of the AORUM project are precisely to bring this largely ignored corpus out of the shadows: to exploit it according the fundamental questions of art history (iconography, social history, history of taste, etc.); to investigate, with an interdisciplinary approach (material history of art, technical art history – physical chemistry of heritage materials), the history of techniques for using gold; and to analyse the optical properties of gilding, the historical display of works of art, and the effects it generates through the interplay of luminous surfaces, again using an interdisciplinary approach involving art history and physics (optics). Finally, the aim is to manage all of the data in such a way as to contribute to the EquipEx+ ESPADON, thus enhancing its value for art historians, curators, restorers and the general public.
The institutional partners of the project are: the HAR research unit (University Paris Nanterre), the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, the Centre de Recherche sur les Collections (CNRS, MNHN), the ETIS research unit (information sciences, CY Cergy Paris université). Other collaborators include curators (Louvre Museum, Unterlinden Museum of Colmar), restorers, a historian of science (University of Burgundy), physicists (University Lyon 1, University of Poitiers), and a specialist in digital humanities (École Nationale des Chartes). AORUM has already received financial support from the Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine, the Université Paris Lumière, the Musée du Louvre, the HAR research unit (Université Paris Nanterre), and the IPERION-HS network (European Union).

Scholarship: Medieval and Renaissance Studies MA at UCL, Deadline 31st March 2022

The square half-mile around the UCL Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies must contain the highest concentration of manuscripts, books and seminars relating to the period 400 to 1600 anywhere in the Anglophone world. Situated halfway between the British Library and the School of Advanced Study, the Centre benefits from the richness of local resources and acts as a focal point for collaboration in the Bloomsbury area. It is one of the UK’s most prominent specialist centres for the study of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. 

Hosted by the History department but with teaching staff from across the university, we offer an MA degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. We also host a lively programme of seminars and events. This is an MA programme that offers excellent training in languages and palaeography, research-led courses, as well as supervision across a wide range of disciplines.


This year we have a particularly generous range of scholarships available. In addition to the programme-specific Chattaway scholarship, the UCL history department can distribute up to 6 Baxendale scholarships, which will cover the full home tuition fees for the year’s MA. All applicants to the MARS MA are eligible to be considered for these scholarships. Those who have been awarded a scholarship will be notified by the end of June.

The deadline for applications this year is 31st March 2022.

Find more details here.

Online Lecture: Art and Internal Anatomy – Michelangelo, Bronzino, and Mannerist Bodies, 8th February 2022, 5:00-6:30pm (CET)

Christian Kleinbub – Ohio State University
Building on the speaker’s research on Michelangelo’s investment in internal anatomical matters, this talk proposes that other artists of his time, especially Bronzino, paid particular attention to the meaning of the internal organs like the liver, heart, and brain, referencing those organs to explain the internal states of represented bodies. Although such references were only occasionally systematic, this talk contends that they contributed to something like an elite visual language of the body that depended on a long tradition in Tuscan poetry with special reference to Dante. Anatomy is featured throughout the practice and theorization of Italian art in the sixteenth century. Yet, almost without exception, the textual and pictorial evidence has been taken to suggest that artists were concerned only with superficial anatomy, those parts of the body visible on its outsides such as muscles, bones, and sinews. These findings emphasize that the Mannerist body cannot be easily dismissed as a matter only of arbitrary or ornamental form, and they cause us to rethink what “artificiality” means in discussing the art of the period.

The event is free to attend but registration is required. To register click here.
Info at: https://csmbr.fondazionecomel.org/events-and-activities/online/internal-anatomy/

Online Course: Mapping Worlds – Medieval to Modern, Warburg Institute, 25th-29th April 2022 3:00-5:00pm (BST)

Course tutor: Alessandro Scafi (Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural History)

The aim of this course is to explore how maps have served to order and represent physical, social and imaginative worlds from around 1200 to 1700. The focus is on the iconographic character of maps and the complex relation between art and science that is found in mapmaking throughout history. The students will be introduced to a wide range of images from different time periods and made for a variety of purposes, with the intent of drawing together art history, literature, philosophy and visual culture. Theoretical issues will be approached concerning, for example, the association of word and image, the definition of maps and their difference from views and diagrams, but the background and purpose of individual examples will be also discussed. These include medieval world maps produced as independent artifacts or drawn as book illustrations, mural map cycles of the Italian Renaissance, early modern prints made to identify and describe lands mentioned in the Bible. The course will investigate the creative and projective power of maps and their value as historical testimonies. Mnemonic and allegorical maps will be also approached. 

