CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
Accepted speakers
Agency of things and the Enclosed Gardens. A case-study on Mixed Media,
Remnant Art, récyclage and gender in the Low Countries (16th onwards)
Particulary in the Low Countries and the Rhineland emerges by the (post--reformation times a peculiar artistic phenomenon in feminine religious context, the so called ‘enclosed gardens’ (cfr figs.). What makes this art specific, is that these evocations are made by remnants and “récyclage” of 'things', such as pearls, papiermâché, paperolles, wax seals, little embroideries and other textile handwork, sometimes mixed up with miniatures inserted, sculpture of wood and clay, and moreover several kinds of relics recuperated. These little paradises became very popular from the sixteenth century onwards in the Low Countries Nunneries.
Although the phenomenon is academically recognized in a gender context (Paul Vandenbroeck, Jeffrey Hamburger), nobody looked at it from the stand point of the 'agency of things' and its particular functions This paper will focus on the common characteristics of these 'objects': a hybrid compilation that refers to a reliquary box (re-inserted older objects in a new 'garden-context') with the effect of a devotional Kunstkammer and a hybrid récyclage of 'lower' materials that explode in an unique formal horror-vacui. Hence this paper will also contribute to gender, récyclage and making processes after the so-called 'material turn' (things) in Iconology.
Important to mention here is the fact that the KU Leuven is currently studying these objects with a team of 8 conservators (since 8 different material disciplines in the restoration process are involved going from parchment to wax, from glazed pearls to textile, etc). Also these results which will excitingly contribute to a better understanding of the making process, the material contents of the boxes and the récyclage and afterlives of different 'things' will be communicated at this particular conference in Warschau too.
Revealing and Concealing: Visibility as a Strategy of Power at the Royal
Mausolea of Batalha and Westminster Abbey
This paper will explore the implications of the restricted or partial visibility of monuments. Discussions of tomb sculpture often assume that the viewer was able to examine the monument and its effigies at close range, whereas in many cases such privileged access was restricted or impossible. Studies of royal ceremony have characterised the veiling of the king as a strategy of power, increasing the mystique of the monarch among subjects who were deliberately starved of his presence. This paper extends this theory to royal tombs, considering whether these monuments sought to encourage an attitude of submission from the viewer by simultaneously revealing and concealing the body of the king and his consort.I will focus on two related royal monuments: the tomb of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia at Westminster Abbey, London (1394–99), and the monument to Philippa of Lancaster and João I of Portugal at the monastery of Batalha in Portugal (c. 1435). Both these memorials are much- lauded by art historians for the quality and the intricate detailing of the effigies. However, such features are near--‐impossible to see in situ: the effigies of João I and Philippa are placed on a tomb chest of exceptional height, while those of Richard II and Anne were raised far above the south ambulatory. Placing these memorials within their broader architectural and liturgical context, I will argue that such concealed opulence was part of the agency of these objects. By prompting the viewer to strain to see the sculpted bodies of the king and queen, the monuments at Westminster and Batalha encourage them to acknowledge the majesty and other-ness of the royal couples.
Collecting, Exchange, and the Agency of Things in the Renaissance Court
In the Archivio di Stato di Modena, where the records of the Este and the court of Ferrara are maintained, there exists a series of account and inventory books belonging to Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona (b. 1450–d. 1493). A close attention to the ways these books were utilised at court reveals how the objects recorded within were sociable things—in their intended uses, but also in terms of the people who maintained them, recorded them in inventories or account books, and those who handled them during their movement. Rather than viewing collectables as static objects or simply the reflection of a patron’s tastes, this paper will investigate the ways artefacts circulated, connecting diverse individuals across space and time. Drawing upon anthropological approaches to objects, this talk elucidates the dynamics of power at play, the numerous individuals involved in acquisition, and most importantly, it understands the object as an active agent within processes of negotiation at court.
