Appel à communication : Symposium sur l’art italien (Nuremberg, 9-11 mars 2020)

Under the theme of “Mobility: People, Objects, Ideas,” scholars of Italian art history are invited to the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to discuss current research in Italian art and architectural history.

The conference takes place 9-11 March 2020 and is divided into eight sections (two each in the mornings and afternoons); each panel will feature three papers with time for in-depth discussions. Papers that do not fit into the thematic framework of the sections can be presented in the poster session and “Science Slam.” Therefore, in addition to applications for the individual sections, other topics are most welcome.

It is intended to reimburse speakers as well as participants in poster session and Science Slam for travel and accommodation expenses. Applicants should send a single PDF file consisting of an abstract (1-2 pages), a short CV, and a list of selected publications to Prof. Dr. Christina Strunck at the address kunstgeschichte-kontakt@fau.de.

The deadline for all applications (papers, posters, science slam) is 5 May 2019.

Please find the CFPs for individual sections below, in chronological order according to the program.

“Maniera bizantina” – Evaluation and Model
(Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stein-Kecks)

Vasari’s construct (and negative evaluation) of an older, foreign manner, which spread across Italy from the late-antique period in a manner as disastrous as it was enduring, and which was finally overcome by the modern “rinascita dell’antico,” is regarded as an axiom of art historical writing. However, the (middle) Byzantine style, which was imported and adapted in various Italian centers from Sicily to Venice, made the “maniera bizantina” an export hit across the Alps and a valued model in the North. The result is a complex network of relationships in which artists, clients, ideas, and objects override territorial and religious boundaries, and increasingly after 1204, also return to Byzantine-controlled territories.

This section welcomes contributions that deal theoretically with the “maniera bizantina” in the source literature and in its later reception, and in the object-oriented terms of “Italo-Byzantine” art, its techniques, forms, and iconographies both within Italy itself and their dissemination across Europe, from Byzantium to the British Isles. In particular, this session invites papers that focus on the change in the evaluation of the maniera with regard to the processes of changes to, translation of, and appropriation of Byzantine models in Italo-Byzantine art.

Architectural Identity in the Renaissance
(Dr. Sarah W. Lynch)

The well known figure of the “Renaissance Architect” is characterized by his erudition, familiarity with classical architecture, and cultural sophistication. However, architects in the early modern period occupied a variety of positions both socially and professionally, and some individual architects could claim a wide range of professional skills including painting or sculpture, military engineering, hydraulics, and cartography, in addition to designing buildings and overseeing their construction. This panel invites papers that address the professional role of the architect, his position at court or in urban hierarchies, his activities on building sites, and the development of architecture as a profession in the Renaissance and Baroque.

Artists’ Travels in the Renaissance
(PD Dr. Manuel Teget-Welz)

Transcultural artists’ journeys in the Renaissance offer a great potential for the development of the Intereuropean exchange process. The writing master and mathematician Johann Neudörfer reported that the 1515 journey of the Nuremberg artist Hermann Vischer to Rome and Siena helped the artistic development of the bronze caster’s family, thanks to the drawings he brought home (today in the Louvre). Other prominent Renaissance artists who traveled abroad include Gentile Bellini in Constantinople, Giovanni d’Alemagna in Venice, Masolino in Hungary and Titian in Augsburg, all of whom traveled for different artistic purposes. Albrecht Dürer’s two trips to northern Italy and Venice have recently been the subject of considerable controversy, and it has even been questioned whether the Nuremberg master went as far as Venice in 1494/95.

This section will reconstruct various artists’ journeys in the Renaissance on the basis of written sources and images. Papers addressing less well known travels such as Hans Cranach’s in Bologna, Joachim Deschler’s in northern Italy, Adriano Fiorentino’s in Wittenberg, or Paris Bordone and Lambert Sustris’ in Augsburg are particularly welcome. We are also interested in topics that critically address erroneously recorded trips and the methodological limits of studies of artists’ journeys. Papers may also examine how such travel experiences affected an artist’s work and to what extent artists referred to the visual expectations of their audiences. Additionally, papers may address questions about different motivations for travel, and the economic and artistic or social-historical conditions of these journeys. Discussions of drawings and prints as an alternative media for international cultural transfer may shed light on the topic from another, interdisciplinary perspective. A final question may be to what extent and since when such journeys have become a compulsory element of an artistic-biographical narrative.

New Trends in the Study of Drawings in the Renaissance and Baroque
(Dr. Claudia Steinhardt-Hirsch)

Since the beginning of art historical discussions in the early fifteenth century, drawing has occupied a central place in the discourse on artistic activity. The definitions given to the practice of drawing in the early modern period range from the “foundation of art and of all the works of the hand” (Cennini) to “the principle of universal knowledge of the world” (Zuccari). Beyond this theoretical discourse, whose significance is increasingly critically questioned in recent research, the production-aesthetic role of drawing is increasingly coming to the fore.

