Medieval Art Research

Online Event: The Guelph Treasure, Historic Significance & Legal Implications, International Center of Medieval Art, 28 June 2021, 12pm (EST)

A Special Online Event Presented by Friends of the International Center of Medieval Art

Please join the Friends of the ICMA for the second in a series of special online events on Monday, June 28 at 12:00 p.m. ET (9:00 a.m. PT; 5:00 p.m. BST; and 6:00 p.m. WET) with speakers Holger A. Klein, Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History, Columbia University, and Leila A. Amineddoleh, Founder, Amineddoleh & Associates LLC. Professor Klein will discuss the historic importance of the Guelph Treasure, a collection of liturgical objects now housed in Germany, Sweden, and U.S. museums. Ms. Amineddoleh will outline the legal cases related to the collection that have been argued in Europe and the U.S., including the U.S. Supreme Court. The moderator for the event will be George Spera, retired counsel at Shearman & Sterling, and former legal advisor to the ICMA.

Please feel free to notify colleagues and friends who may not be ICMA members about this event.

Sign up HERE. All are welcome!

For questions, please contact Doralynn Pines, Chair of the Friends of the ICMA, doralynn.pines@gmail.com.

Online Lecture: ‘Relocating the Holy Places: Jerusalem in Early Medieval Europe’, with Professor Julia Smith, 24 June 2021, 17:30 (BST)

Discover how small portable objects enabled biblical sites to be relocated in Early Medieval Europe. Historian Julia Smith of the University of Oxford will discuss the various uses mobile objects were put to, as well as the significance attributed to them.

Focusing mainly on Jerusalem, Historian Professor Julia Smith will examine the use of these objects within the Holy Land prior to the Arab conquest of 637 and in the Latin West in the centuries before the First Crusade.

About the speaker

Professor Julia M. H. Smith took up the Chichele Professorship of Medieval History at Oxford in 2016, having previously held the Edwards Chair of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. Her current project, Christianity in Fragments: Relics From Constantine to the First Crusade, examines the instrumental use of small material objects in late antique and early medieval Christian practice from a variety of perspectives, and offers a new analysis of the origin and growth of relic cults.

Her recent publications include essays on relics as “portable Christianity,” on material Christianity in the early medieval household, and a reconsideration of saints’ cults and relics in early medieval Britain and Ireland. Julia has also published on politics, gender, hagiography, and saints’ cults in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, ca. 300–1100, including The Cambridge History of Christianity III: Early Medieval Christianities, 600–1100 (with Thomas F X Noble, 2008); Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500–1000 (2005); Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West 300–900 (with Leslie Brubaker, 2004); Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West (2000); and Province and Empire: Brittany and the Carolingians (1992).

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Please ensure you use the correct email address as this is where details of the online event will be sent. If you do not provide the correct address, you will not receive the acknowledgement email or ticket.

Online Lecture: ‘Vault Design at Ely Cathedral, Ely’ with Alex Buchanan and Nick Webb, 29 June 2021, 14–15pm (BST)

Some of the most remarkable features of medieval works of architecture, particularly greater churches and cathedrals, are the ribbed vaults spanning their interior spaces. For over nine hundred years, they have inspired worshippers and visitors alike, their eyes drawn heavenwards by these captivating constructions, prompting the question ‘How did they do that?’ No corresponding texts or drawings survive but digital methods now enable us to propose answers.

The Tracing the Past project at the University of Liverpool, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has spent the past seven years recording and analysing vaults in England. This lecture will introduce the project and share some of its key findings in relation to Ely Cathedral.

You might also be interested in the associated workshop. Further details are available here: https://vaultdesignatelycathedralworkshop.eventbrite.co.uk

Recommended for:

Young adults & adults – no prior knowledge necessary.

Language: English

Lecturers: Alex Buchanan and Nick Webb

Lecturers’ Profiles:

Alex Buchanan is an archivist and architectural historian specialising in medieval architecture; Nick Webb is an architect and architectural historian specialising in digital methods. Together they are the investigators on ‘Tracing the Past’, an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project at the University of Liverpool exploring medieval vaults using digital methods (see www.tracingthepast.org.uk).