By concentrating on the mobility of objects in court culture, this paper will illuminate how through their circulation, objects navigated an often paradoxical status: on the one hand, they were symbolic goods reflecting magnificence and operating as repositories of knowledge, while on the other hand, they were often used as liquid capital, functioning as pawns for loans. The objects of analysis are thus considered not only as components of court life, but also as agents that activated the symbolic practices that became integral to relations within and between courts, operating as points of contact between individuals, giving rise to new associations and the circulation of knowledge.
Presentation/Representation. The Agency of Materials in the Scenic Reliquaries,
circa 1300
In the late thirteenth century, not only was there an increasing emphasis on transparency in Gothic reliquaries, well documented by Michael Camille and in the recent work of Christof Diedrichs, and amply illustrated in the 2010–11 Treasures of Heaven exhibition, but there was equally a shift in particularly Parisian reliquaries towards ‘scenic’ forms, whereby miniature repoussé figures in gilded silver and bronze acted out scenes in three dimensions. The reliquary’s primary strategy of enshrinement (Seeta Chaganti) thus ceded to a dramatic mise en scène of the sacred. Related conceptually to the so-called ‘speaking reliquaries,’ these new scenic reliquaries played explicitly with the rhetoric of material presentation versus that of representation. Attendant in this shift is the inclusion of realia for certain narrative elements, a sort of representational literalism. For example, on the reliquary of Saint Laurent at the Louvre (OA D.722; Paris, c. 1300), the beautifully rendered nude deacon holds in his hands a speaking reliquary of his finger which once enclosed that very bone. The gilt-silver deacon, however, lies on his side on a rough gridiron, complete with actual rivets and fashioned from raw, un-gilt bronze. The coarse material and rugged technique act as reality effects for the instrument of martyrdom. Beneath, the juxtaposition of gold and bronze surfaces is exploited to great effect to represent the flickering flames licking the saint’s flesh, causing him to allegedly exclaim: “I’m done on this side, turn me over!” In my contribution, I would analyze the rhetorical strategies employed in the small corpus of scenic reliquaries produced around the year 1300, seeking to understand these objects’ cunning self-awareness, oscillating between the poles of presentation and representation inherent in their theatrical forms.
The Choir Screen as Agent: A Reinterpretation of the Ghent Altarpiece
The paper argues that the Ghent Altarpiece – based on its deed of foundation and in accordance with the requirements of the Early Netherlandish realism, that both shaped its artistic concept – adopted essencial formal and content-related elements from the choir screen.
It shall be analyzed how the elements of agency of the rood-screen, proven to be the main agent within the space of the laychurch (being the place of the Mass for the laity, the performing space of liturgical and para-liturgical drama, but also the threshold between secular and sacred space of the sanctuary) retroact on the Ghent polyptych’s power of agency, insofar allowing its reinterpretation. Reference will be made to agents such as, inter alia, the different folding-states of the altarpiece, the realtion between the annunciation-setting and the paraliturgical plays, the localization of the donors within the performative contextuality of the celebration of Mass as well as the opening of the retable as virtual crossing the choir screen.
Dexterity, Memory, and Cutting-Edge Agency in Decorated Surgical Saws
Despite their often fantastical decoration and high level of design and craft, surgical saws of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance are not often discussed by historians of art or science. When they do feature, they are often only utilised tangentially to inform social and ideological readings of the communities which used them, mere offshoots of guild systems and academic networks in which their surgical owners functioned. This paper, however, argues that much more might be done to broaden our reading of these accoutrements if we consider the various and vital types of agency they possessed.
Building on their fundamental status as tactile and animated objects, the paper begins by considering the functional agency of such surgical tools, objects whose physicality, sensitivity, and design were used to draw their wielder towards certain modes of use. Wielded most often during medical amputations, the makeup of these saw instinctively guided the grip of the surgeon and directed the way he employed the tool, exerting a medical agency all of its own. So intense was this command that they continued to be used even after documented complaints surfaced from surgeons, who claimed their decorative elements caught on the patient’s skin or hurt surgeon’s own hands.
