Art History (general)
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Les colonnes du ciborium de San Marco à Venise
La recherche s’articule autour de trois axes principaux : une lecture approfondie des aspects visibles et matériels qui composent l’œuvre d’art c’est-à-dire les parties sculptées et les inscriptions ; la relation de l’œuvre avec les sources littéraires ; enfin la relation de l’œuvre avec le contexte. L’application d’une méthode globale qui considère l’œuvre d’art comme un objet complexe fait de signes de lieux et d’intentions artistiques a permis une nouvelle interprétation de l’œuvre ouverte à des enjeux tout à fait actuels d’histoire de l’art et connectée à la notion d’histoire et d’anthropologie des objets en constante relation avec le temps et l’environnement.
Ce livre se compose de huit chapitres qui affirment et décomposent à la fois le « système » des colonnes ; ils sont précédés d’une mise en perspective historiographique. L’ouvrage présente également un catalogue exhaustif de fiches décrivant pour la première fois une à une les scènes et les inscriptions des colonnes.
Disoriented
Gender Territories in Contemporary Art
'Desnortar' or disoriented means to lose the north or the sense of direction to disorient. In Disoriented a collective book from a gender perspective we consciously seek to lose both the geographical north and the north of the contemporary art canon. We aim to rethink and disrupt from feminist LGTBQ+ and postcolonial approaches the coordinates that have articulated the discourses on the art history and art system along the 20th and 21st centuries. Coordinates that define how these artistic practices and systems of modernity and the contemporary are understood the cardinal directions and main conceptual issues or which artists are relevant or expendable according to the narratives of avant-garde and contemporary art history. It is crucial to reinterpret and disorientate to disnorth and thereby shatter these references to overcome the gaps that prevent the emergence of alternative knowledges. To address questions or artists often perceived as peripheral to a grand historical narrative we propose an intersection of modern and contemporary art history gender feminist queer and postcolonial approaches and transnational interrelations. This intersectionality allows us to actively lose the north of the canon and to direct our gaze towards subjects outside the usual centres of legitimation. Mostly we attend to women artists to peripheral geographical centres to subaltern collectives or to practices or materials regularly considered of little artistic interest. All of the above critiques how conventional discourses have excluded some collectives or certain artistic proposals and the resistances that have emerged against them.
Images of Saint Anne in the Ionian Islands (Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
The article examines the preservation of the Byzantine iconographic tradition alongside the growing influence of Western style in images of Saint Anne on three Greek Ionian Islands after the establishment of Venetian rule: Corfu (1386) Zante (1482) and Kefalonia (1500). A new political religious and social context characterized the production of art on these three islands during their occupation by the Republic of Venice. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 when icon painters sought refuge in Venetian-held Crete and the later flight to the Ionian Islands (which were also Venetian possessions) after the sack of Crete in 1699 the Ionian Islands played a decisive role in the development of post-Byzantine art and later modern Greek painting.
In mente Dei, in gremio Annae. The Source and the Receptacle of Marian Immaculacy in Sixteenth-Century Piacenza
Starting from the notion of Maria ante saecula which implies the Virgin’s presence in God’s mind before the world and humanity the paper will firstly analyse the place of Mary’s soul before and during the Creation. This aspect will be studied through the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception painted by Malosso for the Church of San Francesco in Piacenza. Then it will examine the debate surrounding the controversial transmission of the original stain from Saint Anne to Mary to the point of considering the Virgin’s purification after her birth. These considerations will lead to tackling an ambiguous altarpiece by Pordenone where at first sight the spectator could confuse Saint Anne with the Virgin.
