Istituto Olandese a Roma, Rome

Organised by
Prof. Barbara Baert
Barbara.Baertarts.kuleuven.be
Prof. Catrien Santing
C.G.Santingrug.nl

Point of departure in this symposium is the representational tradition in
word and image of loose heads, the iconification of separate body parts
and its cultural-historical significance in relation to changing concepts
of sensations/pain, cruelty and their practice.

In art and hagiography the ‘loose or disembodied head’ holds a pivotal
role. Well-known examples are the so-called ‘cephalophores’, amongst which
the patron of France St Denis is the most widely known. After their
execution they picked up their head and carried it along towards chapel,
church or grave. In other cases the head takes up its original place after
the beheading. A special veneration of reliquaries in the form of the
heads developed in the High Middle and continues to the present. In the
Late Middle Ages and Renaissance new examples and categories of
increasingly popular ‘loose heads’ developed. In Italy as well as in
Northern Europe many St John confraternities came into being, which
venerated the head of Saint John or “Johannes in disco”. It is telling
that many of these organizations consoled the capitally condemned in their
last moments and often negotiated with the medical doctors who were after
these bodies for anatomy.

Thanks to a renewed and broad interest in the Bible especially the severed
heads of the Old and New Testament gained popularity during the Late
Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. This seems to have expressed itself
in hundred of paintings and woodcuts of Judith and Salomé with the heads
of Holofernes and John the Baptist, next to those of David with that of
Goliath.

Accademia Belgica
http://www.academiabelgica.it/
Istituto Olandese a Roma
http://www.nir-roma.it/
Iconology Research Group (K.U.Leuven)
http://www.iconologyresearchgroup.org/
University of Groningen
http://www.rug.nl/

Programme

Monday 21 September
@ Istituto Olandese a Roma

9:15 Coffee
9:20 Opening by the directors Prof. Walter Geerts (AB)
and Prof. Bernard Stolte (KNIR)
9:30 Setting Concept and Agenda by Catrien Santing and
Barbara Baert
10:00 Esther Cohen (Jerusalem): Head and body: The meaning of
decapitation
10:45 Coffee
11:00 Scott Montgomery (Denver): Securing the Sacred Head:
Cephalophory and Relic Claims
11:45 Jeanette Kohl (California): The Currency of Heads. Portrait
Medals and Reliefs in the Renaissance
12:30 Barbara Baert (Leuven): Head and face. Spiritual and visual
intertwinings between the Johannesschussel and the vera icon
13:15 Lunch
14:30 Mateusz Kapustka (Wroclaw): Fighting with St. John's Heads.
Images of the Caput in a Political Struggle
15:30 Visit to the complex of San Giovanni Decollato
20:00 Dinner at the Academia Belgica

Tuesday 22 September
@ Academia Belgica

9:00 Coffee
9:15 Bert Treffers (KNIR Rome): Baroque Heads in
Comparison: Sts John, Gennaro and Andrew
10:00 Arjan de Koomen (Amsterdam): The Victimized Artist:
Decapitated Selfportraits of the Early Modern Period
10:45 Coffee
11:00 Marina Montesano (Genova): Adam’s skull
11:45 Bob Mills (London): Talking Heads
12:30 Dominic-Alain Boariu (Geneva): Cephalovory. A
homofageous gaze over some Western Art’s beheadings
13:15 Lunch
14.15 Jetze Touber (Groningen): Late Antique Beheaded
Martyrs in Counter-Reformation Martyrologies
15:00 Catrien Santing (Groningen): Matters of the heart
or the brain? Renaissance discussions about body and soul
15:45 Coffee
16:00 Bert Watteeuw (Leuven): Ruff Stuff. Framing the Face in
Early Modern Dress and Portraiture
16:45 Florike Egmond (Leiden): Drawing conclusions
Barbara Baert and Catrien Santing: Formulating
preliminary content book
19:00 Dinner

Professor dr. Barbara Baert
Medieval Art, History of Christian Art, Iconology Research Group (IRG)
Faculty of Arts Room 04.05
Blijde Inkomststraat 21/Postbus 3313
B-3000 Leuven
BELGIUM

Phone: +32-16-32 48 64 Fax: +32-16-32 4872
E-mail: barbara.baertarts.kuleuven.be

www.kuleuven.be
www.iconologyresearchgroup.org