Communication – Cooperation – Confrontation: Queens, Noblewomen, and Burgher Women in the Middle Ages.
Organised jointly by the Institute of Art History and the Institute for Czech Literature, both of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the conference will take place at the Academic Conference Centre in Prague (Husova 4a, Prague) on 16–17 October.

Medieval women were not isolated figures in society. As part of a complex system of personal, ideological and material relations, they lived and worked within various networks. The terms 'communication, cooperation and confrontation' can serve as analytical categories for understanding how women exerted influence and power, gained support to achieve their goals and navigated social, economic and other obstacles. This conference seeks to apply these analytical categories to the investigation of the manifold relations between medieval women and material culture in the broadest sense. The conference organisers invite all members of the academic community to attend.

PROGRAM
Thursday – 16 October

09.00 MORNING COFFEE, REGISTRATION

09.30 Welcome speech

09.50 Conference opening

I. Women at power: beyond the limits?

10.00 KLÁRA MEZIHORÁKOVÁ
Institute of Art History, CAS, Prague, Czech Republic
The concept of the Přemyslid Acropolis: princess Mlada, St. George’s monastery and its architecture

10.30 GIULIA MARIA PALMA
University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy
RENZO CHIOVELLI
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
VANIA ROCCHI
International Center for Studies on the Holy Sepulchre – C.I.S.Sa.S., Italy Saint Matilda Queen of Germany – founder of churches

11.00 COFFEE BREAK

11.30 HELENA DÁŇOVÁ
Institute of Art History, CAS, Prague, the Czech Republic
Visual demonstration of Bohemian Queens’ power and authority through seals, 13th–14th centuries

12.00 SOPHIE MARIE DASCHNER
Heidelberg University, Germany
A regnant in her own right? On the contrasting ideas encapsulated in the silver coinage of Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus

12.30 LUNCH BREAK

II. Women and devotion:
between communities and individual

14.30 AISLING REID
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Sculpting the scream: female mourning, devotional confrontation, and the limits of communication in Niccolò dell’Arca’s Lamentation

15.00 DANIELA RYWIKOVÁ
University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
Faceless women? Visual strategies and the “public image” in the female religious communities

15.30 COFFEE BREAK

16.00 HOLLY FLORA
Tulane University, New Orleans, USA
Female agency, self-fashioning, and devotion to the side wound of Christ in a manuscript of Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior

16.30 VĚRA SOUKUPOVÁ
Institute of Czech Literature, CAS, Prague, Czech Repblic
Prayer books, female readers and models of piety in late medieval Bohemia

17.00 DISCUSSION AND WINE

Friday – 17 October

09.00 MORNING COFFEE

III. Women, their entourages, social
and family networks

9.30 MARTA REDONDO DE FUENMAYOR
National University of Distance Education – UNED, Madrid, Spain
Female patronage and artistic mobility in 14th century Castile: a pictorial commission through the religious networks of Santa Clara de Tordesillas

10.00 PARASKEVI TASSOU
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
The Queens’ legacy: female networks and artistic patronage in Southern Italy in the 13th–15th centuries

10.30 COFFEE BREAK

11.00 MICHAELA ANTONÍN MALANÍKOVÁ
Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic
Late medieval Moravian townswomen as donors and patrons within a network of social relations and roles

11.30 CIPRIAN FIREA
Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
What was it like to be a painter’s wife in the 16th century Transylvania? A few remarks on the marge of a remarkable source

12.00 LUNCH BREAK

IV. Models of patronage and cultural
tranfers

14.00 RAFCA YOUSSEF NASR
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
From Mount Lebanon to Cyprus: textile transfers and artistic exchange in Anna Lachana’s attire

14.30 RICHARD A. LESON
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
At the limits of Majesty: rethinking the visual and material dossier of Jeanne de Flandre

15.00 LAURA AGATHA EGER
Heidelberg University, Germany
“Fortune – Infortune – Fortune”: female agency and dynastic representation in the artistic patronage of Margaret of Austria (1480–1530)

15.30 CONFERENCE CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

16.00 EXCURSION

The conference is open to the public. For the Zoom link, please, register for free at the e-mail addresses below by 12 October 2025.

Contacts:
Helena Dáňová
Institute of Art History
of the CAS
Husova 4
110 00 Prague 1
danovaudu.cas.cz

Klára Mezihoráková
Institute of Art History
of the CAS
Husova 4
110 00 Prague 1
mezihorakovaudu.cas.cz

Věra Soukupová
Institute of Czech Literature
of the CAS
Na Florenci 1420/3
110 00 Prague 1
soukupovaucl.cas.cz