The paper then turns to consider another form of agency at work in these carefully conceived objects, addressing their ability to embody notions of value, technique, and even professional practice. In a period where access to such high quality tools and the training needed to deploy them was difficult, the acquisition of such saws spoke to the simultaneous possession of professional expertise and financial standing. Thus these objects of surgical knowledge were active agents in communicating fundamental expertise to patients and peers alike.
Finally, by considering the use of such medical tools in a historical period where the invention of hydraulic saws and other pioneering automatous machinery had begun to grant mechanised tools their own kinetic agency, this paper concludes with the tantalising suggestion that the highly decorated design of surgical saws implied a certain embodied historical agency too. If contemporaneous with the first signs of human disengagement with the hand-held tool in favour of mechanisation, could the over-wrought designs of these saws somehow be consciously archaising or nostalgic? Offering a potential glimpse into the emotional agency of tools, the paper concludes by presenting them as active commentators on social change, objects constantly fluctuating between notions of intense function and artistic beauty.
The multilayered agency of luxury textiles. A diplomatic gift presented
to the Republic of Venice in 1603
My paper deals with a painting which can be found in the Sala delle Quattro Porte in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. It was made by Gabriele Cagliari and shows the doge Marino Grimani when he received the Persian ambassador and his entourage in 1603. On this occasion the ambassador consigned on behalf of shah Abbas I nine luxury textiles. The painting itself acts on a political, ideological and ritual level. Because of its important strategic position in the waiting hall for officials it is part of an ideological programme and a related political ritual. It was commissioned in order to commemorate the donation ceremonial during this state visit and its symbolic implications as well as the economic value of the diplomatic gift. In this particular case the present not only signifies a political statement between two friendly states but it also proves their close commercial relations. Moreover, it aims to promote trade in luxury textiles since these nine silk objects advertise the craftsmanship of traditional Persian high-quality fabrics. The items were accompanied by an official letter in which the shah explains that they were designed for use with Venetian state ceremonials as well as religious rituals regarding the Basilica of St Mark. Thus, the agency of these luxury textiles shifts from a concrete commercial purpose to a state symbol and ends as a semi-sacred object. The agency of the painting, however, keeps simultaneously its symbolic content as well as a type of marketing function. Therefore, it represents not only the visualisation of an ideological system and its ritual structures but it permanently interacts with the beholder.
Michelangelo, Tommaso de’Cavalieri, and the Agency of the Gift Giving
The bestowal of drawings – composed as ends in themselves – as gifts appears to have begun in Italy at around the turn of the fifteenth century. As Vasari reported, Leonardo’s now lost drawing of Neptune was made as a present for Antonio Segni shortly after his return to Florence in 1501, and it has been suggested that Andrea Mantegna’s Judith (Florence, Uffizi) may have been an even earlier example of such a work. The most striking contribution to this category of drawings was, however, made by Michelangelo. Although he applied himself to the task only intermittently, the drawings he produced as gifts are remarkable for the sophistication of their composition and the deeply personal meanings with which they were imbued.
The agency of the drawings that Michelangelo sent to Vittoria Colonna has long been recognised as integral to their function as visual images. In a seminal article, Alexander Nagel convincingly demonstrated that their status as gifts served not only to underscore the viewer’s role as an interpreter, but also to reify the gift of faith that they had discussed so earnestly.
Yet not all of Michelangelo’s “gift-drawings” have been so well served by scholarship. Although the works that he sent to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri – the Tityus, the Rape of Ganymede, and the Fall of Phaethon – are perhaps the most emotionally-charged examples of this class, the study of their agency has often been subordinated to an analysis of their apparently neo-Platonic iconology. As Michelangelo’s letter accompanying the Tityus suggests, however, the drawing’s status as a gift performed an essential function in establishing and shaping the association between the two men, a function that – despite the ambiguity of his wording – has parallels with those of marriage gifts. It is to this issue that this paper will turn. By examining the agency of these three works, it will seek not only to locate them more firmly in the gendered world of the Renaissance “economy of gifts”, but also to bring to light the decisive – and distinct – role that the “gift-drawing” itself played in determining the character of relations between the two men.
