Online Lecture: The Sound of the Lectionary: Chant, Architecture, and Salvation in Byzantium, Roland Betancourt, November 30, 2021, 2:00–3:30 pm (EST)

Looking at the interplay between chant, architecture, and manuscript illumination, this talk considers the ways in which notions of salvation were sonically articulated in the Divine Liturgy during the Middle Byzantine period. Tracing the Gospel lectionary from text to illustration to recitation, this lecture looks at how Byzantine artists produced a unified experience that took into consideration not only the text of the Gospel, but also how it would appear to the reader and his audience within the context of the Divine Liturgy. This work looks across text, art, and music to better understand how medieval artists fluidly worked across these categories. The material presented in this talk comes from Betancourt’s recent book Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy (Cambridge University Press, 2021) that richly addresses these matters in further depth.

Part of the Boston Byzantine Music Festival Lecture Series exploring the musical heritage of the Byzantine Empire. The Boston Byzantine Music Festival is a program of the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture. 

This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question and answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link. An email with the relevant Zoom information will be sent 1–2 hours ahead of the lecture.

Registration closes at 11:00 AM (EST) on November 30, 2021.

Click here to register.

Call for contribution : Workshops New Translations and indirect Reception of Ancient Greece (Texts and Images, 1300-1560) (ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA Project)

ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA Project
The Reception of Ancient Greece in pre-modern French Literature and Illustrations of Manuscripts and Printed Books (1320-1550): How invented memories shaped the identity of European communities
Direction : Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas

The AGRELITA project ERC n° 101018777 was launched on October 1st 2021. It is a 5-year project (2021-2026) financed on an ERC Advanced Grant 2020 through the European Union’s Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020.

Workshops
New Translations and indirect Reception of Ancient Greece
(Texts and Images, 1300-1560)

Thursday, September 15th and Friday, September 16th 2022
Thursday, January 19th and Friday, January 20th 2023

The AGRELITA Project studies the reception of ancient Greece, exploring a corpus of French-language literary works produced from 1320 to the 1550s, as well as the images of their manuscripts and printed books. The development of direct translations from Greek to French begins only from the 1550s. From the beginning of the 14th Century until the middle of the 16th Century, French-language authors and artists who illustrate manuscripts and printed books of their works, with some exceptions, have no direct knowledge of Greek works. The knowledge about ancient Greece that they transmit and reinvent in their texts and in their illustrations is mediated by various filters. Their reception is indirect, based on previous textual and iconographic works, whose representations of ancient Greece are in fact the result of one or more receptions.
The workshops of September 2022 and January 2023 will be devoted to the analysis, through this corpus, of new translations and adaptations into French language from Latin works which convey the knowledge about ancient Greece, in several different forms. These Latin works adapted by 1300-1550s French authors are partly ancient and medieval works which are not translations, and partly translations or adaptations of Greek works, sometimes with several linguistic transfers from Greek. They take very diverse forms : from ancient texts (Ovid, Virgil, Boethius, Augustine, Darès, etc.) to Latin humanist translations of Greek works produced in Italy and in the Netherlands in the 15th and 16th Centuries, including original medieval Latin works (id est no translations, Vincent de Beauvais, Third Vatican Mythograph, Petrarch, Boccaccio, the author of Rudimentum novitiorum…), Latin translations from French (Guido delle Colonne) and Arabic-Latin and Arabic-Spanish-Latin translations (Aristotle, Dits moraux des philosophes…).
French-language authors thus inherit various previous receptions, which they appropriate and transform, so that they carry on the inventing process of representations of ancient Greece. As the manuscripts and printed books of these new translations often comprise a lot of illustrations, the artists present simultaneously visual translations, which are also based on various sources and previous receptions and show new images of ancient Greece. The question of the reception of ancient Greece will therefore be explored from another perspective than the one adopted until now and which consisted in studying the direct transmission of Greek works.
In the corpus of 1300-1550s French new translations / adaptations which relate to ancient Greece, its history, its heroes, its authors and their works, although they are not direct translations of Greek works, the multiple origins and the syncretism of the knowledge available to authors and artists will be explored, as well as the methods of their appropriation and transformation. We will analyze how this transmission of knowledge that already conduct various interpretations is above all matter of circulation and of creation of representations, and how the elaboration of images of ancient Greece contributes to inventing a cultural memory submitted to a large secular audience both through text and images.

