CALL FOR PAPERS: Re-inventing traditions on the transmission of artistic patterns in illuminated manuscripts of the Late Middle Ages in terms of art history, restoration and palaeography, Institute of Art History of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 8-10 June 2012.
The transmission of artistic patterns was a key practice in medieval manuscript illumination. Despite a changing and differentiated process of production the constant recourse on older works of art, the copying and variation as well as the innovative adaptation of artistic patterns shaped the methods of work of medieval illuminators and writers.
The art historical research on the development of pictorial practice uses this particular technique to define artistic developments, regional particularities and even artistic biographies and still, even the most elaborate examples never liberate themselves entirely from the tradition of illustration and decoration of certain types of manuscripts. They usually follow a defined selection of patterns – also depending on the type of book illustrated – and thus even the masterpiece has to be seen in the context of its pictorial tradition.
The colloquium Re-inventing traditions is dedicated to a systematic approach to the problems of the transmission of artistic patterns as a key field in the study of medieval manuscript illumination. It is not just concerned with the reutilisation and diffusion of patterns, and beyond that the process of appropriation itself needs to be investigated. Young scholars are invited to submit proposals on their own approaches to this wide research field. The topics listed below merely serve as reference points for possible submissions.
In addition to an art historical approach, we encourage scholars to submit proposals that deal with the scientific analysis of illuminated manuscripts. Questions on dating, technical particularities and thus the opportunity to define related groups of works or even workshops can be explored as well as the analysis of materials or underdrawings for miniatures.
The art historical emphasis of the colloquium should also be expanded by the inclusion of text critical perspectives. Therefore, we encourage scholars of relevant disciplines to submit proposals on e.g. the meaning and textual history of vernacular prayers or the intertextuality of devotional manuscripts as related to the possibility of dating and localising individual or particular groups of manuscripts.
The following points serve as suggestions for possible proposals. Interested scholars may of course submit proposals on the transmission of artistic patterns in late medieval manuscript illumination that are not listened among the following:
- Artistic itinerary: on the transmission of artistic patterns across national borders
- Decoration and layout: strategies of illustration in various types of devotional manuscripts and their relation to other media
- On the relation between royal commissions and standardised production: case studies
- Structuring regional centres: exchange and characterisation of the local production
- Continuity and the aesthetic value of the pattern: how a good idea survives and how its diffusion is reconstructable
- The development of the historiated border in the 2nd half of the 15th century in France and Flanders
- Intermediality and strategies of adaptation: exchange between panel and miniature painting
- On dating and localising artistic production outside the capitals
- Between manuscript illumination, printing and stained glass: on the historic reality of the intermediary artist
- Exchange between the illustration of secular and devotional manuscripts. Case studies on the transfer of artistic patterns
- Rediscovering antiquity: new iconographies in manuscript illumination
- Italian art in the northern Europe: the reinterpretation of motives and their reutilisation
- French and Flemish manuscript illuminations in Italy.
We ask interested scholars to submit their proposals (ca. 300 words) by the end of July 2011 to Joris C. Heyder and Christine Seidel. You may contact us with any question concerning the colloquium and modes of submission.
Application deadline: 30 July 2011.
Source: H-ArtHist