Medieval Art Research

New Publication: ‘Medieval Art at the Intersection of Visuality and Material Culture. Studies in the ‘Semantics of Vision’’ edited by Raphaèle Preisinger

ISBN 978-2-503-58153-8

By according equal importance to theoretical accounts of vision and cultural practices of seeing, the articles in this book contribute to the ongoing shift in the fields of art history and medieval history from considerations of vision to those of visuality.

Over the last two decades the historiography of medieval art has been defined by two seemingly contradictory trends: a focus on questions of visuality, and more recently an emphasis on materiality. The latter, which has encouraged multi-sensorial approaches to medieval art, has come to be perceived as a counterpoint to the study of visuality as defined in ocularcentric terms.

Bringing together specialists from different areas of art history, this book grapples with this dialectic and poses new avenues for reconciling these two opposing tendencies. The essays in this volume demonstrate the necessity of returning to questions of visuality, taking into account the insights gained from the ‘material turn’. They highlight conceptions of vision that attribute a haptic quality to the act of seeing and draw on bodily perception to shed new light on visuality in the Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements, List of Illustrations

Colour Plates

Introduction: A Return to Medieval Visuality after the Material Turn — RAPHAÈLE PREISINGER

‘Visual Piety’ and Visual Theory: Was There a Paradigm Shift? — BERTHOLD HUB

Fortress of Form, Robber of Consciousness: Theorizing Visuality in Islam — WENDY M. K. SHAW

De spiritu et anima: The Cistercians, the Image, and Imagination — JENS RÜFFER

The Liveliness of the Methexic Image — BISSERA V. PENTCHEVA

Radiance and Image on the Breast: Seeing Medieval Jewellery — SILKE TAMMEN

Reliquaries and the Boundaries of Vision: Relics, Crystals, Mirrors and the ‘Vision Effect’ — CYNTHIA HAHN

Channelling the Gaze: Squints in Late Medieval Screens — TINA BAWDEN

Index

Online lecture: ‘Orality – Literacy – Digitality: Medieval Perspectives on the Digital Age’, by Torsten Hiltmann, IHR European History 1150-1550 lecture series, 13 January 2022, 5.30pm (GMT)

The first of the IHR European History 1150-1550 seminars 2022 will take place on 13 January 2022, between 5.30 and 7pm GMT.

Professor Torsten Hiltmann (FU Berlin) will deliver the paper ‘Orality – Literacy – Digitality: Medieval Perspectives on the Digital Age.’

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.

The seminar, which takes place on Zoom, is free. Please register online here.

Fellowships: Six RECEPTIO postdoctoral fellowships in codicology, 2022-2023 (deadline 1 February 2022)

RECEPTIO, the Research Centre for European Philological Tradition (Lugano/London), announces six fellowships for its training course for codicologists who are looking to work in auction houses and antiquarian bookshops.

RECEPTIO is the only research centre in Europe that combines codicological and philological research with the labour market, training codicologists to work for auction houses and antiquarian bookshops. Every semester we launch a competition for six scholarships to attend this unique course. The Institute’s diverse research areas and student body form an innovative, cosmopolitan and enriching academic environment, providing students with the skills and networks needed to pursue an exciting career.

There is no age limit, but applicants should have obtained their PhD no more than ten years from the date of the appointment. Researchers who have obtained their PhD more than ten years ago, but are active in the field of codicology or philology, are invited to apply on the basis of their Curriculum Vitae and will be tested for admission through a motivational interview. Candidates with a Master’s degree who have a strong interest in the object of study will be tested for admission through a motivational interview, too.

Admission decisions are based on the quality of the overall application file. The grant consists of €4,000 for each academic year and can be renewed on the basis of the results obtained.

For more information visit: https://www.receptio.eu/codicologia

Our selection committees give priority consideration to academic achievement and motivation. Academic achievement is documented using transcripts and recommendations. Motivation factors should be clarified in the cover letter/statement of purpose. The evaluation committees will take into consideration the difficulties encountered by many students around the world in the spring 2020 semester, due to the COVID-19 health crisis. The main language of the course is Italian, but a very good command of English is required to follow the seminars (seminars are also held in French and Spanish).

Deadline: 1 February 2022

Application via the website: https://www.receptio.eu/programmes

Exhibition: ‘Gold’, British Library, London, 20 May – 2 October 2022

The British Library has announced a new exhibition, Gold, which will run from 20 May to 2 October 2022.

Gold has long held the power to dazzle and ignite feelings of wonder. This new exhibition will take visitors on a journey to over 20 countries to discover how gold has been used to embellish and enhance the written word across cultures, faiths and through time.

Showcasing some of the most luxurious illuminated manuscripts, gold-tooled books, sacred texts and scrolls from the British Library’s collection, objects on display will include the Harley Golden Gospels, the Lotus Sutra and a treaty in Malayalam, beautifully inscribed on a long strip of gold. Through these stunning objects, Gold will examine the masterful techniques used to handle such a precious metal and tell the stories of those who owned these extraordinary books.

Tickets will go on sale in February 2022.

The exhibition is supported by The Goldhammer Foundation and the American Trust for the British Library, with thanks to The Finnis Scott Foundation and the Owen Family Trust.

