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
Reference:
CONF: Queens, Noblewomen, and Burgher Women in the Middle Ages (Prague, 16-17 Oct 25). In: ArtHist.net, Oct 9, 2025 (accessed Oct 9, 2025), <https://arthist.net/archive/50828>.