Munich, 2-3 November 2017

Contested forms
The limits of the sacred image and the normative power of art in early modern Europe

This first conference of the project SACRIMA, The Normativiy of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe (LMU, Munich), explores the limits of the sacred image and the normative power of art in Europe between 1450 and 1650 in two ways: on the one hand, we propose to map European cases of images contested by external and often competing agencies (religious and political authorities, image theoreticians, the various Inquisitions etc.); on the other, we focus on the visual traditions and norms created, adapted or changed by artists, during the various stages of conceptualization and finalization of their works.

Papers include cases of contested portraits, objects and iconographies, the use of images in trials, the limits of the representation of suffering bodies, the tensions between theology and art, and the significance of copies and adaptations for the establishing of visual norms from the main geographical areas explored by the project: Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

"Contested forms" is part of a series of planned activities organised by the project SACRIMA, The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe (LMU München), over the duration of the five-year project. These events will open discussions with the larger scientific community regarding the main research questions of the project and/or provide closer analysis of associated themes and case studies.

Programme

Thursday, 2 November: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Room 242

13:00, Registration and welcome

13.30-14.00, Introduction to the SACRIMA project and conference:

Chiara Franceschini (LMU): Refused, forbidden, replaced, remade: contesting images between religion and aesthetics

14.00-16.00, Portraits (moderation: Chiara Franceschini)

James Hall (Southampton): Mimicry and Masquerade: the cultural background to a papal ban on saintly portraits of non-saints

Steffen Zierholz (Bern): Ignatius of Loyola as Normative Image

Nina Niedermeier (LMU): Ritratti rubati - Portraits of Postridentine Saints as pia fraus.

16.00-16.30, Coffee break

16.30-18.30, Trials (moderation: Erin Giffin)

Mattia Biffis (Washington, DC): Contested Portraits. The Case of Casali, and the Use of Portraits in Early Modern Lay Trials

Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (Johns Hopkins): The Stuff that the Sacred is Unmade of. Wax, Image-Desecration, and Inquisitorial Evidence in Cuenca, 1563

Cloe Cavero (LMU): Controversial Wounds, Ambiguous Bodies: Images of Child Martyrs in early modern Europe

19.00, Apéro

19.30, Dinner (for speakers and chairs)

Friday 3 November: Institut für Kunstgeschichte, LMU, Room 007

9.00-11.00, Bodies (moderation: Cloe Cavero)

Todd Olson (Berkeley): Middle Natures, Human Stone: Ribera and Fanzago at Certosa di San Martino, Naples

Josephine Neil (London), The Reception of Divine Grace in Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John

Livia Stoenescu (Texas A&M): Alonso Cano: Walking on the Edge of Miracle Images and Liminal Bodies

11.00-11.30, Coffee break

11.30-13.00, Images (moderation: Urte Krass)

Escardiel González Estévez (Sevilla): Visual Normativity Hesitations Facing an Ambiguously Heterodox Iconography: the Seven Archangels between Italy and Spain

Rangsook Yoon (Cornell Fine Arts Museum): Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin: The Contested Vision of the Trinity in Mid-Fifteenth-Century Provence

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.00-16.00, Copies (moderation: Aleksandra Lipińska)

Antonia Putzger (Bielefeld): An Altarpiece from Augsburg and the Norms of Religious Art in Between Sacred Space and Princely Collection

Piers Baker-Bates (The Open University): Sebastiano del Piombo: The Sacred Image between Italy and Spain

Erin Giffin (LMU): The Tradition of Change in Copies of the Santa Casa di Loreto: The Case of Venice

16.00-17.00: Final discussion and round table with speakers (moderation: Chiara Franceschini)

The conference has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 68019/SACRIMA, PI: Chiara Franceschini).

For more information on the project:
Chiara.Franceschinilmu.de