Art, Liturgy and Power in the 15th century: the ‘Manuscript Chapel’ of Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo
Traditionally regarded as manifestations of a “minor art” and often neglected by art historians, liturgical books should however be considered as privileged objects of all historical approach to the past because, along with their practical nature, often have an important ideological dimension: firstly, as vehicles of expression of the social and political establishment, made visible in the liturgy, and secondly, as supports of the artistic creation that materialized the importance of their content and their owners, members of the medieval and Renaissance society’s elite.
On this basis, the aim of this paper is to analyse the magnificent ‘manuscript chapel’ ownedby the archbishop of Toledo Alfonso Carrillo (1446–1482), powerful personality in the Court of the Reyes Católicos and prominent patron of the arts in the former Crown of Castile. Composed of a dozenmanuscripts commissioned by himself and destined to the development of various rituals, they all share the extraordinary richness of their miniatures, due to the most celebrated workshops of the time, and reflect the same desire of consolidation of their owner’s personality through the illuminationof his heraldic emblem. In addition, the prelate also possessed other rich liturgical codex, produced in previous centuries and at places as far away as Cambrai, but acquired thanks to his international contacts.
Throughout a comparative study of their texts and images, this paper will allow me to reveal the trajectory of these art objects, understanding the reasons for their luxurious appearance, and at the same time, to reconstruct the personality of their owner, knowing the relationships that established in Europe in the second half of the 15th century. By doing so, this analysis will provide us the opportunity to reflect on the essential dialogue between objects, people and contexts that must be established in all historical and artistic approach to the past.
The Cloisters Leather Casket. A Fine Example of Late Fourteenth-Century
Flemish Craftsmanship
The embossed, incised and painted casket on loan to the Cloisters from the Alastair B. Martin collection helps shed light on the underrated part that leather played in the system of the arts between the 14th and the 15th centuries.
The casket is made of soaked and softened leather that was molded and shaped around a wooden core to create three-dimensional figures. This very technique flourished as quickly as it disappeared in Flanders at the turn of the 14th century and the Cloisters casket — that displays a cycle of the Infancy of Christ and the Death and Coronation of the Virgin on the inner side of the lid — is one of the finest in that medium and is rich of genuine artistic merit.
Although we can nowadays mostly appreciate it for its artistic quality, the casket was conceived for a specific purpose, as an object for private devotion. The specificity of its function was wholly fulfilled thanks to the unity of its conception, that was the logical outcome of the superb mastery of the craftsman who made it.
This paper is aimed to investigate the direct links between the agency of the casket and craftsmanship practice. The complex method of construction of the casket — that has been recently clarified during restoration — as well as its well-structured iconographical program are the results of a detailed project. Such a project was entirely leaded by a skilled master and his technical and artistic ability formed the basis of the specific function that the casket had within the social milieu where it was produced. The investigation of this rare work of art will be further developed discussing a group of related caskets that originated in the same cultural context.
“Let them fall down and worship thing.” Lorenzo Valla’s Renaissance Thing Theory
Art history is a discipline of things. Things are the vital essence at the center of art history, the essential constituent that distinguishes the field from aesthetics. The emergence of Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented-Ontology, and New Materialism has given new weight to the ontological status of created things and called attention to how they assert agency in the world. But while Thing Theory emerged as an academic concern only around the turn of the new millennium, it had already happened elsewhere in the history of philosophy. Uncovering that history has important consequences for the object-oriented practice of art history.
This paper will examine one historical strain of “thing theory”: the radical ontology of “thing” (Latin: Res) set forth by Lorenzo Valla in the 1440s. Valla’s writings demonstrate that during the Renaissance “thing” held currency as a category for intellection. Valla’s precocious re-working of Aristotle’s philosophy places “the thing” at the center of a new logical and metaphysical order. In the Categories, Aristotle had proposed that there were six categories of transcendental entities: being, one, good, true, something, and thing. Valla eradicated this system, preserving only “thing” as a category that transcends substance, quality, and action. Valla writes of the other demoted transcendentals: “Let them fall down and worship ‘thing,’ which is truly king among the six.” For Valla, only “thing” cuts to the core of being. “Thing” is the irreducible essence of being, for it is impossible to imagine a being – an agent – which is not already a thing. That Valla developed a discernable “thing theory” has passed unnoticed by specialist and non-specialists alike. This paper contends that Valla’s Renaissance “thing theory” forces a reconsideration of the status of things in late-medieval and early modern culture. My primary contention is that art historians can leverage Valla’s thing theory as the impetus for a broader reconsideration of the agency of pre-modern things.