Photo: The Queen Mary Psalter, English, early 14th century, copyright British Library

CFP: ‘Ritual: Practice, Performance, Perception,’ Cerae Volume 9, deadline 30 April 2022

Rituals pervade human life. From small or mundane rituals like brushing our teeth or making one’s daily coffee, to grand ceremonies that mark important life stages, rituals are everywhere. This has prompted reflection on what rituals are, on what can be considered as ritual. Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies invites essays that analyse rituals of all kinds: public and private, communal and solitary, secular and religious, rapidly changing and long-lasting. It also welcomes theoretically- or methodologically-focused contributions.

Authors may address, but are not limited to:

Royal rituals: coronations, births, or marriage consummations etc.
How rituals can be used as an element of identity and alterity
Subversive and subverted ritual: witchcraft trials, historical (mis)perceptions of Jewish rites etc.
Sacred landscapes and rituals focused on/in the natural world
Ritual as a medium for memory and memorialisation
Sacrifices, magic, religious rites and their intercultural reception
Medieval and early modern political rituals such as guild processions
Ritual represented in medievalism, including film, fantasy, literature, and art

We invite submissions encompassing all aspects of the late classical, medieval, and early modern world. There are no geographical restrictions. As an interdisciplinary journal, Ceræ encourages submissions from archaeology, art history, historical ecology, literature, linguistics, intellectual history, musicology, politics, social studies, and beyond.

Full length articles should be 5000-8000 words, excluding references. Ceræ also accepts short notices of up to 3000 words. Themed submissions must be submitted by 30 April 2022. For submission instructions, please visit our page on submission guidelines.

We also accept non-themed submissions throughout the year. Ceræ particularly encourages submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and offers a $200 (AUD) annual prize for the best postgraduate/ECR essay. Further information on our annual essay prize can be found here.

Featured image: The Trier Adventus Ivory, photo by Ann Münchow

Scholarship: British Archaeological Association 2022 Ochs Scholarship, deadline 1 February 2022

The Ochs Scholarships are awarded annually by the British Archaeological Association for research projects which fall within the Association’s fields of interest. These are defined as the study of archaeology, art and architecture from the Roman period until the nineteenth century, principally within Europe, though the core interests of the BAA are Roman to 16th century. We only entertain applications that cover the 17th to 20th centuries that are of an historiographical, conservationist or antiquarian nature. The scholarships are intended to provide post-graduate students striving to write up theses with late stage funding, and help independent researchers complete projects. Applicants should either be UK citizens, registered at a UK University, or undertaking work on material in the UK. Only one of these criteria is necessary, but there should be a connection with the UK.

Applications are thus invited from students who are completing theses for post-graduate degrees and who are facing financial hardship. It must be demonstrated that the award of an Ochs scholarship will enable a thesis to be completed satisfactorily within the period of the Scholarship. Applications where a substantial amount of fieldwork remains to be done are unlikely to succeed.

Applications for research projects conducted either privately or at post-doctoral level are not eligible. The Association is launching a separate fund to cover these. For further details please contact the Hon. Secretary as below.

In preparing the application, all information should be typed. Additional information may be attached on a separate sheet or in a covering letter. Scholarships are awarded annually in April on the recommendation of a Scholarship Committee. The committee reach a decision primarily on the basis of the application (plus any supporting documents), though committee members will take account of remarks made by the applicant’s referees.

Applications should give a detailed account of proposed expenditure, which may include a reasonable level of subsistence. Allowance may not be made for any imputed salary, nor do awards cover the costs of books or equipment such as computers. For post-graduate students allowable expenditure includes supervision and examination fees, as well as thesis-binding costs. While bearing in mind that scholarships up to the value of £5,000 are available, we ask applicants not to ask for more than the minimum they require, as this may enable the Scholarship Committee to make an additional award.

Applicants should supply the names and contact details of two referees, one of whom in the case of degree candidates should be the main supervisor and ask their referees to forward references (either by post or as email attachments) to the Hon. Secretary by 21 February. The scholarship is tenable for one year and may be taken up at any time between April and October 2022, so only work which is capable of submission by October 2023 will be considered by the Scholarship Committee. The award is payable in three instalments; half on acceptance of the Scholarship, one quarter at the half-way stage, and one quarter on submission (or publication if a non-degree research project). Arrangements will be made to pay the first instalment on a date agreeable to the successful candidate.

Members of the Scholarship Committee will not discuss applications with candidates once they have been submitted, nor offer feedback; it is the role of the applicant’s sponsors and supervisors to advise them on the tone and content of applications. However, the Hon. Secretary is happy to advise on procedure prior to the submission of an application. While all applications are regarded as confidential, the Association will publish the names of the successful applicants and the title of the work for which their Scholarship was awarded.