Drawing as a prerequisite for the artistic design process is therefore only one context for drawing in the early modern period. Additionally, there are finished, autonomous drawings made for the art market or as gifts for friends, dilettante drawings, as well as copies and designs for compositions, which were created as part of an artist’s training in workshops or private academies, and later in institutionalized academies. Whether they were designs, studies, or pictorial drawings, sheets that “wandered” were mediators in the transfer of ideas between artistic landscapes and regions. This section invites papers that address the different purposes and contexts of Italian drawing in the early modern period and discuss current questions, methods and perspectives of drawing research. Contributions on material, technique, and style of individual Italian drawings are also welcome.

The Interaction of Painting and Architecture: Secular Interiors in the Baroque
(Prof. Dr. Christina Strunck)

Through the interplay of the architectural and pictorial arts, baroque interior design seeks to affect and activate the viewer. The analysis of such highly complex visual systems of signs requires a combination of methods („Bild-Raum-Wissenschaft“) which this section seeks to develop with reference to fresh case studies. Participants are invited to investigate how and with what intentions the pictorial decoration refers to functions and formal design features of the architecture. In particular, performative, spatial-sociological, and reception-aesthetic aspects should be foregrounded, i.e. the question of to what extent the design of the space conditions the actions to be carried out there and prescribes certain modes of reception. This concerns the physical as well as the intellectual and emotional movement of the viewers in and through the space.

Connoisseurship instead of Art: German Tours of Italy and the Establishment of the Discipline of Art History in the Context of the Decoupling of the Intellectual Study and Practice of Art
(Prof. Dr. Hans Dickel)

This section assumes that the decoupling of the history from the practice of art was completed by the institutionalization of art history as an academic discipline beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. This panel seeks to analyze the reasons for this division, focusing particular attention on the experience of German artists traveling in Italy in the period around 1800. K. P. Moritz, who traveled in Italy, had, with his autonomy of aesthetics (Autonomieästhetik), detached the creative power of the imagination from the receptive powers of sensory experience and thought, two concepts that had been united since Vasari’s Vite assumed the bond between the practice of art and art history. Hegel was then the first art theorist who rejected the practical validity of the canon of antiquities and provided a philosophically coherent basis for this. While J. D. Fiorillo influenced his students, the early romanticists Wackenroder, Tieck and the Schlegel brothers, with a desire for the return of the art of the past, the first generation of academic researchers, who saw art history as an autonomous discipline in a university context flowed from the Hegel school. Among Fiorillo’s students, F. v. Rumohr found himself to be a researcher who rejected the backward-looking ideal of the Nazarenes and instead devoted himself to the study of historical events. The painters J. D. Passavant and J. Schnorr von Carolsfeld carried out their careers as connoisseurs and museum officials in Frankfurt and Dresden respectively. Berlin also offers a multifaceted example of institutional differentiation for discussion with A. Hirt and K. F. Schinkel as well as K. P. Moritz and H. Hotho.

“Welsch” and “deutsch”: Museology since the Age of National Styles and Schools
(Prof. Dr. Daniel Hess)

Current discourses not only challenge museums and archives to critically review their collections and exhibitions, but also pose academic (in the sense of the development of the discipline in the context of nation states) and existential questions to art history regarding its role in the universities and society at large. What can museums contribute to this discourse, and how can the traditional organizational and presentation criteria of artistic nations and schools be modified with the goal of a European art history?

The venue FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg presents an opportunity to deal more intensively with the interaction between “welsch” and “deutsch” (foreign/Italian and German) and thus to reflect on the possibilities and limits of cultural exchange between Italy and Germany, starting with the humanistic discourse of Dürer’s era. Since that period, cultural interactions grew increasingly intense, and in the sixteenth century “welsch” became synonymous with “modern.” What effects does this have on early modern modes of collecting north and south of the Alps? Which schools and masters come into focus, and where do we designate regional or “national” borders?

With the reorganization of the imperial painting gallery in the Viennese Belvedere in 1778, Christian von Mechel established the classic museum organization of masterpieces and schools that is still widespread today. Which alternatives were and are there? How can a museum present a European history of art that supersedes the concepts of borders?

Italy and Digital Access
(Prof. Dr. Peter Bell)

German-language Italian art history has followed a dual strategy of travel and transfer since its beginnings. Originals, both works of art and written sources, were explored in situ, but also directly reproduced and transferred. What initially appears to be a necessary importation for a German academic enterprise, however, liberates the objects from their (present-day) contexts and promotes the elaboration of ever newer models. While the progress of analogue art history has been overseen by the venerable older scholars of the discipline, either themselves or at least with their utmost attention, the development of digital art history often only appears as digitization, i.e. compulsory conversion of originals into a new medium.

That the digitalization of all museums, photo libraries, and objects in situ, in addition to all primary and secondary sources, would improve upon the present, fragmentary status quo is indisputable. But the necessary infrastructures, and even less the methodical and theoretical tools to compile, analyze, and discuss these datasets, have only been developed selectively. The relationship between travel and transfer becomes blurred as digital reproductions return to their location of origin (e.g. Veronese’s “Wedding Feast at Cana”) and, in any case, become virtually omnipresent. This raises questions about the organization of knowledge, and the interpretation of, representation of, and relationship to the original, as well as the possibilities of multifaceted, experimental modeling. The section invites projects and studies that break new ground in the digitalization of Italian institutions and Italian material, strengthen the presence of objects, and make their own contribution to research on Italian art history.