Manual Medicine
Late medieval folded almanacs were busy things. Unlike typical bound codices, almanacs are small, folded parchments covered with notes, charts, and drawings, probably carried in leather or textile pouches at the belt; fewer than thirty examples survive, all produced in England in the fifteenth century. They were portable working tools, designed to meet the needs of itinerant medical practitioners: folded, unfolded, turned, and manipulated, almanacs were part of the performance of diagnosis.
Contents of an almanac can include solar and lunar eclipse calendars; charts of planetary hours and bodily humours; uroscopy tables; and diagrams of Zodiac Man and Vein Man. As historians of science have shown, these documents are critical to understanding the practices of late medieval medicine. The almanacs have also been briefly treated in art historical scholarship, primarily in terms of the iconography of Zodiac Man.
This paper takes up instead the ‘object-ness’ of folded almanacs, and particularly the ways in which they actively defined the space of medical treatment. Almanacs were not simply a collection of useful texts and images; they were worn on the body, touched habitually, and manipulated like astrolabes or other scientific instruments. To make use of the contents in diagnosis and treatment would require a series of hand and even body movements, some sequential, some repeated, as the doctor opened, closed, turned, and reopened the almanac, to consult and coordinate information. The images, charts, and texts were neither fixed nor held still in the hand: the almanac moved in the space between doctor and patient. In this paper, I argue that this movement engaged both doctor and patient physically and even emotionally in the technology of treatment; folding almanacs can be understood as a kind of participatory space of knowledge in late medieval England.
Marketing Dürer: Prints as agents of self-promotion
When Albrecht Dürer departed for Antwerp in July 1520, it was officially to have his imperial pension confirmed. The artist stayed for about a year in the Netherlands, where he met artists, merchants, and government officials. There, he spent a significant amount of time giving and selling his art. Concentrating on Dürer’s diary of his trip to the Netherlands (1520–1521), my paper argues that the purpose of Dürer’s journey was to market his image and establish his fame. It focuses on the role of prints in this enterprise of self-promotion, in the construction of the artist’s public image. Prints (such as Dürer’s already famous engravings of Adam and Eve, or Saint Jerome) represent the bulk of the artworks distributed by the artist in the Netherlands, before drawings or other media.transmission of his art, particularly through gifts of prints, which evidently played a role in the construction of a social network.
Seeking to determine in which ways Dürer’s pricing mechanisms reflect a value system and a hierarchy within his artistic production, I raise the following questions: beyond their reproducible quality and handy format, what makes prints such an ideal vector of prestige? Which criteria did Dürer use to measure his commercial success (or lack thereof)? Which prints did Dürer choose to take with him and eventually give? How does the monetary value of certain objects reflect their intrinsic technical qualities? What role does the “enchantment of technology” (as underlined by Alfred Gell) play in their appeal?
Renaissance artists in Nuremberg were more often than not entrepreneurs. This seems to have been particularly true of printmakers at the dawn of their art, as selling prints had not quite become an independent profession. Dürer’s diary presents the artist as a dynamic businessman, who was eager to build lasting financial success and was fully aware of the potential of the printed medium. Confronting text with images, my study offers a unique opportunity to historicize the theory of ‘agency of things’ in sixteenth-century Northern Europe through the emergence of master prints.
