[1] Afterlives of the Reliquary: Reinventions of Object Cults in Post-Reformation Arts

While we have a detailed understanding of the role played by reliquaries in the devotional practices of pre-confessional Christianity, art historians have rarely asked what became of the sumptuous receptacles in the visual culture of reformist and counter-reformist societies. Recontextualised and assigned a new function, secularized reliquaries would come to serve as cabinets for worldly treasures, while in dismantled form their gems would be worked into new artifacts functioning as visible evidence for political loyalties or testimonies of love. More complex forms of afterlife of reliquaries are found in the emergence of objects that mimicked the aesthetic of the reliquary to other ends, adopted their visual logic and practices of preservation or circulation. Produced from materials of greater availability and employed according to pre-confessional religious practice, objects like rosaries made out of orange-peel were turned into substitutes of sacred instruments allowing believers to maintain condemned traditions of worship in secrecy. What are the second-life histories of reliquaries in Post-Reformation Europe and beyond? How do devotional practices that originated in the cult of Saints migrate or reemerge in societies concerned with reconceptualising their beliefs in the frames of reformed and counter-reformed thought? Both case studies and more conceptually oriented approaches are welcome.

Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words and a CV of no more than 300 words to christiane.hillekhi.fi.it and jeanette.kohlucr.edu by 30 May 2014.

-----

[2] Narrative Techniques in Renaissance Art
RSA Meeting, Berlin, March 26-28, 2015

Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies University of Toronto

Organizers: Ethan Matt Kavaler, University of Toronto; Giancarla Periti, University of Toronto

During the past twenty years, literary scholarship has made significant contributions to the study of how Renaissance writes and readers conceived and interpreted stories of political, literary, mythological, and religious content. Art historians, too, have also addressed this issue, though far less consistently. The essays of Oskar Bätschmann on Netherlandish painting and Holbein, of Louis Marin on Poussin, among others, have explored differing approaches taken by early modern painters to issues of narrative. How, indeed, did artists tell stories in visual media in which an element of time was frozen? What were the techniques developed by painters, sculptors, printmakers, and designers of tapestry? How were critical moments in a story chosen and communicated, and how did these narrative junctures relate to associated textural accounts? How did artists develop techniques to explore unresolved problems in a story? And what manner visual rhetoric was developed to argue for a particular interpretation? To what degree did genre or medium influence the approach? Were there certain methods particularly favorable to the relating of biblical, mythological, or historical narratives? And were new procedures developed for the visual expression of stories without associated texts—for scenes supposedly drawn from everyday experience? We look for papers addressing narration in painting, sculpture, printmaking, tapestry, or other media of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, both in Italy and in northern Europe.

Please send the following to both organizers by May 5, 2014, at the following email addresses:

matt.kavalerutoronto.ca
giancarla.peritiutoronto.ca

Title of Paper
Abstract (150-word maximum)
Keywords
Brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum)
One-page curriculum vitae (not a prose bio; this should include degrees awarded, institutional affiliation, major publications).

Please also state your audio-visual needs.

All participants must be members of the RSA.

-----

[3] Citizens of Venice: History and Art

RSA, Berlin, March 26 - 28, 2015
Deadline for submission: May 30, 2014

We invite papers that explore the identity formation of non-noble Venetian citizens, both original and naturalized. A class later known as Cittadini Originari did not exist when the serrata, a series of laws from 1285-1323, prohibited non-noble Venetians from holding high government office. In the following centuries, a significant number of disenfranchised non-noble families sought to empower themselves, in part by gradually assuming control over the administration of four charitable confraternities, later called the Scuole Grandi, which they transformed into prominent civic spaces and centers of art. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Cittadini Originari referred to themselves as "Noble Families not of the Great Council," and became officially recognized by the Venetian government.

Papers might address one or more of the following topics:
- How did members of the Cittadini perceive themselves within the social stratification of Venice, and did their perceptions change over time?
- Did the Cittadini actively employ strategies to achieve class formation?
- Did the Cittadini's commercial, artistic, and religious practices contribute toward defining their social class?
- What was the role of literature and the visual arts in fashioning the Cittadini's social identity?
- Did the Cittadini emulate the ruling nobility or did they develop their own distinctive social model?
- What was the contribution of patronage to the Cittadini's class formation? Did Cittadini patronage differ between private and public contexts?

Please send your paper title, abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, and a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum) to one of the organizers: Gabriele Matino (gabrielematinogmail.com) and Daniel Wallace Maze (danielwallacemazegmail.com).