[1] Italian Renaissance Art and Artifacts: Restorations, Alterations,
Transformations

During periods when sacred art and ecclesiastical embellishment served
important liturgical roles, alterations were sometimes deemed essential
to the didactic and spiritual functioning of the work, for example, the
"modernization" by an early Trecento Ducciesque master of Guido da
Siena's c. 1270 Madonna and Child in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.
Changing tastes sometimes impelled updating, as occurred when Giotto's
Baroncelli altarpiece in Sta. Croce had its offending Gothic frame
truncated and was enclosed within a classicizing surround. Vasari, as
Counter-Reformation architect, destroyed or altered many Gothic objects
in Florentine churches, while the 19th century, in turn. replaced
Vasari's interventions with neo-Gothic elements. During the Ottocento,
in fact, restorations were frequently effected to transform unmarketable
objects into saleable merchandise or, as importantly, to bring works in
line with the Romantic ideal of the Golden Age of Renaissance Italy.
Until the 1870s, Tre- and Quattrocento paintings, furnishings and
sculptures were readily available and inexpensive. By enhancing their
visual appeal and displaying them in evocative venues such as the
Bardini, Hibbert, and Horne house-museums, their market value was
greatly heightened at the very moment of diminishing supply. Papers
should address changes to the physical and visual properties of
Renaissance art and artifacts, and the motivations for these
interventions, focusing on individual objects, the practices of specific
restorers, and/or the desires of particular dealers or collectors.
Speakers might attempt to distinguish between a fantasy Lost Golden Age
from a more authentic appraisal of objects dating from this crucial
moment of the Early Modern period.

Please send 150-word abstracts, a CV, key words, and full contact
information by May 20 to the session organizer:
Anita.moskowitzstonybrook.edu

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[2] Transformations and Restorations of the Italian Church Interior

Church interiors have always been subject to constant change. Spatial
dispositions and the artistic treatment of wall surfaces and furnishings
have been repeatedly adapted to changing taste, artistic demands,
representational needs, and evolving liturgy. Such transformation
campaigns could include erecting or eliminating internal screens,
commissioning extensive pictorial cycles, whitewashing medieval frescoes
or encasing older churches with new wall structures of different
architectural articulation.
Recent research has demonstrated that such transformations were
commonplace in the Renaissance period and could occur in any given
church on numerous occasions. Reconstructing both the extent and the
motives for any restructuration campaign still provides complex
challenges for the historian, given that documentary, archaeological and
material sources can be fragmentary or even contradictory.
We therefore welcome papers that promote the still limited work on
alterations and restorations of Italian church interiors in the
Renaissance period. Proposals can take the form of case studies,
exploring how individual spaces have been adapted or enhanced by
patrons, artists and architects. However, we also encourage papers which
tackle broader trends, for instance: How did the usage of the church
interior develop in Italy? Are possible differences dependent on the
church type, and are there regional trends? How did changes in the
function of space affect transformations and restorations of the church
interior?

Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words to Joanne Allen
(jmallenamerican.edu) and Michael G. Gromotka
(michael.g.gromotkafu-berlin.de) by June 1st 2014. Please include a
brief CV (max. 300 words). Feel free to email with any questions.

Please note: This CFP is prolonged to June 7th 2014.

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[3] Architecture and Voice

Moderator: Charles Burroughs
Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History

Long before the 18th-century notion of "speaking architecture," the
human power of utterance was variously transferred to components of the
built environment, or at least suggested by design features. With
reference to the "long" Renaissance in Europe and the colonial world, we
seek papers exploring either more or less explicit articulations of the
idea of the building's voice in theory or literature, or its expression,
probably implicit, in actual buildings. Potential topics might include,
for example, the rhetorical device (prosopopeia) of attributing speech
to inanimate objects; the association of architectural symmetry with the
organization of facial features, centered on the mouth; the idea of the
city as a kind of theater of presences in dialog or contestation; the
enhancement of the communicative function of architecture through
inscriptions, sculptural ornament, and emblematic and heraldic material;
and the association of the physical house with the "house" or lineage
sheltered as well as symbolized by it.

Proposals should be sent to Charles Burroughs (ceb33case.edu), and
should be received by May 15.