Appel à communication pour les sessions suivantes :

[1] Collecting and the Peripheries / The Collection as Laboratory
[2] Papal Triumphs in Texts and Images
[3] Eternal Painting? The Meaning and Materiality of Copper Supports
[4] Rethinking the Myth of Venice. The Many Identities of Venice in the Early Renaissance
[5] Antiquity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy
[6] Art and Conflicting, Overlapping, and Shifting forms of Agency
[7] Architecture and the Environment
[8] Transcendence, Figuration, Modernity: On Theology and the Arts in the Renaissance
[9] The Historiography of Early Modern Architecture
[10] Urban Studies beyond the Aestheticized Object
[11] Paintings and drawings of grotesque heads in early modern Italy
[12] ‘Translatio.’ [Re]moving bodies in the early modern world
[13] Discovering & Rediscovering Renaissance Objects
[14] The Matter of Sculpture in Southern Italy, Spain and the New World

Collecting and the Peripheries / The Collection as Laboratory
Contributor: Adriana Turpin

When scholars of the early modern period started to focus on (princely) collections in the 1980s, they often concentrated on Italy as the epicentre of cultural development and progress. The courts of Florence, Rome, Urbino or Ferrara were regarded as hubs of collecting, while the rest of Europe either seemed not to care very much (England and Spain) or was too poor and uncivilised (large parts of Germany and Eastern Europe) to follow the Italian example. Even though recent studies have started to investigate collections built and displayed in the peripheries, much of the research conducted these days still underwrites a supposed Italian supremacy. Nonetheless, we know that even a place such as Florence picked up fashions in collecting, in palace building and in interior architecture from other courts north and south of the Alps as well as from the East and West. A main issue to be investigated is, therefore, that of hubs and peripheries and whether any such division has ever been as clear-cut as has long been assumed.
Another issue is the question of models and trendsetters. In particular, the multi-cultural Holy Roman Empire, bringing together traditions from Burgundy, Spain and from the Austrian Habsburg territories among others, offers a multitude of collections, examples of multinational collectibles, as well as some of the earliest theoretical writings on the subject. Nevertheless, when collections from the empire are discussed, as happens more often now, they are usually compared to other examples from the North of Europe or seen as second-rate followers of the fashions at Italian courts.
Rather than continuing a traditional view of Europe separated into cultural donors and receivers, we expect to renegotiate long-standing certainties. Therefore, we invite proposals of 150 words that focus on clusters or networks of exchange, favour a multinational, multiconfessional and multidisciplinary approach to the rise and development of early modern collections and seek to establish new ways of defining models and trendsetters, as well as centres and peripheries.

/ The Collection as Laboratory
During the sixteenth century, collectors became interested in increasingly varied types of objects. Whereas in many studioli, the display was intended to invite comparisons between antiquities and contemporary works of the art, in other collections the aim was to present the relationships and even rivalries between artificialia and naturalia. A concern with man’s ingenuity was an important element in such new collections, as has been studied in relation to such well-known sixteenth century collections in Florence, or Munich or somewhat later in Prague. Horst Bredekamp observed that ‘the idea of using the collection as an active laboratory rather than a passive collection corresponded to the Promethean practice, perceiving the actions of collecting, researching and constructing the collection as a unit.’ The collector could thus be not just an acquisitor but also a creator. He could himself develop the skills to create complex works of art, the knowledge and skill to practice ivory turning for example; he could bring together scientists and mathematicians to explore the universe, and put to use instruments within the collection. Techniques and new methods of manufacture were also related to objects in the collection.
The aim of this session is to explore the collection as a laboratory of scientific investigation and the pursuit of knowledge, whether through the creation or the use of the objects collected. Although there has been considerable attention given to the development of the kunst and wunderkammer collection, the impact of these in terms of manufacture and impetus for scientific development has been more limited to a few well-known examples. We would encourage the presentation of papers by researchers in the history of science, history of manufacture or collecting. We would also encourage the presentation of material over a broad geographic base, from the lesser-known Italian and German collections to other European collections. Although the time frame is essentially that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, papers that cover these sites of knowledge at other times are welcome. We hope through the exploration of a variety of collections, to bring a richer understanding of the collection as the nexus of curiosity and skill.

