Appel à communication : Baldassarre Fontana and Other Travelling Stucco Artists (Olomouc, 16-18 juin 2025)

STUCCO DECORATION ACROSS EUROPE: Baldassarre Fontana and Other Travelling Stucco Artists.

In the early modern history, fashionable and flamboyant stucco decoration spread across Europe, largely due to the influence of travelling artists from Lake Lugano and the adjacent areas of present-day Ticino and northern Lombardy. The art of stucco was thus part of a broader and intricate phenomenon of artistic migration. From a social, economic and cultural perspective, a number of specific mechanisms were at work, affecting the functioning of communities, the organisation of workshops, strategies for obtaining commissions and the form of the resulting works of art, both materially, technologically and artistically.

The objective of the conference is to present new findings pertaining to material studies within the broader context of the migration phenomenon. Additionally, the event will showcase diverse methodological approaches and the latest techniques for studying, interpreting, restoring, preserving, and conserving stucco decorations across a range of contemporary European countries. The conference welcomes submissions of papers with an international scope that adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the subject matter. These may be drawn from the fields of art history, restoration and conservation, materials science, heritage conservation and preservation, cultural history, and so forth.

The conference will commence with a joint reflection and mutual dialogue on the life and work of Baldassarre Fontana (1661–1733), a European stucco artist from Chiasso. Fontana created a number of remarkable works, particularly in the territories that are now the Czech Republic and Poland. Nevertheless, case studies focusing on other stucco artists (their collaborators and commissioners) working in the same or previous period across Europe are also welcomed.

Both renowned specialists and emerging junior researchers are invited to attend the conference.

The following preliminary sections and/or themes may be addressed:
1) Baldassarre Fontana: education, life, patrons, networking, workshop, collaborators, and other collaborating artists such as architects, painters and sculptors, audience/reception, historiography and reflection on methodological approaches to study, etc.
2) Predecessors and contemporaries of Baldassarre Fontana in Europe: interaction between stucco workers, architects and other artists.
3) Materiality, authenticity and perception of 17th and 18th century stucco decorations. Specific attention towards the restoration and preservation of 17th and 18th century stucco decoration and their surfaces, with a focus on the works of Baldassarre Fontana and other stucco artists across Europe, will be particularly welcomed.
4) Technical art history: case studies on the interdisciplinary study on stucco decorations, with a particular focus on the work of Fontana’s predecessors and contemporaries across Europe.

Conference language English

Directed by
Jana Zapletalová and Martin Krummholz

Scientific committee
Alberto Felici (SUPSI Mendrisio), Giacinta Jean (SUPSI Mendrisio), Martin Krummholz (Palacký University Olomouc), Ondřej Jakubec (Palacký University Olomouc), Michał Kurzej (Jagiellonian University in Cracow), Serena Quagliaroli (University of Turin), Jan Válek (Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences), Jana Zapletalová (Palacký University Olomouc)

Organising committee
Jana Zapletalová, Martin Krummholz, Ondřej Jakubec

Schedule
Abstracts (up to 2,000 characters) and a brief biography (up to 500 characters) may be submitted in English by no later than 31 December 2024 to the following e-mail address: j.zapletalova@upol.cz.
A notification of acceptance will be provided by 28 February 2025.

The conference is organized as part of the Stucco decoration across Europe project (STUDEC) co-financed by the European Union thanks to the Erasmus+ programme, KA220-HED – Cooperation partnerships in higher education.