Application forms may be downloaded from the BAA website, or obtained by sending a stamped addressed envelope to John McNeill (Hon. Secretary, BAA), 18 Stanley Road, Oxford OX4 1QZ. Completed applications, together with any covering letter or enclosures, should be returned to John McNeill not later than 1 February, 2022, either by post – or as email attachments to jsmcneill@btinternet.com

BAA Ochs application form Download

Online lecture: ‘The Medieval Wall Paintings of Pickering Church’ by Dr Kate Giles, hosted by The Society for Church Archaeology, 6 January 2022, 7pm GMT

The Society for Church Archaeology is delighted to welcome Dr Kate Giles, who will deliver an online lecture ‘The medieval wall paintings of Pickering church (North Yorkshire): discovery, restoration and meaning’.

In this free online lecture, Dr Kate Giles (Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture and the Department of Archaeology, University of York) will share her research on the remarkable series of wall paintings in Pickering church, N. Yorks. Long thought to be an example of Victorian over-restoration, Kate will make the case for a reappraisal of these paintings as a means not just of telling the story of hundreds, if not thousands of England’s medieval churches, but also as a potentially unique survival of a hidden scheme of meanings, which form the subject of her forthcoming monograph, to be published by Shaun Tyas in 2022.

The lecture will be hosted through Zoom and will take place on Thursday 6th January 2021 from 19:00 to 20:00 GMT.

Open Access Journal: ‘Fenestella. Inside Medieval Art’ – Issue 2-2021.

Fenestella is a scholarly and peer-reviewed open access journal. It is published by Milano University Press, and powered by OJS 3. Issue 2 – 2021 was published on December 28th and can be viewed here: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/fenestella/issue/view/1760

Fenestella publishes scholarly papers on medieval art and architecture, between Late Antiquity and c. 1400, covering the Latin West, the Byzantine East and medieval Islam. The journal aims to consider medieval artefacts from within, as if seen through a fenestella confessionis, in order to throw light on iconography, function and liturgical practice and space. Fenestella supports original research, favouring an inter- and trans-disciplinary approach arising from the horizon and methodology of art history. Papers on wide-ranging themes, critical reviews and studies of micro-topics are all welcome, as long as they contribute to debate at an international level.

Fenestella accepts papers in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish, with abstracts in English. Submissions that satisfy a preliminary review by the editorial staff are then peer-reviewed by anonymous reviewers. After final acceptance and copyediting each article is given a DOI number, to be immediately published and indexed. Articles published during a calendar year are collected in an annual issue. Each article is freely accessible and shareable according to the license CC BY SA 4.0.

The editorial board is also currently accepting submission for Issue 3/2022. Submission Deadline: 30 June 2022. Submission guidelines can be found here.

Online Lecture: ‘The Martial Maid’: Armored Women in the European Imaginary’, 8 Jan 2022 @ 2PM EST

‘The Martial Maid’: Armored Women in the European Imaginary – online lecture by Dr. Chassica (Chaz) Kirchhoff, Assistant Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022 • 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm EST

Armor is a category of material and visual culture that was inextricably linked to constructions and performances of masculinity in late medieval and early modern Europe. But what did it mean to depict or describe a female body encased in such a symbolic carapace of steel? Moreover, how could the act of donning armor transform a real woman in the eyes of her contemporaries and for posterity? Presented in conjunction with the Toledo Museum of Art’s current exhibition, The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum, this talk will explore stories, images, and texts created between the late fourteenth and the early seventeenth century, when plate armor was central to martial identity and experience. These case studies offer lenses through which to examine the persistent allure of the armored female body for both historical and contemporary readers and viewers.

The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum is sponsored locally by presenting sponsors Taylor Cadillac and Susan and Tom Palmer, as well as 2021 Exhibition Program sponsor ProMedica, with additional support from the McLoughlin Family Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, and the TMA Ambassadors. More information can be read here.

This event is free and open to the public. Join the lecture on January 8 at 2 pm EST here: https://toledomuseum-org.zoom.us/j/85429818796

Lecture: Leah R. Clark, Fit for the Gods: Chinese Porcelain in Duke Alfonso d’Este’s camerini (The Murray Seminars, Birkbeck) 12 Jan 2022

Wed 12th January 2022, 5:00 PM, GMT

A research paper exploring the intersections between Renaissance ‘fine art’ and material culture.

Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods is well known as one of the earliest representations of Chinese porcelain in Italy. Painted for one of the famed camerini of Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara and later repainted by a compatriot, Titian, and the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi, it is often assumed that Bellini copied Chinese porcelain he had seen in his native city of Venice.Yet this talk will consider instead how Bellini may have been referencing the large porcelain collection held by the Este, housed in spaces such as the previously unknown Stanza delle Porcellane. A narrow art historical focus on the paintings destined for the camerini and their literary interpretation and programme has ignored the role of material culture (including porcelain) across the rooms. An emphasis on materials and their transformative qualities was a theme running throughout the paintings, but also in the objects of display, and in the larger interests of Duke Alfonso. Looking at the material, sensorial, and pictorial conditions of the camerini thus allows us to explore broader understandings of disegno. The inclusion of porcelain in Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods is not simply a representation of Alfonso’s porcelain collections and his interests, but rather, sets up a complex relationship between reality and fiction and the metaphoric capabilities of material culture.

To register for this lecture, please visit this site: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fit-for-the-gods-chinese-porcelain-in-duke-alfonso-destes-camerini-tickets-227624439827