If you wish to contribute to these discussions, please send your abstract of c. 300 words and your CV (in accordance with the guidelines set out at http://www.rsa.org/page/2017Chicago) to collectingdisplay@hotmail.com on or before 2 June 2016.

Papal Triumphs in Texts and Images
Contributor: Pascale Rihouet

One of the most arresting spectacles in early-modern Rome was the pope’s procession from St. Peter’s church to St. John in Lateran to mark his “possession” of the city after his election. The possesso featured a colorful cortege made up of ecclesiastical dignitaries and their servants parading with an array of symbolic objects. This session invites papers on the various configurations of this papal triumph, according to texts and images. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, what kind of evidence does the visual, musical, or textual culture of papal ceremonies provide? What contradictions emerge when one compares these sources? What did their material culture consist of? What meanings did it produce? How about the sensory dimension?

Send abstract and CV to Pascale Rihouet (organizer): prihouet@risd.edu by June 1, 2016.

Eternal Painting? The Meaning and Materiality of Copper Supports
Session Sponsored by the Italian Art Society
Contributor: Alexander J. Noelle

In the Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari championed Sebastiano del Piombo for having « introduced a new method of painting on stone, which pleased people greatly, for it appeared that by this means pictures could be made eternal, and such that neither fire nor worms could harm them. » Vasari elaborated by describing how the same technique could be extended to « silver, copper, tin, and other metals. » Piombo, however, was just one of many fifteen and sixteenth-century artists who experimented with supports beyond the more traditional media of panel, canvas, and fresco; Italian painters employed a variety of stone and metal supports on projects of diverse scale and subject matter. Vasari himself painted on copper, utilizing the material not only to produce paintings that were impervious to the threats he enumerated but also to enhance the aesthetic impact and perhaps even materialistic resonance of his compositions, as seen in Vulcan’s Forge (1567 – 68, Galleria degli Uffizi). Numerous painters explored this relationship, establishing a conceptual association between the copper support and the subject matter of their artworks. This connection between the physical and narrative elements was manifested in a number of ways, sometimes visible to the viewer, and sometimes only known to the patron and artist. The use of a copper support should not be taken as a straightforward indication that the artist chose a more durable, or perhaps « eternal, » medium. Rather, the intersection of material and meaning in these paintings often warrants reconsideration. This session seeks to explore the associations between subject matter and support in paintings on copper from Italy, ca. 1300 – 1650. Papers that present a combination of art historical and conservation research as well as those that consider copper in relation to other alternative supports – such as tile, slate, and various metals – are particularly encouraged.

Please send a brief abstract (no more than 150 words); a selection of keywords for your talk; and a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum in outline rather than narrative form) to Alexander.Noelle@Courtauld.ac.uk and SallyRHiggs@gmail.com by June 1.

Rethinking the Myth of Venice. The Many Identities of Venice in the Early Renaissance
Contributor: Zuleika Murat

The primary aim of this panel is questioning the concept of the Myth of Venice and of the city’s uniqueness, that ended up embalming Venice in the name of a tradition created a posteriori. In order to both challenge and complement this long-standing historiographic tradition, we intend to address the period between the end of the War of Chioggia (1381) and the Fall of Constantinople (1453), when an entire age ended and a new one began.
The choice of the period is intentional: it coincides with a time of particular ferment and innovation, that thus offers a chance to verify many notions usually taken for granted. Indeed, after the War of Chioggia a new period of expansion towards the Mainland began, through the acquisition of new territories and the arrival of several foreigners. In the homeland, the military enterprise of Michele Steno (1400-1413) and Francesco Foscari’s (1423-1457) careful political tactic enlarged the city’s domain of influence considerably, but also made Venice receptive to influence from the West. Meanwhile, the improved religious ferment triggered by the phenomenon of the Observance collided with the hard core of local forces, personified by the doge and the aristocracy, but also by older religious orders. It is thus an extraordinary dynamic period, unsettled and experimental.
Paper topics may include (but are by no means limited to):
– Rituals, liturgies and devotion
– The different roles played by foreign and local patrons and artists
– Old and new typologies of artworks
– The introduction of new artistic techniques (e.g. Terracotta)
– New religious movements (e.g. the Regular Canons of San Giorgio in Alga)
– Private devotional practices
– Confraternities and Scuole Grandi & Piccole
– The rise of new iconographies, or the reinvention of old ones
– Relics, Blessed and Holy Bodies
– Venice and the Mainland: reciprocal influences?