Joining the lecture:

The lecture will be delivered via Zoom. You will receive a Zoom workshop link and password to join the workshop after registration. The lecture will start promptly at the given time.

Exhibition: ‘Treasury Objects of the Middle Ages’, Sam Fogg, London, 24 June–30 July 2021

Treasury Objects of the Middle Ages (24th June – 30th July 2021) is the first selling exhibition of its type in more than a century. Devoted entirely to the subject of medieval goldsmiths’ work, it provides a unique survey of the varied types of precious, small-scale metalwork objects that were produced between the 12th and 16th centuries for use in cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and private chapels across Europe. Uniting the forty-five objects in this exhibition are the rich and glittering materials they were produced from – gold, silver, copper and its alloys (brass and bronze), many enriched with meticulous enamelling or studded with large cabochons of polished rock crystal.

Some of these objects would have enjoyed daily use as part of the celebration of Mass: gold and silver chalices for administering the Holy Communion, cast bronze censers for the burning of incense, gilded crosses for carrying in processions or venerating at the altar. But many are so sumptuous that they would have been carefully protected in treasuries for much of their lives and only brought out at particularly significant moments in the year, such as high feast days or even royal visits. Materials were lavished on the most spectacular and refined of them, like gilded reliquaries whose surfaces are enveloped in vivid coloured enamels and have tooled designs worked into the surrounding metal. Others are covered in delicate filigree, micro-architectural structures, or small-scale cast figures of the saints and angels.

Treasury objects were among the most potent bearers of meaning in the Middle Ages. Significance and symbolism were not only entwined with their craftsmanship and materiality, but more importantly also with their perceived sacredness. Many treasury objects protected holy relics, or the body and blood of Christ, but since most people never actually saw the relics or sacraments themselves, these objects came to embody and visualise the magical properties associated with what they contained, or with the miraculous moment of transubstantiation on the altar table. They were often modelled on descriptions of the heavenly Jerusalem, or keyed in to Biblical doctrine through representations of characters from the Old and New Testaments. Powerful, striking, sometimes even intended to shock, treasury objects existed to transport the medieval viewer from the material to the heavenly.

Treasury Objects of the Middle Ages celebrates the ingenuity of the Medieval metalworkers and the astonishing objects of devotion they crafted upwards of half a millennium ago.

Find out more here.

Exhibition opens from 24 June – 30 July 2021

Sam Fogg will also be open on the following weekends: 26 – 27 June & 3 – 4 July 2021

Online Conference: ‘Ora Pro Nobis: Marian Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance’ in honour of Dr Cathy Oakes, The British Archaeological Association, 3 July 2021, 10-17:30 (BST)

An online day in honour of Dr Cathy Oakes

SATURDAY 3 JULY 2021

Cathy Oakes was Director of Studies in the History of Art at Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education and a Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford, co-founder of the Centre for Marian Studies, and a lecturer for the Learning Department of the V&A, The Arts Society (formerly NADFAS), Art Pursuits Abroad, ACE, and many other organisations, Dr Oakes inspired countless students by her knowledge of, and passion for, the visual culture of the Middle Ages. This study day is hosted by the British Archaeological Association, of which Cathy was a longstanding member. It will concentrate of various aspects of Marian devotion a subject close to Cathy’s heart and the focus of her book, Ora Pro Nobis: The Virgin as Intercessor in Medieval Art and Devotion (2008), from which this day takes its title.

To register please follow the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JFRhiN9oS7yV_6wE5s8zNg

DRAFT PROGRAMME

SESSION 1. Chair – Sally Dormer

10.00 Introduction

10.05-10.30 William Wykeham’s devotion to Mary – mostly in relation to the glass at New College – Anna Eavis

10.30-10.55 Cult and Image at Our Lady’s Well, Hempsted Gloucestershire) – Sarah Boss

10.55-11.05 Questions

BREAK

SESSION 2. Chair – John McNeill

11.30-11.55 Revisiting the Quinity – the Virgin Mary in Ælfwine’s Prayerbook (London, BL MS Titus D. xxvi and D. xxvii) – Teresa Lane

11.55-12.20 The Lady and the Lion in the Map Psalter (London, British Library, Add. MS 28681) – Sally Dormer

