Ancient Magica in the Early Modern Period (16th–18th centuries).
Visualizing Antiquity. On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints VI.
What did “magic” mean to people in the early modern period? Did it encompass the foreign in its broadest sense, the exotic, the cultic, the cosmic, the distant past—perhaps even antiquity itself? How did early modern actors engage with and make sense of these phenomena? What, precisely, did the category of Magica designate? And how were ancient magical artefacts perceived, documented, classified, and incorporated into early modern systems of knowledge?
The sixth colloquium in the series “Visualizing Antiquity. On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints“ examines the manifold ways in which ancient Magica were perceived, transmitted, and interpreted in the early modern period. At its centre are material and visual sources: artefacts and their representations in drawings and prints, considered within the frameworks of early modern knowledge and interpretation. Contributions may address the religious, cultic, apotropaic, astrological-cosmological, alchemical, medical, ritual, mythological, and symbolic dimensions attributed to these objects.
The range of materials under consideration extends from amulets, curse tablets (defixiones), magical gems (“Abraxas”), inscriptions, seals, and signet rings to magic wands, ritual implements, cult images, statuettes, votive offerings, and ritual masks, as well as reliquaries, pendants, jewellery, Horus stelae, and magical papyri and parchments containing spells. Literary sources and traditions may likewise serve as points of departure. We are also interested in the phenomenon of reconstructed, invented, or otherwise newly constituted forms of magic—including early modern creations of images and signs such as hieroglyphs, magical alphabets, fictitious charaktêres, and Hermetic or occult emblems. In such cases, drawing and printmaking could function not merely as media for reproducing existing objects or signs, but as autonomous sites in which new forms of magical knowledge and imagery were produced.
Particular attention will be paid to the processes of transmission, representation, and appropriation that shaped ancient Magica in drawings, prints, and antiquarian collections. Central to this inquiry is the reciprocal relationship between object and medium: How did antiquarians, scholars, and collectors shape the visibility, interpretation, and classification of magical artefacts through acts of graphic documentation and reproduction? And how, in turn, did the objects themselves inform the ways in which they were drawn, reproduced, classified, and understood?
Another focus concerns the epigraphic and iconographic particularities of Magica—including charaktêres, magical formulae, and inscriptions—and their interpretation and incorporation into early modern learned discourse. The colloquium thus asks how ancient magical artefacts and signs were made visible, rendered intelligible, and transferred into new networks of meaning.
Against this background, we propose the following thematic fields as possible areas of focus. They are intended as points of departure rather than fixed categories and invite further questions and perspectives:
1. The History of Concepts (16th–18th centuries): The semantic transformation and conceptual formation of “magic”, particularly in relation to religion and confessional identities, the pagan myths of antiquity, and the perception of the foreign through encounters with non-European cultures.
2. Object Biographies & Knowledge: Provenance, find contexts, and the transformation of objects through processes of collecting, classification, and scholarly interpretation.
3. Iconography & Epigraphy: The translation of magical signs (charaktêres), formulae, and iconographic types into the media of drawing and printmaking.
4. The History of Scholarship on Magica:
– Collecting Practices: The antiquarian as interpreter, mediator, and producer of knowledge.
– Authenticity: The tension between ancient heritage and early modern invention, fiction, and fabrication—whether on paper or in material form.
– Epistemic Order: How did canons and categories of magical artefacts emerge within the scholarly discourses of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries?
– Interpretatio europaea: A history of the remembrance and reinterpretation of ancient Magica: How could that which was perceived as strange or foreign—including Europe’s own distant pagan past—come to appear “magical” and become subject to magical interpretation?
5. Media Transformations: The genealogies (stemmata) of representations of Magica, the shifting boundary between object and image, and the reciprocal authority attributed to each.
The colloquium seeks to shed new light on the mechanisms through which ancient Magica were appropriated as scholarly knowledge and visually mediated in the European context of the 16th to 18th centuries.
Place & date: Berlin, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, July 2, 2027.
Researchers are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute presentations in German, English, French or Italian, ideally combining case studies with broader perspectives.
Proposals (max. 400 words) can be submitted until 31 October 2026, together with a short CV (max. 150 words) to th*******@**aw.de with the keyword “Episteme VI”.
Hotel and travel expenses (economy-class flight or train; 2 nights’ accommodation) will be reimbursed according to the Federal Law on Travel Expenses (BRKG).
Publication of the contributions to the colloquium in expanded form is planned.
Organized by the Academy Research Project “Antiquitatum Thesaurus. Antiquities in European Visual Sources from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” together with „Phoinix. Platform for Studying Ancient Amuletic Jewellery“ (Budapest). Conceived by Árpád M. Nagy, Arnold Nesselrath, Cristina Ruggero, Timo Strauch.