The course will be taught across five x two hour classes online via the zoom platform. Each session will have time for discussion. Reading lists will be made available to registered students.

You can find more information here.

SCHEDULE: 
Monday-Friday, 25-29 April 2022: 15:00-17:00

PROGRAMME:
1. What is a Map? Definition of a map. Maps of territories and maps of concepts. Art and cartography.

2. Rhetorical Mapping, Then and Now: Maps and Politics. Maps of medieval and modern cities and empires. 

3. Mapping Other Worlds: Medieval and modern mapping of the Garden of Eden. Maps of the past. 

4. Mapping Inner Worlds: Allegorical maps and maps of the imagination: maps of love, the mind, the road of life.

5. Maps of Memory: Spatial thinking and the art of memory; maps of knowledge and maps as spiritual aids.

FEES:

  • Standard £120
  • Warburg Staff & Fellows/external students/unwaged £110
  • SAS & LAHP-funded students £95
  • Warburg Students £60

A limited number of fee-waiver bursaries are available. If you would like to apply please download the form HERE(Opens in new window) and return it completed to warburg@sas.ac.uk by Monday 4 April 2022.

Online Lecture: Murray Seminar – Eroticism, Emulation and Censorship: the Two Lovers by Giulio Romano, Barbara Furlotti, 10th February 2022 5pm (GMT)

Giulio Romano (1492/1499-1546), Raphael’s favourite pupil, played a key role in the awakening of a new approach to eroticism in Renaissance art. Engaging with openly pornographic subjects and more traditional mythological themes, such as the loves of the gods, Giulio became one of the most imaginative and provocative Renaissance painters of erotically charged scenes. This paper focuses on the most puzzling of his erotic paintings: the Two Lovers from the Hermitage. Relying on recent conservation data and primary evidence, it reconstructs the collecting history of the painting from its creation to its arrival in Russia, and the iconoclastic censorship it was subjected to. Moreover, by taking into account Giulio Romano’s antiquarian interests in conjunction with contemporary literary production, especially comedies and poesia burlesca, the paper clarifies the subject of the painting, which has been much-debated over the years but never fully explained.

Dr Barbara Furlotti is Associate Lecturer at The Courtauld, London. She was the recipient of several grants including a post–doctoral fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2009-2010) and a Marie Curie fellowship at the Warburg Institute (2012-2015). Barbara has published extensively on the history of collecting, especially in relation to Rome and Mantua, display practices, the art market, and antiquarianism. Her last book, Antiquities in Motion: From Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections, on the market for antiquities in sixteenth century Rome, was published by The Getty Publications in 2019. In 2019, Barbara co–curated the exhibition Giulio Romano: Art and Desire with Guido Rebecchini, held in Mantua, Palazzo Te, and is currently working on a new exhibition, Giulio Romano: the Art of Living, on Renaissance design for luxury objects, to be held again in Mantua, in Palazzo Te in October 2022.

Eventbrite link to Barbara Furlotti’s Murray Seminar (in your local time)

Online Course: Introduction to Arabic Manuscript Studies, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, 13th-24th June 2022

This two-week introductory course is open to graduate students, advanced undergraduates, faculty, and independent scholars with a research interest in Arabic manuscripts. The course will introduce students to the study of Arabic manuscripts in their historical, cultural, and material dimensions and to a diversity of Arabic manuscript traditions from West Africa and the Middle East, both Islamic and Christian; provide basic introduction to paleography, codicology, and philological practices, with a special focus on the application of these skills in a digital context; and highlight a wide range of scholarly reference tools for the study of Arabic manuscripts. By the end of the course, students will be able to contribute to the scholarly description of a previously uncataloged manuscript of their choice from the HMML collection.

Sessions will be held Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. CST.

Eligibility

  • Basic understanding of the classical Arabic language
  • Professional and scholarly interest in manuscripts 

Costs
$250 (U.S.)

Find more details here.