The corpus of studies (texts and images in manuscripts and printed books) will be constituted as follows:
-the translations / adaptations into French of ancient Latin works and the images of ancient Greece that they convey, in particular the translations of the works of Ovid, of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, of the City of God by Augustine, of De excidio Troiae historia by Darès the Phrygian…
-the retranslations into French of medieval Latin works that are translations from French, such as the ones of the Historia destructionis Troiae by Guido delle Colonne.
-the translations / adaptations into French of medieval Latin works that are not translations, and among the most widely distributed the ones written by Vincent de Beauvais (in the wake of Hélinand de Froidmont), Boccacio, Petrarch, but also many others texts; the images of ancient Greece that the mid-Latin works present and those that their adaptations in French transmit, accurate or not.
-the first indirect translations of Greek works, through Latin, Arabic-Latin or Arabic-Spanish-Latin translations (the French translations of the ethical and political works of Aristotle, the Dits moraux des philosophes…)
-from the 15th century, French translations of Greek works through Latin translations of humanists from Italy and the Netherlands. Particularly, the indirect translations of Xenophon, Plutarch, Thucydides, Diodorus of Sicily, Lucian, Homer, Euripides from the translations of Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Guarino Veronese, Pier Candido Decembrio and Erasmus.
How do the humanist Latin translators of Greek works, and then the French translators of these Latin translations, present their translation initiatives? What images do they give (them and the illustrators of the manuscripts and printed books of their works) of Greek authors and works, and of ancient Greece in works that deal with its history and its characters? What changes are emerging in the reception of ancient Greece?
-the translations into other European vernaculars, during the 15th and 16th centuries, from Latin humanist translations of Greek works. Analyzing the new indirect translations, from Latin, in particular from Xenophon, Plutarch, Thucydides, Diodorus Sicile, Lucien, which are written in the other Romance languages and in the English and Germanic languages, would make it possible to understand the commonalities as well as the differences of translation and reinterpretation in several European cultural fields, the various inflections given to Greek works and images from ancient Greece, the different uses of these translations, the different types of manuscripts and printed books, in their materiality and in their illustrations.

The papers will be published by Brepols publishers, in the “Research on Antiquity Receptions” series :
http://www.brepols.net/Pages/BrowseBySeries.aspx?TreeSeries=RRA

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered according to the terms of the University of Lille. Contact: Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas

Please submit a short abstract (title and a few lines of presentation) to catherine.bougassas@univ-lille.fr by December 15, 2021.

For more information about the ERC Agrelita Project, please see our academic Blog : https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/

Lecture: Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Catherine Yvard, The Research Forum,10 November 2021, 5:00PM – 6:30PM (GMT)

With over 2000 cuttings from medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, the V&A holds one of the largest collections of this kind in the world. On the occasion of the Fragmented Illuminations exhibition at the V&A (8 September 2021-8 May 2022), curator Catherine Yvard will explore the history of this collection, and highlight some of the exciting discoveries made while researching for the exhibition.   

Catherine Yvard is Collections Curator at the National Art Library within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, United Kingdom. She is an expert in late medieval manuscript illumination and Gothic ivory sculpture, with an extensive knowledge of databases and manuscript cataloguing, acquired through work on major digitization projects at the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Courtauld Institute of Art and Trinity College Dublin. She has most recently been investigating the V&A’s collection of manuscript cuttings in preparation for a small exhibition entitled Fragmented Illuminations which opened in early September and will run until early May 2022.  

Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld). 

Location: The Courtauld Institute of Art, Lecture Theatre 1, Vernon Square and Online via Livestream

The lecture is free, but booking is essential. Click here to register.