12.20-12.45 The mystery of the Mother of God and her companion in the Homilies of James Kokkinobaphos – Cecily Hennessy

12.45-13.00 Questions

LUNCH BREAK

SESSION 3. Chair – Sarah Boss

14.00-14.25 Metope North 32 on the Parthenon: False Virgins and Cultural Vandals – Steve Kershaw

14.25-14.50 The Reception of Sancta Maria Rotunda: Recent Interpretations and Open Questions – Richard Plant

14.50-15.15 Crowned in Glory: The Virgin Mary enthroned – Eileen Rubery

15.15-15.30 Questions

BREAK

SESSION 4. Chair – Richard Plant

16.00-16.25 The Virgin by the Chapter-House: The life and times of a carved relief at St-Aubin in Angers – John McNeill

16.25-16.50 Imagery and Meaning in Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna – Paula Nuttall

16.50-17.15 The Virgin Mary in Fragments – Julian Luxford

17.15-17.30 Questions

In memoriam Cathy Oakes, 1956-2019

Online Lecture: ‘Becket: charismatic cathedral & sacred storytelling’ with Professors Paul Binski & Alixe Bovey, British Museum, 30 Jun 2021, 17.30–18.30 (BST)

Becket’s final days, murder, and posthumous career as a miracle-worker are among the best-documented episodes from the Middle Ages.

This conversation, between art historians Paul Binski and Alixe Bovey, will explore the way Becket’s universality as a martyr was embodied in the architecture of Canterbury Cathedral, evoking the heroic age of early Christian martyrdom.

As the objects in the exhibition Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint reveal, Becket’s story was codified in word and image with extraordinary speed, in England and across Europe. What was the role of images and objects in promoting Becket’s cult, and how and why did Becket’s cult so rapidly come to define its age?

To attend this event

Book now(Opens in new window) to secure your place. We’re hosting the event on Zoom – a free video conferencing system that requires users to register in advance. If you do not already use Zoom, you can sign up using this registration link(Opens in new window).

If the event is fully booked, or you do not wish to use Zoom, you can also watch the event streamed live – as well as other events in the series – on the Museum’s live events YouTube channel(Opens in new window).

About the speakers

Paul Binski is Emeritus Professor of the History of Medieval Art at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Caius College. He writes widely on the visual arts in the Middle Ages, and his many books include Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (Yale University Press 2004).

Professor Alixe Bovey is a Canadian medieval art historian. She’s currently Dean and Deputy Director and the Head of Research at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University. Bovey is also a member of the Fabric Advisory Committee of Canterbury Cathedral.

New Publication: ‘Images and Indulgences in Early Netherlandish Painting’ by Miyako Sugiyama

This book demonstrates the relationships between images and indulgences in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish art. In the Roman Catholic Church, indulgences served as a way to reduce temporal punishment in purgatory for one’s sins. Indulgences could be obtained by reciting prayers and performing devotional practices. Penitents could earn this type of devotional indulgence with the aid of paintings and other artifacts that possessed theological, historical, and aesthetic values as well as performative and promissory ones. In this study, we explore not only the power of indulgenced images but also the power of their audiences, creating a way to communicate with the divine.

Miyako Sugiyama is an art historian specializing in early Netherlandish art. She received her Ph.D. in Art Science from Ghent University in 2017. She was the recipient of a Flemish government scholarship (2013–14), a Kress Foundation Travel Grant (2016), and a Japan Student Services scholarship (2015–17). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo. Her research focuses on the functions of images and the relationships between art and devotional practices in the Netherlands in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Harvey Miller: Distinguished Contributions to the Study of the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands (HMDC)

IV+193 p., 10 b/w ill. + 126 colour ill., 220 x 280 mm, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-912554-58-4
Languages: English
Retail price: EUR 50,00 excl. tax

Order and find out more here.

Online Conference: ‘Pluriversality at Play: Art and material culture in the thirteenth-century Mediterranean’, University of St Andrews, 17-18 June 2021, 2:15pm-6pm (BST)

The Mediterranean has always been a ‘contact zone’, a place of convergence and divergence, of peaceful co-existence, as well as of war and conflict. Although the medieval Mediterranean was an area of cultural commonalities, it was also a place of religious, political and military oppositions.