Knighted by the Apostle Himself: Political Fabrication and Chivalric Artifact
in Compostela, 1332
In the summer of 1332, at the time of the feast of St. James, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela was turned into a stage for one of the most exceptional events ever described by Castilian chroniclers: the knighting of King Alfonso XI by an articulated life-size statue of the Apostle whose same relics were venerated at the impressive Romanesque building, its glory long ago vanished after the union of Castile and León. This unheard-of ritual preceded the unction and coronation of the king that took place in Burgos few days after and had been carefully designed in order to solve a thorny issue for the young monarch—he had come to the throne in 1325—, that of being dubbed without remaining bound to his padrino by feudal homage.
All the political implications of this ingenious response to the problem posed by the disputed legitimacy of the sovereign—still haunted by the dynastic conflict arisen after the death of King Alfonso the Learned in 1284—have been masterfully analysed by Peter Linehan. However, his influential scrutiny of the ‘mechanichs of monarchy’ has left aside other aspects of this extraordinary mise en scene that deserve a closer look. Therefore, this paper aims at re-examining the role played by the image of St. James—already preserved—not only against the backdrop of political theology and Iberian notions of Kingship, but also in an attempt to define the experience of the audience. Besides, bearing in mind that clerical intervention was reduced to the benediction of the arms and that the ritual was of a para-liturgical nature, I would try to explore the way in which the statue mediated the uneasy relation between the sacral space and the largely secular tone of the ceremony performed.
The Choir-stall as Interactive Agent
This paper aims to rethink the role of the choir-stall in the daily activity of the late medieval English church.
Located in the most sacred part of the church, the choir-stall both defined and was defined by the people who were allowed within its bounds. It was an exclusive space and, increasingly in the later middle ages, a substantial, towering piece of liturgical furniture. It was supposed to be impenetrable by laypeople, and yet evidently highly permeable. Finally, from its humble origins, the choir-stall evolved to become a strictly ordered and active space, dictating not only the location of each participant, but also their movements, whether sitting, standing, or kneeling.
The paper will consist of two sections. First, I will use a variety of sources, from visitation records to churchwardens’ accounts and wills, to explore the way in which choir-stalls constituted the agency of individuals who occupied them and, at the same time, embodied the corporate identity of religious institution. I will focus on three fifteenth-century choir-stalls in particular: the parish church of St Mary, Nantwich; Ripon Minster, a collegiate church whose statutes betray a concern over lay intrusion in the choir; and Norwich Cathedral, a monastic institution whose stalls were probably partially funded by the laity. Can we understand these objects as Gellian indexes, distributing the agency of their patrons?
In the second half of the paper, I will analyze the potential kinetic and animated quality of choir-stalls. How did the stalls work as agents upon on their occupants? I will conclude by examining the possibility of “interactive” misericords in the form of two wagging tongues, one at Winchester Cathedral (c. 1305) and another at Halifax Minster (15th century). Other examples of movable carvings fixed to a static surface will be considered in comparison.
Infiltrating artifacts. The agency of things in 14th- and 15th-century Florence
A city with far reaching diplomatic, mercantile and missionary networks, 14th- and 15th-century Florence was characterized by the impact of numerous artifacts imported from distant lands. As trade items, gifts, or loot, objects from Al-Andalus, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia Minor stimulated local craft production, were displayed on faςades, in interiors, and were represented in pictorial space.
This paper will focus on two case studies: While the first one will shed new light on the artistic reception of metalwork from Mamluk Syria and Egypt in 14th- and 15th-century Florence, the second one will reflect on the representations of Oriental carpets in the miraculous image of the Annunciation in the Florentine church SS. Annunziata as well as in its multiple “copies”. In a comparative approach, this analysis will not only discuss the multifaceted responses by local artists to these imported goods and the way how these very artifacts stimulated new artistic transformations and inventions in 14th- and 15th-century Florence. The comparison of the two groups of objects will also highlight diverse tendencies in the reception of Islamic artifacts. Whereas Mamluk metalwork was continuously conceived as referring to the distant markets in Syria and Egypt, also when adopted and recalled in local artworks, the frequently represented carpets underwent new interpretations. The paper will in fact show how, gradually, the “Oriental” carpet even turned into a symbol for the city of Florence.