Online Lecture: Common Threads: Textiles at the Frontiers of Faith, A Virtual Scholars’ Event for the Exhibition at The Met Cloisters Spain, 1000–1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith, Wednesday 10 November 2021 1:00-2:30 PM ET

The sumptuous patterned silk textiles produced in the multifaith medieval Iberian Peninsula, objects of great value as well as desire, played a paramount role in facilitating interactions among elite consumers, no matter their beliefs. Rare and precious surviving medieval Iberian fiber arts evoke for modern audiences a variety of social, political, and economic relationships, yet there is still much to be discovered from the fragments that remain. This virtual scholars’ event, convened in conjunction with the exhibition Spain, 1000–1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith, takes a close (occasionally microscopic!) look at some of the most important silks surviving from the eleventh through thirteenth centuries.


Introduction: Textiles at the Frontiers of Faith
Julia Perratore, Assistant Curator, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition’s curator provides an overview of select textiles included in the exhibition.


The Textile Turn in Medieval Iberian Studies
María Judith Feliciano, Independent Scholar, New York

Using the textile fragments currently on view in the Fuentidueña Chapel gallery, we explore multiple interpretative possibilities relating to materiality, contexts, and histories.


Distinctive Technical Features of Iberian Textiles—The Met Collection
Janina Poskrobko, Conservator in Charge, Department of Textile Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This presentation, from the perspective of a textile conservator, introduces a group of magnificent textiles in The Met collection, which were produced in the Iberian Peninsula during the medieval period. Their striking appearance and exceptional craftsmanship are the result of traditional weaving (ranging from simple slit-tapestry to compound weaves including samite, taqueté, and lampas), enriched with innovative techniques introduced by Nasrid weavers.

Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the International Center of Medieval Art.

Register HERE. For questions, please email icma@medievalart.org.

New Publication: Experiencing the Last Judgement, by Niamh Bhalla

Experiencing the Last Judgement opens up new ways of understanding a Byzantine image type that has hitherto been considered largely uniform in its manifestations and to a great extent frightening, coercive and paralysing. It moves beyond a purely didactic understanding of the Byzantine image of the Last Judgement, as a visual eschatological text to be ‘read’ and learned from, and proposes instead an appreciation of each unique image as a dynamic site to be experienced.

Click here for further information or to purchase.

Online Lecture: Stargates – ‘Magical Images in Late Medieval Manuscripts’, Dr. Jean-Patrice Boudet, The Warburg Institute, 10 November 2021, 5:30PM – 7:00PM (GMT)

Stargates – The Magic of Images from Heka to the Monas Hieroglyphica is a lecture series dedicated to the material aspects of making magical images. Following a chronological sequence in order to underline the transformations, continuities, and discontinuities from ancient to “modern” practices, this series builds on the legacy of the Warburg Institute scholars D.P. Walker and Frances Yates.

In the last centuries of the Western Middle Ages, following the translation of magical texts from Arabic (and even Hebrew and Greek) into Latin, dozens of manuscripts include magical images of all kinds. Other endogenous magical traditions, such as the Ars notoria, generate their own images. We will try to draw up a typology of these images, designated by technical terms (imagines, figurae, sigilla, characteres, pentaculae, candariae, notae, etc.), to see what are the functions of these images and the relations they have with the texts in which they are inserted, and to ask the question of whether the whole of these texts and images form together a more or less coherent system of representation of the world.

Organised by Luisa Capodieci (Frances A. Yates Long Term Fellow, Warburg Institute).

Click here to register.

Job Opportunity: Assistant Professor, Pre-Modern European Art History (Deadline 30 November 2021)

Texas Tech University welcomes applications for an Assistant Professor, tenure-track, with specialization in the pre-modern era (pre- 1600) that engages the artistic, visual, and material cultures of Europe in its intersectional encounters with the circum-Mediterranean, circum-Atlantic, or circum-Pacific. PhD and teaching experience with diverse student populations required.

Click here to apply.

Call for Papers: ‘Obscurités/Darkness’, Perspective 2023 no. 1 (Deadline 13th December 2021)

As a discipline based on the study of the visible, art history has necessarily to engage with what is illuminated and can be seen. But the opposition of light and shade, in its physical as well as in its symbolic dimensions, also structures human thought. Many myths of creation begin with the emergence of light; banishing darkness is the first step for the development of life and society. Subsequent developments in philosophy and the human sciences—the Enlightenment comes to mind in particular—continue to make the division between light and dark a framework of thought of decisive importance. Thus, consciously or in spite of ourselves, from our origin myths to contemporary positivism, from biblical narratives to the constitution of human sciences as academic disciplines, we are the heirs of a polarisation between darkness and light. Brightness becomes a virtue: clarity, lucidity, brilliance, carry a positive charge while their opposites are associated with negative qualities of obscurity and even evil.

