The international workshop “Unruly Landscapes: Producing, Picturing, and Embodying Nature in Early Modernity” discusses notions and concepts of landscape and nature in early modern European art and visual culture by connecting recent approaches in art history, architectural history, environmental history, the history of science, the history of spirituality, and the philosophy of aesthetics. It explores shifts and ruptures in the (mostly) early modern representation, imagination, and creation of spaces and places oscillating between inside and outside, interiority and ‘worldliness’, confinement and boundlessness, and between this world and another (or the next). The focus is on the notion of landscape as an intermediate or mediating space, shaped by both nature and art, civilization and wilderness. The workshop aims to provide a forum to further explore the early modern ‘landscape’ in its multiple (metaphorical) uses and meanings as, for example, a site for farming and agriculture, a site of aesthetic experience, artistic self-fashioning, and religious self-cultivation, an area of archaeological and geological research, and a place of warfare and violence.

Attendance is free of charge but due to limited seats, registration is required until 6 December 2017. Contact: Michèle Seehafer, michele.seehaferikg.unibe.ch

PROGRAM

Thursday, 14 December 2017
University of Bern, Main building (Hochschulstrasse 4), room 331

14:15 Registration

14:45–15:00 Welcome
Christine Göttler, Ivo Raband, Michèle Seehafer, and Steffen Zierholz, University of Bern

15:00–16:30 Unruly Research: New Perspectives on Landscape
chaired by Karin Leonhard, Konstanz University

Michèle Seehafer
Transforming Landscapes: The “Winter Room” at Copenhagen’s Rosenborg Castle

Ivo Raband
“Aurea Aetas Antverpiensis”: Landscape, Agriculture, and Sovereignty in Antwerp’s Joyous Entries

Steffen Zierholz
Spiritual and Visual Discernment in “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” by Antonio Tempesta on Pietra Paesina

16:30–17:00 Coffee and Tea

University of Bern, Main building, room 220

17:15–18:45 Keynote Lecture
Ellen J. Beer Lecture; Lecture Berner Mittelalter Zentrum

Niklaus Largier, University of California, Berkeley
Das Einbrechen der Natur: Sinnlichkeit und Spekulation in mittelalterlichen Bildern

introduced by Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, Beate Fricke, and Christine Göttler, University of Bern

Friday, 15 December 2017
University of Bern, Main building (Hochschulstrasse 4), Kuppelraum

9:00 Registration

9:30–9:40 Welcome
Stefan Rebenich, Dean, Faculty of Humanities

9:40–10:00 Introduction
Christine Göttler

10:00–10:45 Session 1: Exegetical Landscapes
chaired by Raphaèle Preisinger, University of Bern

Michel Weemans, Fine Art School of Bourges
Stumbling Stones: Sight and Insight in Pieter Bruegel's Landscapes

10:45–11:15 Coffee and Tea

11:15–12:45 Session 2: (Imaginary) Vistas
chaired by Jennifer Rabe, Bern University of the Arts

Claudia Swan, Northwestern University
Landscapes of the Mind: Materiality and Imagination in the Work of Hercules Segers

Karin Leonhard, Konstanz University
Painted Landscape before Landscape Painting in Early Modern Britain

12:45–14:15 Lunch Break

14:15–15:45 Session 3: Potential Landscapes
chaired by Noémie Étienne, University of Bern

Mia M. Mochizuki, New York University Abu Dhabi/The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Before the Anthropocene: New Horizons, Potential Landscapes

Dario Gamboni, University of Geneva
“To See a World in a Grain of Sand”: Finding the Landscape in Stone in Early Modern Europe

15:45–16:15 Coffee and Tea

16:15–17:45 Session 4: Landscapes Near and Far
chaired by Beate Fricke, University of Bern

Tristan Weddigen, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome (Max Planck Institute)/University of Zurich
Geo-Aesthetics of Latin American Modernism

Gerhard Wolf, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max Planck Institute)
Between Far and Near: Scaling Unruly Landscapes

17:45–18:15 Hannah Baader, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max Planck Institute)
Final Reflections

18:15–19:30 Reception

Organized by Christine Göttler, Ivo Raband, Michèle Seehafer, and Steffen Zierholz