The panel welcomes papers centered on specific case studies as well as on the wider context.
To submit a paper proposal for this session, please send a Word or PDF document to Zuleika Murat (zuleika.murat@gmail.com) and Valentina Baradel (valentina.baradel@phd.unipd.it) by June 4, 2016. Please ensure that the document includes the presenter’s first and last name; academic affiliation and title (or “Independent Scholar”); e-mail address; paper title (15-word maximum); abstract (150-word maximum); short CV (300-word maximum; please follow the CV guidelines and models on http://www.rsa.org/page/2017Chicago).

Antiquity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy
Contributor: Robert Glass

The reception of antiquity has been fundamental to understandings of Italian Renaissance art since the period itself, and with every generation, scholars have rethought the relationship. These sessions aim to consider the topic in light of current trends in the field. Papers are invited that examine the reception of antiquity in Italian Renaissance art from perspectives such as:

– Identity: antiquity in the fashioning of the identities of patrons, artists, institutions, or places
– Globalism and/or alterity: the reception of non-Roman antiquities; antiquity as Other
– Temporality: typological, anachronic, or other responses to antiquity that depart from or challenge linear conceptions of time
– Marginality: antiquity in centers vs. peripheries/margins—geographic, pictorial, or other

Please send proposals to Robert Glass (rglass1@nd.edu) by Tuesday, May 31, 2016.

As per RSA guidelines, proposals should include the following: paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, and a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum).

Art and Conflicting, Overlapping, and Shifting forms of Agency
Contributor: Steven Stowell

In recent decades, much research regarding the emotive, social and religious force of images have coalesced around discussions of art and agency. Following the influential work of anthropologist Alfred Gell, Early Modern art historians have asked how works of art had agency in religious, social and political spheres; that is, how were works of art attributed with the agency of sentient, social agents with psychological intentionality? These terms have been viewed as especially pertinent when discussing such objects as miracle-working images, and images that have agency through magic.
Gell’s theories of art objects’ psychological intentionality are in part a development of James George Frazer’s theories of sympathetic magic, in which objects have magical agency over other objects to which they are connected through likeness or contagion. However, Early Modern art works might appear to complicate or disrupt this interpretation since they have agency over a plethora of other objects and social agents, and therefore not only one form of agency but several. A miraculous image of the Virgin, for instance, has agency in many different scenarios, some of which might even appear to be antithetical to one another, as, for instance when an image miraculously restores lost wealth to one devotee while also encouraging the ideal of charity and poverty with another. Moreover, what “counted” as miraculous was also coming under increasing scrutiny in the Early Modern period, and thus various groups perceived agency differently.
This session seeks proposals for papers that address conflicting, overlapping and shifting agency in Early Modern art to explore how images had the power to manifest several sometimes antithetical or conflicting forms of agency.

Organizer: Steven Stowell, Concordia University, Montréal

Please send abstracts by 31 May to steven.stowell@concordia.ca. As per the RSA proposal guidelines, please include:
-a paper title (15-word maximum)
-abstract (150-word maximum)
-keywords
-a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum).

Architecture and the Environment
Contributor: Katie Jakobiec

Deforestation, air pollution, endangered species, depleted natural resources and other environmental concerns were on the mind of early modern architects, patrons, and all those concerned with the art and act of building. During the age of exploration, ports and shipyards, cities and buildings were built through the manipulation and management of natural resources. This panel invites papers that investigate new building enterprises (cities and buildings, landscape architecture, ships and ports, mines, water basins, etc.) in terms of their effects on the environment.

Scholars working in and on any geographical region are welcome to propose a paper.

Papers might consider case studies analyzing single individuals and their ideas, for example, in 1582, Philip II, the builder of the Escorial, expressed to his government minister his concern for the conditions of the forests during his travel to central Castile. He called for the conservation of forests and voiced his fear « …that those who come after us will have much to complain of if we leave them depleted, and please God we do not see it in our time. » (Cited in Henry Kamen, The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance, p. 73).

Other topics might include eco-critical interpretations of primary documents and texts, poetry, and/or drama; re-examining architectural treatises for environmental concerns; or looking at buildings and landscapes themselves in different ways.

Please send proposals with CV to Katie Jakobiec, katie.jakobiec@ed.ac.uk by June 3.