It was a fluid space of communication, negotiation and contestation for Muslim, Jewish and Christian worldviews, as well as a locus of ambiguities, syncretism and blurred boundaries, a zone that enabled borderline cultures to emerge and flourish.

This workshop, organised by Dr Anthi Andronikou, aims to relocate regional arts and cultures within a broader Mediterranean context from an interdisciplinary point of view. Scholars in the fields of Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish and Western Medieval studies will probe interconnections across different ethnic, political, artistic and confessional spheres through historical and art historical perspectives. The workshop is part of the global encounters and exchanging theme of the School of Art History.

Keynote Lectures by Anne Derbes, Robert Hillenbrand, Katrin Kogman-Appel, Amy Neff.

Advance registration required. Register here.

If you would like to join this online conference, please complete this form so that we may add you to the Microsoft Team.

More information about this event

Online Lecture: ‘Representing Dante’s Steps in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy’ with Dr Lucy Donkin, Murray Seminar at Birkbeck, 30 June 2021, 16:45–18:30 (BST)

In the Divine Comedy, at the entrance to Purgatory, Dante encounters three steps made from stone of different colours and textures. These have attracted attention since the earliest commentaries on the poem, and are often seen as alluding to interior states, especially associated with penance. This paper understands the steps and their interpretation to reflect the wider expressive potential of corporeal contact with the surface of the ground. Exploring how they were depicted in illuminated manuscripts, it draws comparisons with ecclesiastical pavement decoration and the treatment of the ground in rites of passage, as well as with the ground trodden by Christ, saints, and personifications of the virtues, as depicted in Italian art of the period. It also relates the steps to other passages in the Divine Comedy that reference church interiors and to the terrain walked by Dante elsewhere in the poem.

Lucy Donkin is a Senior Lecturer in History and History of Art at the University of Bristol. Her research explores medieval perceptions of place, especially the definition, decoration and depiction of holy ground, and the symbolic movement of soil. Her book Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages will be published by Cornell University Press later this year.

Booking link for Lucy Donkin’s seminar on 30th June 2021.

Post-Doctoral Position: ERC Project ‘SenSArt: The Sensuous Appeal of the Holy Sensory Agency of Sacred Art and Somatised Spiritual Experiences in Medieval Europe (12th-15th century)’, Deadline 8 July 2021, University of Padua

The ERC Starting Grant project SenSArt “The Sensuous Appeal of the Holy Sensory Agency of Sacred Art and Somatised Spiritual Experiences in Medieval Europe (12th-15th century)”, led by Prof. Zuleika Murat (Principal Investigator) is accepting applications by highly motivated candidates to cover four post-doctoral positions, starting on 1st September 2021. The project is based at the University of Padua and is funded for five years by the ERC.

The deadline to apply is 8th July 2021. Details on the project, candidates’ profiles and skills, and application procedure are given below.

The Project
Art moves the eyes. However, is sight the only sense we use to appreciate it? This is a crucial question for Western culture, dominated today by the hegemony of vision and the suppression of the other senses. By challenging the current ocularcentric paradigm and assimilating notions on the cultural values of sensation, SenSArt provides an examination of medieval sacred art from the unconventional lens of its sensory agency.

Between the 12th and the 15th century, Europe underwent an extraordinary artistic evolution and an impressive cultural revitalization, which sparked a reassessment of the role of sensory perception in systems of knowledge and spiritual enlightenment. SenSArt explores and compares different social environments in six selected regions, pursuing three groundbreaking objectives: A) it will analyse quantitatively and qualitatively the perceptual schemes that oriented the reception of sacred art, scrutinizing how art solicited its beholders through multiple sensory inputs; B) it will investigate the notion of ‘sensory agency’ of art, establishing sacred art as a primary actor capable of exerting, through sensorial stimulation or deprivation, a social agency on its audience; C) it will provide an overall phenomenology of experiences on a European scale, by comparing the diverse patterns that different social groups lived on a local, regional and supranational scale.
SenSArt will achieve its goals by developing a new combined approach at the crossroads of Art History, Philosophy and Text Studies; it will establish a multidisciplinary team of scholars to delve into a comparative set of materials, including normative texts on the senses and works of art.

