At the Interface of Religion and Cosmopolitanism:
Bernard Picart's Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du
monde (1723-1743) and the European Enlightenment

Thursday, December 6 - Saturday, December 8

In The Getty Center and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

A conference at the Getty Research Institute and the Clark Library organized
by Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht

Co-sponsored by UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies, William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Getty Research Institute, and the
Netherlands Consulate-General of Los Angeles.

Bernard Picart (1673-1733) was one of the most prolific and talented
engravers of his age. He was also intellectually curious, and a player in
internationally connected social circles - some with a penchant for Deism
and Spinozism. Together with Jean Frédéric Bernard, a French language
bookseller and publisher of Huguenot stock based in Amsterdam, he published
a seven-volume folio work that sought to capture the ritual and ceremonial
life of all the known religions of the world: Cérémonies et coutumes
religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-1743). Bernard supplied the
3000 pages of the text while Picart engraved over 250 illustrations. Its
first volume offered the world one of the most sympathetic portraits then
available of European Jewry. Despite being the work of two French Protestant
refugees and done in Amsterdam, the book attempted to be reasonably accurate
about Catholic customs and to cast a more favorable light on the so-called
"idolatrous peoples" who on the whole appeared in most of the travel
literature as barbarous and even without any religion at all. In the life
time of Picart the Dutch Republic stood at the heart of the European book
trade. Picart and Bernard took full advantage of the opportunities they
found in their adopted land, and the Cérémonies in its various translations
sold a remarkable 3000 copies. Its translation into Dutch and English
removed some of the more radical comments about religion found in the
original French text, but those translations, and one in German, meant that
Picart's images became the standard means of portraying many of the world's
religions until well into the nineteenth century.

Papers: Conference papers presented at the Clark Library will be posted to
the Center's website by November 26, and will remain accessible until
December 21.

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/c1718cs/calendar.htm

Program Schedule:

Thursday, December 6

at the Getty Center

9:00 a.m. Graduate Student Session: New Research on Bernard Picart
Getty Research Institute Lecture Hall

Guillaume Calafat, École Normale Supérieure
The Jansenist Roots of the Bernard-Picart Vision

Verónica A. Gutiérrez, UCLA
Quetzalcoatl's Enlightened City: A Close Reading of Bernard Picart's
Engraving of Cholollan/Cholula

Catherine Clark, USC
Chinese Idols and Religious Art: Questioning Difference in Cérémonies et
coutumes

Jesse Sadler, UCLA
The Collegiants, a Small Presence in the Republic, a Large Metaphor for the
Book

11:30 a.m. Lunch Break

1:00 p.m. Digital Picart: Presentation & Discussion

Museum Lecture Hall

Tom Moritz, Getty Research Institute, Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Lynn
Hunt, UCLA

2:00 p.m. Viewing of Picart materials/documents, Getty
Research Institute special collections

3:00 p.m. Free Time: visit Museum and GRI exhibition
China on Paper

4:00 p.m. Keynote address by Wijnand Mijnhardt,
Universiteit Utrecht
Religion, Capitalism and the Revolution
in Science: The Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du
monde

Museum Lecture Hall

5:00 p.m. Invitational Reception at the Getty Center
Restaurant

7:00 p.m. CONCERT, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Performed by New Dutch Acadamy, Chamber
Soloist Ensemble
Early 18th Century Music Making in the
Amsterdam Canal Houses

Elizabeth Dobbin, soprano, Georgia Browne, baroque flute, Karl Nyhlin,
baroque lute, Simon Murphy, cello piccolo/viola pomposa, and Rebecca Rosen,
cello

Friday, December 7
at the Clark Library

9:30 a.m. Morning Coffee

10:00 a.m. Bernard Picart in French and Dutch Art

Chair: Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA

Ann Jensen Adams, University of California, Santa Barbara
Originality and Authenticity in the Graphic Work of Bernard Picart

Louis Marchesano, Getty Research Institute
Impostures innocentes: Bernard Picart and Reproductive Printmaking

Inger Leemans, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Picart's Dutch Connections: Family Trouble, the Amsterdam Theatre and the
Business of Engraving

1:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00 p.m. Inventing Comparative Religion

Chair: Catherine Secretan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Jacques Revel, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The Uses of Comparison: Religions in the Early Eighteenth Century

Kishwar Rizvi, Yale University
Persian Pictures: Artiface and Authenticity in the Representations of Islam
in Bernard Picart's Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples
du monde

Marcia Reed, Getty Research Institute
Picart on China: "Curious" Discourses and Images Taken Principally from the
Jesuits

5:00 p.m. Reception

Saturday, December 8
at the Clark Library

9:30 a.m. Morning Coffee

10:00 a.m. The Sources for the Cérémonies

Chair: Wijnand Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht

David Brafman, Getty Research Institute
Picart, Bernard, Hermes, and Muhammad (Not Necessarily in that Order)

Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, Universität Saarbrücken
(Re)Inventing Encyclopedias in the Early European Enlightenment. The Work of
Bruzen de la Martinière and its Relations with the Cérémonies et coutumes

Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California
Illness and Death among Americans in Bernard Picart's Ceremonies and
Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World

1:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00 p.m. Translation: Linguistic and Historical

Chair: Lynn Hunt, UCLA

Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, Universität Zürich
David Herrliberger and the German Edition of the Cérémonies

Tomoko Masuzawa, University of Michigan
The Fate of Ceremonies in the Nineteenth Century

4:15 p.m. Concluding Discussion: What we now know, what
needs to be known

Moderators: Lynn Hunt, UCLA, Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Wijnand Mijnhardt,
Universiteit Utrecht

Registration Deadline: November 26, 2007

Registration Fees:
Thursday sessions at the Getty Center: Free of charge.

The Getty Research Institute will host a reception. Lunch will not be
served; the Getty Center offers a rich choice of indoor and outdoor cafes, a
restaurant, and a picnic area.

Friday and Saturday sessions at the Clark Library:

$25 per person; UC faculty & staff, students with ID: no charge*

*Students should enclose a photocopy of their current ID with the
registration form.

Fees are not refundable and apply to full or partial attendance.

To register, please visit:
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/c1718cs/calendar.htm#dec6

Conference Locations & Parking:
Thursday: The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, off the San Diego
Freeway (405), Getty Center Drive exit.
Parking: reserved for registrants at no charge.

Friday - Saturday: The Clark Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, in the West
Adams district, one block east of Arlington Avenue, two blocks south of the
Santa Monica Freeway (10).

Parking: ample free parking on the grounds.

Lunch and other refreshments are provided complimentary to all registrants
on Friday and Saturday.

Please be aware that space at both locations is limited and that
registration closes when capacity is reached. No confirmation will be sent,
but we will contact you if we receive your registration after we reach
capacity.

Please call a week ahead to arrange for wheelchair access.