Casting the Real: Reproduction, Translation and Interpretation in Petrach's Time

The History of Art department of the University of York is pleased to sponsor 'Casting the Real: Reproduction, Translation, and Interpretation in Petrarch's Time', an international workshop that explores the ways fourteenth-century poets, intellectuals, doctors, and artists engaged with issues of casting, embalming, and quantification.

In keeping with Dominic Olariu’s 'La genèse de la représentation ressemblante de l’homme. Reconsidérations du portrait à partir du XIIIe siècle' (Bern 2014), this symposium discusses contaminations between ideas of measuring, judging, and representation while considering the similarities between concepts of truth, virtue, and likeness.

The goal of the workshop is threefold.
First it re-examines drawing as a practice that served to understand the real and construct a sense of truth.
Second, it looks at medieval doctors' engagement with embalming, casting, and sculpting techniques.
Finally, it intends to break away with the idea of rhetoric as an arid, formalistic ritual, but rather a practice that often drew from practical experiences and changed their significance in return.

This is why 'Casting the Real' is framed around the figure of Petrarch, composer of funerary inscriptions, poet of inner realities, master of the art of memory, and avid commentator of scientific texts.

Program

May 4

17:30
Dominic Olariu (Marburg)
“In libro hoc scripsi et per figuram demonstravi.” Plant illustrations for identification at the end of the Middle Ages

May 5

9:45
Introduction

10:00
Joël Chandelier (Paris 8)
Complexio, Anatomia and the Judgement of the Human Body in 14th-century Italian Medical Scholasticism

10:40
Luca Palozzi (Edinburgh)
Devising the World: Drawing and Other Cognitive Tools around Petrarch’s Time

11:20
Coffee Break

11:40
Laura Jacobus (Birkbeck)
Portraiture at the Carrara Courts: Realism, Representation and Replication

12:20
Philippe Charlier (UVSQ)
Embalming at the Time of Petrarch: How? Why?

13:00
Lunch Break

14:30
Emanuele Lugli (York)
The Life-Size as a Legal Concept

15:10
Giulia Perucchi (Villa I Tatti)
Petrarch and the Sciences

15:50
Coffee Break

16:15
Roundtable Discussion

18:00
Conclusions

The conference is free and open to everyone. The program is available for download from this link: https://www.york.ac.uk/history-of-art/news-and-events/events/2017/may4-5castingthereal/

For information and to secure a place, please write to casting-the-realyork.ac.uk

Please notice that the event will take place at the Centre for Medieval Studies, which is closer to the train station and York's city center than the University of York campus.

The workshop is organized by Emanuele Lugli (York) and Luca Palozzi (Edinburgh).