‘Pictorial Space in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance’, Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, Friday, 26 April 2019

Deadline for Submissions: Friday 22nd February 2019

Keynote Speaker: Professor Christopher P. Heuer (University of Rochester)

According to Erwin Panofsky, linear perspective transformed “psychophysiological space into mathematical space”. To him, it meant a Durchsehung, or “looking through”. The purpose of this workshop is to reconsider the traditional conception of pictorial space in Western art from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Renaissance, in the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. How might we bring a more material and social significance to such an abstract consideration as perspective?

Pictorial space was a pivotal area of art historical research from the early to mid-twentieth century. After Panofsky’s „Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form'" was published in 1927 by the Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, a number of art historians, from Otto Pächt to John White, made pictorial space the main focus of their study. They sought to determine the means by which artists on both sides of the Alps represented the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface. As such, pictorial space became an alternate avenue of art historical interpretation at a time of iconographic and connoisseurial dominance. Today pictorial space, as practised by these eminent twentieth-century scholars, can appear somewhat outmoded, divorced from more material and social questions. We hope to examine the rich legacy of this school of thought and re-integrate it with twenty-first-century scholarly concerns.

This one-day workshop provides participants with opportunities to explore their own ‘perspectives’ on pictorial space in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance art through presentation and discussion.

Areas of focus can include but are not limited to:

Representing Pictorial Space:

Trecento and Quattrocento painters; Early Netherlandish, German and Bohemian painters; manuscript illuminators; painting vs sculpture, pictorial space in and out of picture frame; gold ground; landscape and vistas; architectural representation; interior scenes; structure and narrative

The Experience of Pictorial Space:

Perspective and geometry; medieval optics; vision and visuality; illusion; plane/planar and depth; vicariousness; spatial awareness; neurovisuality and neuroaesthetics

Theories of Pictorial Space:

Treatises on perspective; mathematics; astronomy; geography; early oil painting; Leon Battista Alberti; Piero della Francesca; Nicholas of Cusa; Roger Bacon; Robert Grosseteste; Devotio Moderna; Arab science; formalism and post-formalism

To apply, please send a proposal of up to 300 words (max.) for a 20-minute paper, together with a brief CV, to pictorialspaceworkshopgmail.com no later than Friday 22nd February 2019. Successful applicants will be notified by the first week of March 2019. All submissions and papers must be in English. We would be delighted to receive proposals from early career researchers and beyond. We have a certain amount of funds available for travel and accommodation.

Funded by The Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, University of Amsterdam

Organisers: Sumihiro Oki (University of Amsterdam), Niko Munz (University of York), Charley Ladee (Utrecht University / University of Amsterdam)