Transcendence, Figuration, Modernity: On Theology and the Arts in the Renaissance
Contributor: Christopher Nygren

The representation of the Godhead was a contentious issue in many domains of early modern culture. While certain strains of theology asserted God’s absolute transcendence, the visual arts, literature, and sacred drama often forcefully depicted God the Father in domestic settings. These sessions invite papers from various disciplines that reflect upon the disconnect between theories and practices of divine figuration in the early modern period. This might also encompass broader issues such as the figuration of the Trinity, the representation miraculous or transcendent events, lived theology and spirituality, and the visual and performance cultures of late medieval and early modern Christianity. We are particularly interested in paper that explore how the problem of figuring the transcendent align with or subvert certain genealogies of modernity that are central to the various disciplines. Focusing on the problem of figuring the will provide a test case for genealogies of modernity that link developments in philosophical theology to larger cultural changes.

Please submit the following materials to cnygren@pitt.edu and mcdermott.pitt@gmail.com no later than June 4th.

1. Your name for the program
2. Institutional affiliation
3. Your title
4. Brief Abstract, no more than 150 words (which in any case they no longer publish in the hardcopy program)
5. Very brief C.V., no longer than than 1 page.

The Historiography of Early Modern Architecture
Session Sponsored by the European Architectural History Network
Contributor: Elizabeth Merrill

Since the Renaissance itself, the history of early-modern architecture has been a multifaceted discipline. Antonio Manetti established the biographic format in his Life of Brunelleschi, an approach that was later developed in Vasari’s Lives. In the same period, individuals like Giuliano da Sangallo and Francesco di Giorgio sought to elucidate architectural history through their discovery, or one might say reconstruction, of Roman antiquities. Similarly, the overwhelming interest in Vitruvius not only generated new histories of architecture, but also drove architectural practices and colored the way in which architects were perceived. The modes of scholarly inquiry initiated in the Renaissance have had long afterlives. The great interest in architectural proportions, based both on ancient models and long practiced building traditions, preoccupied theorists like Serlio and Palladio, and centuries later, was resumed by Erwin Panofsky, Rudolf Wittkower and Branko Mitrovic, among others. Correspondingly, the concern with prolonged building processes and the historical valuation of the resultant architecture has captured significant attention. The problems involved in “building-in-time” were outlined in Alberti’s theory of architecture, commented upon by Michelangelo, and in recent decades have been explored by Howard Burns and Marvin Trachtenberg.

This session invites papers that consider the historiography of Renaissance architecture – that is, the history of scholarly understandings of early-modern European architecture (c.1400 – 1700). What are the sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches that have directed the history of Renaissance architecture and what implications do they carry? How do regional or national traditions of early-modern architectural history vary? On what are these traditions based and what are their biases? Papers might also discuss architect-historians like Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, John Webb, Jacques-François Blondel, and Tommaso Temanza, and how they translated the history of Renaissance architecture in practice. In a similar vein, papers might reflect on how Renaissance architectural history been taught. What is the training of the architectural historian and how does this impact the discipline? How have developments in digital technology redirected early-modern architectural history? And what might future developments bring?

Paper proposals that stem from original research should be submitted as a Word document or PDF to Saundra Weddle (sweddle@drury.edu) and Elizabeth Merrill (elizabethmerrill11@gmail.com) by June 4, 2016. Please include the following information: presenter’s full name; academic affiliation and title; e-mail address; paper title (15-word maximum); paper abstract (150-word maximum); and a short bio (300-word maximum). For CV guidelines and models see: http://www.rsa.org/page/2017Chicago.

 

Urban Studies beyond the Aestheticized Object
Sponsored by the European Architectural History Network
Contributor: Elizabeth Merrill

Traditionally, urban historians relied on systems and patterns to analyze cities as aesthetic constructions, parsing them in terms of morphologies and typologies. Eventually, however, cities began to be considered as embodiments and instruments of culture that communicated individual and collective identities and relationships. More recently, urban geographers, anthropologists, and theorists have modeled approaches that consider spatialized experience through the senses and body, and some envision the built realm as “more than a backdrop for action, becoming the action itself” (Bernard Tschumi, Disjunction and Architecture).

