RSA Panel
PORTRAYALS OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, AND DESIRE IN ITALIAN ART AROUND 1500
Università Ca Foscari ­ San Basilio Aula 2

Saturday, 10.04.2010, 09.00-17.30
Co-Organizers: Jeanette Kohl (Riverside), Marianne Koos (Fribourg)

Sat., 9:00-10:30

Portrayals of Love, Friendship, and Desire in Italian Art around 1500.
I: Friendship
CHAIR: Adrian Randolph (Dartmouth College)

- Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut Florence)
Friendship and Flattery. Renaissance Portraits between Ethics and Aesthetics

- Hans Aurenhammer (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt/Main)
Liberalitas: The Image of a Friendly Virtue as Hidden Self-Portrait in Leon
Battista Alberti's "Della pittura"

- Cécile Beuzelin (Acdémie de France à Rome/Villa Medici)
The Double Portrait of Jacopo Pontormo: Representing Real Friendship in the
Renaissance

Sat. 11:00-12:30

Portrayals of Love, Friendship, and Desire in Italian Art around 1500.
II: Metaphors of Love
CHAIR: Elizabeth Cropper (National Gallery of Art, CASVA)

- Adrian Randolph (Dartmouth College)
Fierce Love

- Ulrich Pfisterer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München)
Mirrors of Love and Creativity

- Marianne Koos (Université de Fribourg)
The Martyrdom of Love. An Iconography of Ambiguity

Sat. 2:00-3:30

Portrayals of Love, Friendship, and Desire in Italian Art around 1500. III:
Male Beauty
CHAIR: Stephen J. Campbell (The Johns Hopkins University)

- Giancarlo Fiorenza (California Polytechnic State University)
Apollo Dismembered: Love, Poetry, and Antiquity in the Early Renaissance

- Jeanette Kohl (University of California, Riverside)
Morals, Males, and Mirrors. Being a Boy / Seeing a Boy in the Fiftheenth
Century

- Jill M. Pederson (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)
The Poetics of Male Beauty in Lombard Renaissance Portraiture around 1500

Sat. 4:00-5:30

Portrayals of Love, Friendship, and Desire in Italian Art around 1500. IV:
The Multiple Aspects of Cupid
CHAIR: Alessandro Nova Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florenz)

- Elise de Halleux (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris):
Androgyny and the Ambiguity of Love and Desire in a Renaissance Depiction of
Eros: New Suggestions regarding Parmigianino¹s Cupid Carving his Bow

- Christiane Kruse (Marburg)
Dis/simulation, Art and Love in Michelangelo's lost Sleeping Cupid and
Tintoretto's Vulcan, Venus and Mars

- Christopher James Nygren (The Johns Hopkins University)
Reconsidering Eros in Titian's "Salome/Judith"
RESPONDENT: Kia Vahland (Universität Hamburg)

One of the most important yet enigmatic topics of Italian Renaissance art is
the iconography of love. Numerous fundamental studies of the past decades
have broadened our knowledge and perspective. However, many works of art
still 'resist' convincing interpretation ­ especially in (ideal) portraiture
or non narrative images in close-up. There is a clear need for further
analysis on the symbols, metaphors, and metonymies of the literary love
discourse ­ and its plurality of concepts ­ as reflected in visual images of
love and friendship. What certainly deserves more detailed attention is how
and why structures of devotional images intermingle with profane imagery
(and vice versa). Another desideratum of central relevance are
close-readings regarding the character of the emotions and gestures depicted
in images, of the material structures, and of the rendering of surface
qualities, which often initiate and reflect a relationship of desire between
image and beholder. In addition, very little is known about the occasions
related to the commissions of images of love and friendship, about their
functions, their handling as well as hanging/positioning ­ aspects, which
may change interpretations considerably.

--
Dr. phil. Marianne Koos
Université de Fribourg
Département d'Histoire de l'Art et Musicologie
Avenue de l'Europe 20
CH-1700 Fribourg
e-mail: Marianne.Koosunifr.ch