Tasks
We are looking for four highly motivated and creative post-doctoral fellows, three with an art-historical profile and one with a background in History of Medieval Philosophy. They will work in team with the Principal Investigator, two doctoral fellows, and associate researchers.

In line with the objectives and methodologies of the ERC project SenSArt, the three post-doctoral fellows with an art-historical profile will focus on France, Germany, and Spain respectively. They will examine the types of artworks adopted in the Socio-Sensory Environments of the region surveyed, considering both the survived works of art and those cited in the archival documents and now lost, together with immaterial practices. The study of objects will contemplate different aspects and will focus on two features in particular: 1) the mechanisms through which the artworks stimulated the senses of the beholder; 2) the procedures by which the beholder activated the multisensory potential of the objects, through dynamic devotional practices. In addition to works of art, and in relation to the specific materials of investigation, the post-doctoral fellows will also examine texts about the senses in practice, including records of people’s daily lives and archival materials.

The post-doctoral fellow with a background in History of Medieval Philosophy will work on theoretical and normative texts on the senses and sensory perception, i.e. texts that contain norms meant for shaping the sensoria and establish the interpretive schemes that were intended to orientate the responses of the devotees, including in particular: 1) philosophical and theological texts connected to the Aristotelian tradition, including works produced by a number of scholastic authors; 2) treatises meant at educating the senses. The candidate will focus in particular on two features related to sensory perception: how perception and the senses were to be used, and the kinds of spiritual reactions that the sensory experience was expected to induce in the devotees.

In addition to the above-mentioned research activities, the four post-doctoral fellows will take part in seminars and conferences, and in all the scheduled internal workshops and team meetings. They will present papers and produce on a regular base journal articles and book chapters as envisaged by the project outline. Moreover, they will provide raw data, entries and reports for the envisaged digital archive and website.

Qualifications and Required Skills
– Post-doctoral fellows with an art-historical profile: PhD in Art History, with a focus on the Middle Ages. Good knowledge of French, German, and Spanish respectively, and of Latin, to be able to examine primary and secondary sources. They should also be proficient in English. Candidates are expected to be familiar with the major historical, artistic, spiritual, and socio-cultural phenomena of the region under examination in the selected period. Furthermore, they should have previous research experience in areas related (in terms of objectives, approaches, and methodologies) to those considered by the project, with particular regard to the concepts of art agency, theories of reception, and the multisensory experience of art.
– Post-doctoral fellow with a background in History of Medieval Philosophy: PhD in History of Medieval Philosophy. The ideal candidate needs to have a good command of Latin and should also be proficient in English. She/he should have a background in research topics and methodologies which are in line with the objectives and approaches of the ERC project SenSArt, with specific respect to concepts related to perception and to the senses in medieval philosophy and culture in general.

In addition, applicants should have a taste for interdisciplinary studies, excellent analytical skills, and willingness to work in a team.

Working Conditions and Modalities
– Location: University of Padua, Department of Cultural Heritage. Some travels abroad are required to conduct research.
– Employer: University of Padua
– Type of contract: fixed-term contract
– Duration of contract: 3 years, with a possible renewal of 2 years
– Working time: 100%
– Starting date of the contract: 1st September 2021
– Remuneration: 26.868,59 € per year

How to Apply:
Applications may only be submitted by completing the online procedure at https://pica.cineca.it/unipd.
Instructions on how to complete the application are given at https://www.beniculturali.unipd.it/www/lavorare/bacheca-di-dipartimento/
The application should include:
– A Curriculum Vitae
– Three samples of written works in pdf (PhD thesis and/or published materials)
– A Letter of Motivation, detailing the candidate’s professional skills and reasons for applying
– Names and contact details of two referees

In addition, an interview will be held online (via Zoom) in July (20th – 23rd July 2021).

For any queries please write to: dipartimento.beniculturali@unipd.it and zuleika.murat@unipd.it

More information can be found here:https://www.beniculturali.unipd.it/www/lavorare/bacheca-di-dipartimento/