We invite papers that propose new approaches to and readings of the experiential and sensory in respect to the early modern city. How was the city’s physical fabric experienced and perceived by locals as well as foreign travellers? Which rhythms (e.g., day/night, canonical hours) defined movements of bodies through and individual experiences of the city? How did the sensory, (e.g., concepts of hygiene and public health), guide city planning and construction? The presence of “others” in the city, whether animals, foreigners, the sick, or minority populations, might also be considered. Speakers are welcome to discuss new methodologies or techniques for studying urban history (e.g., digital mapping and visualization).

Proposals should be submitted to Saundra Weddle (sweddle@drury.edu) and Elizabeth Merrill (elizabethmerrill11@gmail.com) by June 4, 2016 with the presenter’s full name; academic affiliation/title; e-mail address; paper title (15-word maximum); abstract (150-word maximum); and a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum; prose bios will not be accepted).

Paintings and drawings of grotesque heads in early modern Italy

Although the history of caricatured heads can be traced back to Antiquity, as an independent genre, depictions of strange, fantastic, comical and repulsive heads arguably stem from the influence of Leonardo Da Vinci’s systematic and experimental teste caricate, which soon became widely known and copied. Less programmatically Michelangelo too experimented with the genre, both in quick sketches and more complete works. Later exponents of the genre, each of whom contributed his own vision to its development, were Annibale Carracci, Ribera, Guercino, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and, later, Carlo Maratti and Pier Leone Ghezzi, all of whom produced substantial bodies of graphic caricature.
This session seeks to explore the development of the grotesque head as an early modern genre. Participants are particularly encouraged to put forward original readings of grotesque heads as depicted in drawings, paintings and prints, as well as those to be found in single and group portraits, or series. We hope to approach the subject from many angles and would welcome analyses of processes ranging from the ‘doodle’ to highly finished works; and discussions of the subject as a reflection of the human condition from socio-political stances, as well as the interaction between caricature and audience.

Please send proposals to Rebecca Norris rebeccamnorris@cantab.net and Lucia Tantardini lt303@cam.ac.uk by Friday, 3 June 2016.

As per RSA guidelines, proposals must include the following: paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, and a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). See http://www.rsa.org/?page=submissionguidelines#CfP

Translatio.’ [Re]moving bodies in the early modern world

[the Church] began to celebrate these same things with supreme glory, and to venerate the martyrs in basilicas which had been built in their memory, and to which their bodies had been translated and placed in silver chests, and silver-covered chapels furnished with vases glittering with gold and jewels.
Writing in the final decades of the sixteenth century, Roman Cardinal Cesare Baronio composed the above paean in his multivolume account of sacred history, the Annales Ecclesiastici, exalting the early fourth-century Church’s praxis of translatio, the physical transfer of the dead bodies of saintly persons in whole or in part(s). But Baronio may as well have composed his laudatory account to describe efforts in his own time: starting in the last quarter of the Cinquecento, rituals of relic translation proliferated within and between urban centers in Europe and the Catholic colonial world. The post-Reformation Catholic world c. 1600 confronted a perceived unprecedented global conservation crisis concerning supernatural environmental resources. Catholics faced European Protestant rejection of and violent antagonism towards the cults of relics and saints, and extra-European colonial contacts with alien traditions, praxes, and attitudes towards holy matter. The numinous in material form – relic-objects that evinced palpable traces of the holy – constituted a precious, newly-threatened natural and cultural resource in urgent need of preservation, conservation, and careful management.

The proposed session(s) undertakes to plot the juncture of textual, visual, material, spatial and ritual cultural production that attended acts of translatio against early modern urban sites, political and spiritual communities, and their constitutive networks on a global scale, to explore how early modern global conservation efforts to preserve and harness the supernatural power of numinous environmental resources – in the form of bodily relics of sacred persons – contributed to the Anthropocene’s premodern manifestations, and engendered new ideas about the biological realm, nascent medico-scientific methodologies and praxes, and emergent performative spaces, urban environs, visual and material cultures, with a focus on Europe and the colonial Catholic world c. 1400-1700.