CFP: Editing Late-Antique and Early Medieval Texts. Problems and Challenges, Deadline 28th February 2022

Editing Late-Antique and Early Medieval Texts. Problems and Challenges II, University of Milan, October 10–12, 2022

This workshop continues the project inaugurated in 2017 in Lisbon (link), aiming at fostering and promoting the exchange of ideas on how to edit late Antique and early Medieval texts (mostly Latin texts, but without excluding possible extensions to the Greek field). Young scholars in particular will be encouraged to present case-studies and share the editorial problems and methodological challenges that they had to face in order to fulfil their research or critical editions, in dialogue with more experienced scholars. As in the previous workshop, the centre of interest will be troublesome issues, such as, for example:
– ‘open’ or ‘fluid’ texts
– Latin texts translated from another language, like Greek, or bilingual texts
– texts with variants by the author or in multiple recensions
– texts with linguistic instability
– texts transmitted by a huge number of manuscripts
– collections of extracts
– texts with a relevant indirect tradition.

Keynote speakers
Paolo Chiesa (Univ. Milano)
Stephen Oakley (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
Gert Partoens (Katholieke Univ. Leuven)

Papers
The call is open to young scholars under the age of 40.
The papers should be 30 minutes in length and will focus on the edition of late Antique and early Medieval texts. Proposals should concern ongoing research, in which methodological reflection on the most appropriate editorial practise and its problems plays an important role.
The scientific committee will select a number of proposals to be presented and discussed during the workshop. The papers can be presented in English, French, Italian and Spanish.
An abstract of around 200 words (including name, institution and email) and a short CV should be sent before 28 February 2022 to: editing.gargnano[at]gmail.com. Successful applicants will be notified by 30 April 2022.

Location
The conference will be held in the Palazzo Feltrinelli in Gargnano sul Garda, where the participants and the public will also be hosted: this will favour a closer contact and exchange during the whole duration of the workshop. The registration fee will cover board and lodging expenses.
How to reach Gargnano: appropriate information will be provided later.

Inscription fees
70 € for participating with paper.
170 € for public with board and lodging included (three nights, five meals: different arrangements can be made with the organisers).
The payment should be made before 31 July 2022. Bank account details will be provided later.

Scientific Committee
Rossana Guglielmetti (Univ. Milano), Paulo F. Alberto (Univ. Lisboa), David Paniagua (Univ. Salamanca)

Contacts
E-mail: editing.gargnano[at]gmail.com.

Online Lecture: Locating Norman Sicily in Medieval Intellectual History, Philippa Byrne, IHR Europe 1100-1550 Seminar, 3rd February 2022 5:30pm (GMT)

The IHR Europe 1150-1550 seminar returns this Thursday 3rd February 5.30 pm. Dr Philippa Byrne will speak on  ‘Locating Norman Sicily in Medieval Intellectual History’.

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

Online Lecture: “Masters in Miniature”, SIMS Lecture Series, Bryan C. Keene, February 11th 2022, 1-2:30pm EST

The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies is pleased to announce the next lecture in its Online Lecture Series, presented in partnership with Center for Italian Studies and the Italian Studies section of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania:

Masters in Miniature: Future Horizons for Italian Manuscript Studies
Bryan C. Keene, Riverside City College 

Friday, February 11, 2022
1:00 – 2:30 pm via Zoom

This lecture centers on the historiography and future of Italian manuscript illumination with the goal of suggesting new methods of attribution and assessment for art historians, dealers, and collectors. The Philadelphia area collections and BiblioPhilly initiative provide ample inspiration for scholars of this material and will form a cornerstone of this presentation. Within the corpus of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550 and 1568), one reads the biographies of several illuminators, including Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Angelico, the painters of service books for the Sistine Chapel, and Giulio Clovio, the last of whom Vasari called “Michelangelo in miniature.” A present-day counterpart to the Lives is the Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani (ed. Milvia Bollati, 2004), which provides biographies of nearly four hundred named artists working from the 9th through 16th century. About one third are documented as illuminators, while another third are recorded as painters and as illuminators, separately, and the final third are assigned by art historians (based on signatures, connoisseurship, or other means). In addition, there are over two hundred and fifty anonymous maestri christened by scholars. Many studies have been informed by the Dizionario and dozens of new artists have since come to light.  

A specific focus of this paper will be an assessment of the geographic organization by “schools” in the published catalogues of various collections, such as Cambridge (UK), the Cini Foundation, and Kupferstichkabinett collections, and several private holdings. In each, the collaborative nature of manuscript production—by artists, scribes, and other craftspeople from different neighborhoods or regions—is often overshadowed by the career of individual illuminators. A discussion of exhibitions will also be offered, and a vision for future digital collaborations will form the conclusion.

For more information and to register, please visit the link.