The Anna Selbdritt and the Cult of the Three Maries. An Early Fourteenth-Century Wall Painting in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary
This study concentrates upon a little-known late medieval wall painting depicting the Holy Kinship. The fresco is located in the parish church in Csaroda a village in north-eastern Hungary and was painted in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Scholarship dedicated to the iconography of Saint Anne and the Holy Kinship focuses on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries because of the late medieval blossoming of devotion towards the Virgin’s mother and Christ’s extended family. Studies of earlier centuries mostly take into account manuscripts. The case of the Holy Kinship in Csaroda proves that the state of research regarding the iconography of Anne and the Holy Kinship has little relevance for explaining images that were produced beyond the confines of upper-class patronage. The ascending cult of Saint Anne and her three daughters in fourteenth-century France offers examples that bear the closest resemblance to the Csaroda fresco. Illustrated manuscripts of John of Venette’s L’Histoire des trois Maries albeit produced later than the mural in Hungary provide the closest visual parallels. However the use and dissemination of manuscripts is different from the function and reception context that can be assigned to a wall painting and my aim is to investigate possible circulation and reuse of this motif in the case of the wall painting in Csaroda.
Moving with Saint Anne. Representations of Anna Selbdritt between Central Europe and the Tyrolean Region
The cult of Saint Anne was at its peak between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries particularly in German-speaking countries including the historical Tyrol. This essay focuses on the influence of images from the German-speaking area on the arrival and the establishment of the cult of Saint Anne in the Tyrolean area and outlines through an iconographic analysis the fortune and decline of the cult of the Mother of Mary in the historical Tyrol.
Representations of Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Exploring Iconographic Flexibility and Permeability
Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries the cult of the Virgin Mary underwent significant changes a shift clearly revealed by an increase in artistic representations of Mary as well as a flourishing devotional literature in her honour written in both Latin and the vernacular. One aspect of this change was a broader attention to Mary’s genealogical line and in particular to her relationship with St Anne. The result was not only a renewed focus on the vita Annae but also a significant overlap in how these two women were represented juxtaposed and perceived.
This volume traces the often significant iconographic flexibility in terms of both how the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne were presented and perceived and what can be termed a permeability between visual representations of the two saints. Focusing on the multiple readings layers of meaning and the visual interplay between the vita Mariae and the vita Annae the chapters gathered here explore the overlap and influence between different iconographic motifs and how these were used to advance political religious and social ideologies at the time of their creation as well as exploring representations across a range of different media from sculptures and frescoes to panel paintings and manuscript illuminations.
‘Worthy Vestment for the Sovereign Priest’. Matriarchal Priesthood, Marian Allegory, and the Amiens Confraternity of Notre-Dame de Puy
This essay examines the oldest extant panel painting from Amiens cathedral’s Marian poetry confraternity of Puy Notre-Dame. Known as the Priesthood of the Virgin the panel depicts Mary dressed as an Old Testament high priest investing her son with the Levitical lineage that she in turn received from her mother. The painting uses typology allegory liturgy and the hagiography of Saint Anne to create a ‘visual poem’ that was meant to inspire one of the confraternity’s annual chant royal competitions. As such the panel elucidates the palinod verse written by the confraternity master and that featured as the refrain in the contestants’ compositions. This palinod appears on a banderole near the confraternity master who kneels in the lower right corner of the painting: ‘Worthy vestment for the sovereign priest.’
Arbor Anna fructuosa. Apropos of an Image of Saint Anne and the Fruits of Redemption
This essay examines a small anonymous wooden sculpture produced in the eighteenth century in north-eastern Brazil. Of rare iconography the sculpture depicts a Selbdritt in which Saint Anne offers a bowl of apples to the Child while the group is framed by a laden apple tree. The overt emphasis placed on the tree and the offering of fruits encouraged the search for its formal prototypes and their meaning. Thus I present the apples and the apple tree (and other trees and fruits) in Marian and Saint Anne iconography and compare this visual material with an extensive literary corpus that encompasses biblical text Christological-Mariological literature liturgical hymns paraenetics and folk songs highlighting its occurrences in the Lusophone world. Finally after briefly specifying the sociocultural context of eighteenth-century Brazilian artistic production I conclude that the sculpture can be understood as a late repository of the multiple debates that permeated the construction of Mary and Anne characters as a support for what constitutes the very essence of Christianity — and of which the apples and the apple tree are the figurative synthesis: the path of humanity from the fall from grace to redemption.
