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[1]
From: Henrike Haug <henrike.haugtu-berlin.de>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: CFP: Material Culture of the Mines in Early Modern Europe

Deadline: June 5, 2014

Organizers: Tina Asmussen (University of Basel, History Department), Henrike Haug (Technische Universität Berlin, Art History), Lisa Skogh (Victoria and Albert Museum)

During the Early Modern Period mining was among the most important driving forces of early modern economy in central Europe which had a large effect on material culture and the perception and validation of metallic ores. The wealth of the Electors from Saxony, Brunswick and Habsburg came from the extraction of mineral resources and from activities associated with chemical and metallurgical undertakings such as smelting, metal-working, dyeing, glass-making and minting. Several cities in mining regions like for example Freiberg and Annaberg in Saxony or Jáchymov in Bohemia reached impressive dimensions and became not only important places of economic fertility but also centers of scientific innovation and artistic production, virtuosity and display. The aim of our sessions is to have a closer look at sites of metal production, of metallurgical processes, patronage and of artistic craftsmanship. Knowledge about formation and composition of metallic ores as well as about processes and techniques, which were necessary to handle with these materials and objects, brought together a heterogeneous group of people. The material and epistemic culture of the mines open up a “trading zone” where learned, elite and craftsmen convene. Proceeding from recent studies on the circulation of objects, knowledge and practices we are particularly interested in contributions on the interactions of multiple actors with materials and objects and their exchanges upon political, technological, scientific, material and representative aspects of mining. Of specific interest for this session are “sites” such as alchemical laboratories, goldsmith workshops, mints or mineral collections and curiosity cabinets. They serve as important platforms of mining and metal production were disparate cultures, practices and knowledge assemble.

Interested participants should send proposals, of no more than 150 words, keywords, and a one-page CV, no longer than 300 words to Tina Asmussen, University of Basel tina.asmussenunibas.ch by 5 June the latest.


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[2]
From: Simone Westerman <simone.westermannuzh.ch>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: CFP: ´Wilderness´: Creativity and Disorientation in Renaissance Landscape Representations

Deadline: June 10, 2014

This panel seeks a more subtle understanding of artistic creation in relation to landscape and wilderness depictions in Late Medieval and Early Modern art (1300-1600). As in Dante’s "Divine Comedy", where the protagonist’s miraculous journey finds a starting point in a dark, disorientating forest (selva oscura), artistic creation often commences from undefined and disharmonic matter that gives rise to and finds its form within the artistic process. Leonardo’s "macchia" (stain, undergrowth) is the epitome of such a concept of creation and creativity, where a metamorphic mass not only inspires the vision of “un bel paese”, but also embodies creative invention itself – the potentiality for form and content. Moving beyond the concept of wilderness as an antipode to the idea of a civilized environment, this panel welcomes contributions that investigate landscape or wilderness depictions and descriptions that invite psychological and phenomenological modes of analysis.

We are looking for art historical as well as interdisciplinary contributions that may relate to, but can go beyond the following topics:

- The interrelation between landscape and human creativity might call for an ecocritical approach: How does the wilderness relate to the human and how human is wilderness (anthropomorphic, living, even fleshy)?
- Is a depicted wilderness an atemporal place or does it constitute a concrete place and time in human history?
- What spiritual and imaginative powers lie in forest and landscape depictions?
- To what extent do art-theoretical works reflect contemporary and local concepts of wilderness or landscape?
- How might notions of forests or plants from non-European countries have inspired the production and the perception of landscape painting in the Renaissance?
- What role do the natural properties of materials, color, and texture play in furthering the significance of landscape and wilderness?

Please send a 150-word abstract of your paper, a brief curriculum vitae and full contact information to Filine Wagner (filine.wagneruzh.ch) and Simone Westermann (simone.westermannuzh.ch) by Tuesday, June 10th 2014.