Papers are invited from a range of disciplines – art and architectural history, history of science and medicine, environmental humanities and urban studies, to name a few – to take up the question of issues of early modern translatio from an interdisciplinary, transregional and -cultural comparative perspective. Possible topics might include:
– How early modern translatio distinguished itself from earlier traditions
– How human activities involving the discovery, excavation, safeguarding and management of numinous bio-networks of relic-bodies globally impacted supernatural ecosystems
– How such praxes might be inextricably linked with concurrent colonial encounters with and exploitations of bodies and natural resources
– What sorts of enduring traces ephemeral acts of translatio left behind, and how these performative praxes helped shape individual and communal identities
– How translatio contributed to negotiating political power
– In what ways translatio essentially shaped emerging scientific and medical practices and theories
– How translatio related to magic and occult practices

Please submit proposals as soon as possible and at the latest by Sunday 5 June 2016 at 12noon pm EST, to: ruthsnoyes@yahoo.com. Submissions should include:
– paper title (15-word maximum)
– abstract (150-word maximum; see RSA abstract guidelines)
– up to 5 keywords
– brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). Prose bios will not be accepted. See RSA CV guidelines.
– first and last name; affiliation (or « Independent Scholar »); email address.

Discovering & Rediscovering Renaissance Objects

Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) has long been heralded as a pivotal moment for the rediscovery of the Renaissance. Throughout the long nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Renaissance ‘discoveries’ came to light that contradicted, shaped and informed the flourishing academic disciplines of history, art history and archaeology.
From archeological finds and archival revelations to ‘hidden’ art collections, discoveries come in many different forms. But as Francis Haskell and Ernst Gombrich have deftly demonstrated, ‘discoveries’ are also often ‘rediscoveries’ connected to taste, fashion and collecting; external events can act as a catalyst to perpetuate ‘discoveries’, or slow their widespread recognition; and ‘discoveries’ can make and break careers.
Leading on from these studies, this session proposes to explore the phenomenon of the ‘Discovery’ itself, as event, narrative, and academic moment, and as a cipher between this time and the discovered Renaissance past.

We invite case studies and historiographical approaches in the discovery and rediscovery of Renaissance objects, texts, sites, music and ideas to explore how they have been received, revived, and recounted. We welcome discoveries in Western and non-Western contexts, from the early modern period until the present day, as well as papers that consider the paradoxes in the notion of discovery itself.
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
– Process and Method: What are the methods of discovery? Do structures differ for physical and ideological discoveries?
– Event and Narrative: Why and how are objects discovered at particular moments? Are there social, political and theoretical implications for these discoveries? What charge does ‘the Renaissance’ hold as a subject of discovery?
– People and Place: Who makes discoveries, and why? How are Renaissance discoveries used by their discoverers? What are the locations of discovery?
– Language, Cannon, Mythology: How do discoveries fit, challenge and shape the cannon(s)? How are Renaissance objects mythologized on their discovery or rediscovery? How are discoveries written about and how is this language of discovery utilised elsewhere?

Please submit a paper title (15 word maximum), abstract (150-word maximum), key words, and a brief CV (300 words) to Imogen Tedbury, The Courtauld Institute of Art (Imogen.Tedbury@courtauld.ac.uk) and Thalia Allington-Wood, University College London (Thalia.Allington-Wood.10@ucl.ac.uk) by Thursday, June 2, 2016

Link: http://rsa.site-ym.com/blogpost/1357883/248320/Discovering—Rediscovering-Renaissance-Objects

The Matter of Sculpture in Southern Italy, Spain and the New World
Contributor: Joris van Gastel

The history of sculpture has, particularly with regard to the early modern period, been dominated by studies on marble and bronze, materials that are at the core of traditional art literature. Yet, as Michael Baxandall has shown in his Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, different materials might be related to different geographies and very different discourses. This session aims to explore the material richness of early modern sculpture, focusing in particular on the axis between the Kingdom of Naples, Sicily, Spain and the New World. More specifically, we are interested in the ways in which different materials might tell different stories about artistic developments, patronage, artists and local traditions, uncover different sources, and create new connections between various geographical areas. The wooden sculptures of Spain are a well-known example; one may also think, among others, of Sicilian wax sculptures, the silver sculptures of Naples, Lecce’s sculptures in the local pietra leccese, or the cornstalk-paste sculptures of Latin America.

Please send proposals to Johannes Röll (roell@biblhertz.it) and Joris van Gastel (gastel@biblhertz.it) by Sunday, 5 June 2016.

As per RSA guidelines, proposals must include the following: paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, and a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). See http://www.rsa.org/?page=submissionguidelines#CfP