The Pregnancies of Mary-Anne in Fifteenth- to Sixteenth-Century Franco-Flemish Manuscript Illuminations. Between Iconographic Appropriation and Iconographic Development
This chapter discusses the pregnancy representations of the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne. More precisely it focuses on the iconographic permeability and flexibility between the two hagiographic figures in what mostly concerns manuscript illuminations. In this sense manuscript illuminations showing a pregnant Saint Anne are related to Marian representations as in the Annunciation the Throne of Wisdom etc. The chapter tackles mostly Franco-Flemish source material however these sources suggest a much larger area of dissemination for such pregnancy representations dominated not only by the cult of Saint Anne but also by commercial networks (Flemish/Spanish). Furthermore pregnancy representations permeate other holy motherhoods from apocryphal stories — those of Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas.
The Panel of the Virgin and Saint Anne from the Church of the Archangels in Iprari. Iconographic and Ideological Aspects
The chapter deals with the eleventh-century iconic images of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne depicted on the eastern part of a south wall in the Church of the Archangels in Iprari ad 1096 (Upper Svaneti north-west Georgia). The topography of the panel and its iconographic context underline its specific role in the decorative programme of this church. The murals of Iprari are the earliest work of ‘King’s Painter Tevdore’ who painted three churches in Svaneti between ad 1096 and ad 1130. The title of Tevdore mentioned in the dedicatory inscription reveals his links with the royal court. I argue that the inclusion of the panel of the Virgin and Saint Anne in a small church dedicated to the archangels with a limited number of images together with religious context has an important political meaning.
« Aedes Memoriae »
Actes de la Journée d’Études en mémoire du professeur Noël Duval
Le professeur Noël Duval à la forte personnalité a marqué le renouveau des études sur l’antiquité tardive. Se consacrant plus particulièrement à l’Afrique romaine et byzantine il en a étudié l’histoire tardive et l’archéologie en particulier celle des églises paléochrétiennes. Mais ses intérêts se sont portés aussi sur la Gaule à la fin de l’antiquité et plus largement à l’ensemble du bassin méditerranéen. Sa disparition en 2018 a été incontestablement une grande perte. Ses amis et ses élèves ont tenu à honorer sa mémoire en rassemblant un recueil de contributions scientifiques sur des sujets sur lesquels il avait travaillé mais aussi en évoquant sa mémoire et sa personnalité.
Contending Representations III: Questioning Republicanism in Early Modern Genoa
Several studies have been devoted to the flowering of the republic of Genoa during the so-called ‘siglo de los Genoveses’ when Genoa became the hub of European trade and an important center of artistic and literary production. Yet little attention has been granted to the political and cultural crisis that followed starting in 1559 and culminating in 1684 when the French bombed Genoa. Addressing this chronological gap the volume explores how the image of the Genoese Republic was shaped exploited or contested in the long seventeenth century. How did Genoese politicians and men of letters represent their homeland? How was Genoa represented in Spain or in the Low Countries? How was its political system conceived by Italian and foreign political writers and how did the prevailing absolutist model influence such ideas? In order to answer these questions the volume gathers contributions from art historians literary scholars political and cultural historians thus adopting a comparative multidisciplinary approach.
Entangled Histories at Conques
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Unique Site of Medieval Heritage
Conques has been an important node a singularity within many entangled histories from late antiquity to the present. This volume publishes papers expanding on the second conference of the project “Conques in the Global World. Transferring Knowledge: from Material to Immaterial Heritage” (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange H2020). Held in October 2023 at the Centre européen in Conques the workshop brought together international experts from a variety of disciplines and geographies indicating the directions future studies of this site might take and reflecting on its material literary and historiographical legacy.