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[3]
From: Ivo Raband <ivo.rabandikg.unibe.ch>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: CFP: Remembering the Habsburg: Dynastic Funeral Monuments in Early Modern Europe

Deadline: May 31, 2014

The past two decades have seen growing interest in early modern funerary monuments and the religious and socio-political contexts in which they emerged. Nevertheless, the monuments of the diverse and numerous members of the Habsburg dynasty — found all over modern-day Northern and Southern Europe — have not yet received the investigation they deserve. Brigitta Lauro’s 2007 catalogue “Die Grabstätten der Habsburger” lays the foundations for such research, but these monuments should be (re-)examined in greater depth, as key objects for both historians and art historians, to better understand the practices of commissioning funerary sculpture in general and their importance within early modern society. This panel therefore intends to investigate, from a broader view, early modern Habsburg funerary monuments, larger funerary chapels, their settings and the ephemeral aspects around their installation, such as funeral processions and temporary architectural structures. Areas to be addressed include temporality, materiality, memoria and fama, dynastic identity, framing and viewership, as well as whether or not these “objects of memory” can be understood as a cohesive group within the wider context of funerary monument production in early modern Europe.

We are seeking papers addressing specific Habsburg funerary monuments or the development of these artworks more broadly after about 1500. Please send a paper title, abstract (max. 150 words), a short biography (max. 300 words) and a full CV to Ivo Raband (ivo.rabandikg.unibe.ch) and Léon Lock (leon.lockasro.kuleuven.be). The submission deadline is 31 May 2014.


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[4]
From: Daniel Wallace Maze <danielwallacemazegmail.com>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: Revised CFP: Painting and Painters in Fifteenth-Century Venice

Deadline: May 30, 2014

With its political and economic powers at their height, Quattrocento Venice was an affluent and cosmopolitan city that served as a principal entrepôt for trade between East and West, and ruled over a far-flung maritime empire. Painting flourished, and many of the finest painters of early Renaissance Italy, such as Jacobello del Fiore, Michele Giambono, the Vivarini, and the Bellini, made their home in the Venetian Lagoon. Many more visited, making Venice a thriving center of artistic exchange and the first city on the Italian peninsula to embrace painting in oils. Yet few book-length studies of fifteenth-century Venetian painters, excepting those on Giovanni Bellini, have been published by scholars in the last several decades. We invite papers that consider the painting workshops of Quattrocento Venice. A series of sessions is planned, followed by a round-table panel composed of scholars of fifteenth-century Venetian painting (including Stephen Campbell, Colin Eisler, Peter Humfrey, among others) who will consider problems of scholarship and promising research for the field. Please send your paper title, abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, and a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum) to venice.rsagmail.com or to one of the organizers: Joseph Hammond (jrmhammondgmail.com) and Daniel Wallace Maze (danielwallacemazegmail.com).


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[5]
From: Markus Rath <markus.rathunibas.ch>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: CFP: Productive Paragons

Deadline: June 1, 2014

Yannis Hadjinicolaou (Berlin), Markus Rath (Basel), Joris van Gastel (Hamburg)

Where, traditionally, scholars have interpreted the so-called paragone between the arts as involved with one art outdoing the other, this session aims to explore the productive character of possible confrontations, focussing not only on exchanges between the arts, but also between art and nature. One can think here of artists looking at other media to advance in their own – the sculptor who tries to achieve a painterly effect – but also, and more fundamentally, at moments of cross fertilization, even hybridity: the painter who models with his paint, the artist who incorporates the forms of nature in his work. Here, also traditional associations with perceptual modalities come into play; when paint becomes tangible or marble painterly, when art and umwelt start to merge, we need to rethink the ways in which artworks are perceived. We invite proposals for papers that explore the fluid boundaries between the arts as well as art and nature, and the manner in which artists have explored these boundaries to heighten the sensual impact of their works. Both case studies as more theoretical considerations are welcome.