For this issue, coordinated with the Indian art historian Kavita Singh, the journal Perspective turns towards darkness as a theme to question our largely habitual and reflexive association of light with knowledge, positivity, clarity, and, on the other hand, of darkness with non-knowledge, negativity, obscurity. It invites reflections on the discipline of art history through the prism of shadows.

Please submit your proposal (2,000–3,000-character summary, with a provisional title, a short bibliography on the topic, and a 2–3-line biography) to the editorial address (revue-perspective@inha.fr) by December 13, 2021. Authors of selected articles will be informed of the committee’s decision in February 2022. Full texts of accepted contributions will need to be sent by June 1st, 2022. These will be definitively accepted after the journal’s anonymous peer-review process.

Call For Papers: 21st Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Museum of Art, 24th-26th March 2022 (Deadline 29th November 2021)

The 21st Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies invites abstracts from current graduate students and recently graduated Masters students from all disciplines on any topic that is related to the long Middle Ages. The organisers encourage proposals for innovative presentations (20 minutes) and lecture-performances (25 minutes) on the global medieval, non-Eurocentric geographies, and medievalism(s). 

The conference will take place in-person at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio from March 24th–26th, 2022. The event will be moved online pending Covid-19 pandemic conditions. 

Vagantes is a multidisciplinary conference, therefore please provide a clear summary of your proposed paper using language that is accessible to non-specialists. Anonymized submissions will be reviewed by a panel of graduate students. 

An award(s) will be given for the best paper(s)! Papers must be submitted in advance to be considered for the prize. For more information see: vagantesconference.org/conference-information-2021/paper-prize. 

Abstracts of 300 words with paper title and a 1–2 page CV (including applicant’s preferred name and pronouns) in one PDF are due Monday, November 29th, 2021 to vagantesboard@gmail.com. 

Call for Papers: ‘Interruptions & Disruptions in the Medieval Mediterranean, 400-1500’, SMM Seventh Biennial Conference, University of Crete, 11th-15th July 2022 (Deadline 30th November 2021)

In response to the abrupt and largely unforeseen way in which the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown our world and everyday life into uncertainty since early 2020, the theme of the 7th International Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean (SMM) is Interruptions and Disruptions. Scholars are invited to explore and challenge meanings and experiences of interruptions and to reflect upon whether and to what extent interruptions prompted change or acted as ‘turning points’ in the medieval Mediterranean.

The conference invites papers that examine the theme of interruptions from different disciplinary perspectives, including History, Archaeology, Literature, Linguistics, Art History, Religious Studies/Theology, and any other disciplines focusing on the medieval Mediterranean. We welcome research papers that, through the analysis of diverse types of sources, apply innovative approaches and stimulate debates to reflect upon individual and collective perceptions and experiences of interruptions.

The following list of possible topics of discussion is indicative and by no means exclusive:

  • Crisis and recovery
  • Epidemics and natural catastrophes
  • War, invasion, conquest
  • Dynastic change
  • Social unrest and rebellion
  • Disruption of social, religious and/or cultural systems
  • Political interruptions
  • Material evidence of interruptions
  • Integration and segregation
  • Geographical interruptions: insularity, land and sea, mountain and plain
  • Displacement and mobility
  • Lived experience of interruptions
  • Interruptions and historiography
  • Apocalypticism

Applicants are encouraged to submit proposals for panels of three 20-minute papers each for 1.5 hour sessions, and should nominate a chair. We will do our best to accommodate applications for individual papers but panels will be prioritised.

Papers must be delivered in English. 

Proposals, in the form of a session title, session abstract (150–200 words), and 3 paper titles with short abstracts (100–150 words) as well as the name of a nominated chair where there is a preference should be submitted to smm2022crete@ia.uoc.gr by 30 November 2021.