The collected essays in this volume reflect scholarly and artistic fascination with Conques. They question open and reopen important dossiers bringing fresh insights and perspectives on the site’s material literary and performative culture. These range from Bernard of Angers’s Miracles of Sainte Foy and the scholarly reception of this text to charged discussions of the architectural sources and models for the abbey-church and its role in regional and interregional dynamics. From the heated architectural history the essays segue into the other hot topic of Conques: rethinking the elusive Majesty of Sainte Foy. Essays examine its fabrication history its specific perception during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and its staging and geographical anchoring. These analyses give way to an essay devoted to Conques’ nineteenth-century reconstruction. The present volume closes with a text devoted to the mediation of medieval literary culture within contemporary contexts. In their disciplinary diversity this volume unites scholarly traditions opening new avenues for the study of a medieval site which through its entangled histories captivates scholars around the world.
Polyhistor Europaeus
Études sur l’âge classique offertes à Chantal Grell
Le vieux mot grec polyhistor désignait jusqu’au XVIIe siècle à la fois un savant aux multiples compétences et un vade-mecum bibliographique embrassant tout le champ des savoirs.
C’est le cas de Chantal Grell qui au fil de sa carrière a exploré tout l’âge classique en Europe dans ses domaines les plus divers de l’Espagne à la Pologne avec Versailles pour centre de gravité.
C’est aussi le cas du présent recueil où soixante-quatre chercheurs ont rassemblé en deux volumes des contributions de haut niveau scientifique sur ses thèmes de prédilection.
Le tome I traite des antiquités et de l’historiographie d’histoire des savoirs et des idées le tome II des cours et de la diplomatie des arts et des collections.
Gender in Gandhāran Art
Representations and Interactions in the Buddhist Context (1st – 4th centuries CE)
Gandhāran art developed around the first century BCE till the fourth century CE in parts of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been the focus of intense scholarly debates in both Classical and South Asian Studies for many decades. In this book Ashwini Lakshminarayan offers for the first time a specialized study on gender using Gandharan material culture and convincingly proposes new readings of visual culture beyond Eurocentric and postcolonial interpretations.
This book sets the stage with a detailed overview of the contexts in which Gandhāran art was located in Buddhist sites by analysing the gendered use of space and the gender and activities of donors and administrators. At its core the book gives prominence to the stone reliefs of Gandhāra and examines how male and female bodies are represented how they interact and how gender symbolised ideals and values.
With an important comparative overview of the Gandhāran artistic production and new illustrations this work is indispensable for all those interested in the study of gender in ancient art the interaction between Graeco-Roman and Indic cultures and the development of the early Buddhist artistic tradition in South and Central Asia that also shaped Buddhist visual culture eastwards in China.
Inscrire l’art médiéval
Objets, textes, images
Ce livre est consacré aux relations entre écriture épigraphique et art médiéval. Il se propose de placer les inscriptions tracées sur la pierre le métal le bois la peinture ou la mosaïque dans le contexte des pratiques écrites et artistiques du Moyen Âge occidental et de signaler quelques pistes de recherche originales pour appréhender le statut la forme et la fonction de la rencontre entre l’écriture épigraphique et les oeuvres d’art médiévales.
Cet essai se situe à la confluence de l’histoire de l’écriture et de l’histoire des formes. Il est fondé sur l’analyse d’un certain nombre d’objets graphiques du Moyen Âge central produits en Europe occidentale. Il s’inscrit donc dans une pensée chrétienne de l’écriture et de l’image et accorde une place importante à la théologie. Il est moins pensé comme un manuel épigraphique à l’attention des historiens de l’art que comme un répertoire de questions à explorer à repenser ou encore à traiter et s’adresse à quiconque aspire à la réunion des cultures écrite visuelle et matérielle du Moyen Âge.