Please send an abstract (max. 150 w.) with title, keywords, and a short CV (max 300 w.) by June 1st to Yannis Hadjinicolaou (giannis.hadjinicolaoucms.hu-berlin.de), Markus Rath (markus.rathunibas.ch) and Joris van Gastel (joris.gasteluni-hamburg.de).


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[6]
From: Christopher Nygren <cnygrenpitt.edu>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: CFP: Other Venice(s): Alternative Notions of Venetian Art

Deadline: June 6, 2014

Organizers: Christopher Nygren (University of Pittsburgh) and Giorgio Tagliaferro (University of Warwick)

Over the last 40 years or so Venetian art has become central to Anglo-Saxon scholarship on the Renaissance. Drawing attention to the notion of “Venetianness” as it was understood and propagated within the Republic has generated a rich and textured understanding of how Venetian identity emerged at the intersection between artists, patrons, and the apparatus of the state. While recognizing the enormous strides that have been made in conceptualizing Venetian art, this panel seeks to further nuance our understanding of Venetian artistic practices and culture by drawing attention to non-normative expressions of Venetian artistic identity.

Notions of Venetian artistic identity have been formulated principally around painting and focused on figures like Carpaccio, Bellini, Giorgione and Titian. There remains, however, an alternative story of Venetian art. It encompassed native artists like Carlo Crivelli and Lorenzo Lotto, who developed and exported artistic idioms that diverge from what is today considered the Venetian main stream while nevertheless identifying themselves as “Venetus” (“Venetian”). Similarly, a non-Venetian like Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo settled in the lagoon and pushed his way through the Venetian market without renouncing his connections to Brescia and its artistic manner. Or take the anomalous figure of Bartolomeo Veneto. He first signed his pictures as “half Venetian and half Cremonese,” later he signed as “Venetian,” then identified as a “pupil of Giovanni Bellini.” What position ought these artists occupy within a self-critical account of Venetian artistic identity, and how does their flexible identification with geography complicate the issue? Similarly, should the magnificent works that Lotto and Crivelli created beyond the lagoon be seen as part of a conscious exportation of “Venetian art”? Did these artists and their patrons perceive the circulation of their artworks in relation to Venetian “empire”?

This session asks how the term “Venetus” was understood in a period when local and regional identities remained fluid. What was at stake when an artist self-identified as such? Could an artist adopt the moniker “Venetus” while simultaneously resisting the hegemonic aspirations of Venetian aesthetics? Or is the “Venetian aesthetic” simply a myth, something that existed in artistic discourse but failed to materialize in everyday practice? Was it fashioned only later as an element of art history? How was artistic identity explored in various territories of the dominion, where strong local identities potentially challenged the political and artistic economies of the Venetian state? Does it make sense to think of those locales as “contact zones,” where imperial aspirations rub against local identity? Either way, it seems essential to develop a more robust account of how important artistic interventions in "the periphery" redound to the broader history of Venetian art. In this spirit, this session invites papers that explore the notion of “the Venetian” as both a discursive construct and geographical concept.

Although we grant here a prominent role to painting, we encourage and welcome papers dealing with any artistic medium. Please send a 150-words proposal and short CV to Christopher Nygren (cnygrenpitt.edu) and Giorgio Tagliaferro (g.tagliaferrowarwick.ac.uk) by June 6 the latest.


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[7]
From: Irene Mariani <irenemariani85gmail.com>
Date: May 12, 2014
Subject: CFP: New research on Piero di Cosimo

Deadline: June 9, 2014

In 2015 an exhibition on Piero di Cosimo will open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C and, later in the year, at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. To mark the occasion of this retrospective of the artist, the panel invites papers that explore new venues of research on Piero di Cosimo. Paper topics include, but are not limited to:

- Piero’s artistry and creativity
- workshop practice and collaboration
- patronage
- legacy

Please send your paper title, abstract (150-word maximum), curriculum vitae (300-word maximum), and keywords to Irene Mariani (i.marianisms.ed.ac.uk) by June 9 the latest.