The Italian Art Society announces 5 sessions for Renaissance Society of
America Annual Meeting 2014 in New York:


Painted Objects: Furniture Ornament and the Arts in Renaissance Italy

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

This panel explores the arts of domestic furniture decoration in Italy,
c. 1300-1600, with attention to the effects this class of objects should
have on the theorization of painting and representation. We welcome
papers focusing on painted objects of use such as chests, beds, and
musical instruments, as well as more broadly defined ornaments including
painted spalliere, friezes, and portrait covers. What are the
characteristic subjects and styles of such paintings, how were they
manufactured and used, and how should their interactive value inflect
art historical interpretation? What distinguishes these paintings from
framed pictures, both in artistic discourses of the time and in later
scholarship? What roles did painted furniture play in social rituals and
larger decorative programs? Papers addressing hierarchies of the arts,
critical attitudes, the potential for innovation and experimentation in
decorative genres, and the historiography, collection, and display of
this class of objects are especially encouraged, as are proposals from
curators and conservators.

Please send a brief abstract (no more than 150 words) and a one-page CV
to one of the organizers, Chriscinda Henry (chriscinda.henrymcgill.ca)
and Susannah Rutherglen (srutherggmail.com) by May 24, 2013.

----

On "Naturalism" in Early Modern Italian Art

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

Although "naturalism" is often evoked by art historians describing the
character and development of the art of early modern Italy, the meaning
of this "naturalism", or indeed the very legitimacy of the application
of the term itself, has not always been evaluated in a rigorous fashion.
This panel seeks papers that examine and/or problematize conventional
ideas about naturalism in period images of all mediums, looking
especially for assessments grounded in formal analysis,
interdisciplinary research, period writings about art, historiography,
and contemporary critical theory. Also welcome are papers that consider
naturalism through such prisms as visuality, linear perspective, natural
philosophy, foreign artistic influence, theology, and poetry.

Please submit a 150-word abstract and one-page CV to Christian Kleinbub
at kleinbub.1osu.edu by May 25, 2013.

----

Stillness in Early Modern Italian Art

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

Keeping pace with our digital, mobile, and globally conscious reality,
in recent years art historians have recast the discipline through ideas
of performance, time, geography, and exchange. Movement, it would seem,
is the paradigm of our age. Movement was, of course, also of interest to
early modern Italian art theorists, who sought the adept depiction of
the affetti and praised paintings in which the figures seem to move and
breathe. Yet, the focus on movement belies an inherent limitation of the
painted image: its stillness. Stillness is more than an objective fact
in the history of Italian painting; it is also an important theoretical
and critical construct. Stillness is a defining quality in the continuum
between icon and narrative and in the formulation of devotional art such
as the sacra conversazione, it is a precondition of single point
perspective, and it is an element of decorum, as seen in later
sixteenth-century condemnation of the figura serpentinata. Art,
according to Wincklemann, "can express her own peculiar nature only in
stillness." In our current age of mobility, is it possible to reflect on
the significance of stillness? This panel seeks papers that examine any
aspect of stillness in early modern Italian art: as a problem in the
depiction of narrative (as in Caravaggio's stories ‘without action'), an
issue of categorization (ie. ‘classical' vs. ‘baroque'), a defining
quality of devotional art and spiritual experience, a stylistic trait
(eg. Guido Reni), the setting for aesthetic response, a condition of
perspectival constructions of space and fictional architecture, a
corollary of silence and part of the debate of painting versus poetry,
or as a trope of sleep or death. The goal is to theorize stillness as
the necessary counterpart to movement, and as a critical component of
the aesthetic and devotional function of early modern Italian art.

Please send a paper title; abstract (150-word maximum); keywords; and a
brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum, not a prose biography) to:
Karen Lloyd, at karen.lloydqueensu.ca by Monday, May 27, 2013.

----

Blood: Representation, Materiality and Agency in Italian Renaissance Art

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

In Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Germany and
Beyond Carolyn Walker Bynum asks "Why blood?" This period witnessed a
proliferation of blood cults, relics and shrines, sanguineous images of
Christ and martyrs and meditations focused on Christ's bleeding body.
What made blood so central to late medieval and Renaissance theology and
devotion? What did blood and its effusion signify for the period viewer?
How did blood imagery convey divine presence and impact debates over
holy matter? What role did blood imagery play in Renaissance
anti-Semitism ("miracle of the host") and the development of affective
piety? What types of responses did blood evoke? How did the materials
used to contain and represent blood enhance its agency? What more can a
consideration of blood relics, shrines and images contribute to the
current scholarly interest in material agency? This session seeks papers
that explore these themes in Italian art.

Please send a brief abstract (no more than 150 words) and a one-page CV
(no more than 300 words) to Theresa Flanigan at flanigatstrose.edu by
May 26.

----

Italian Sculpture, a Social History: the Practice of the Craft from
Nicola Pisano to Michelangelo

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

This session proposes to examine the realities of sculptors' lives
(1250-1500) and the factors that determined the appearance of the
sculpture they produced. Papers are welcomed that address the following
issues: the social status and reputation of the sculptor; their training
and organization in workshop and guild; how they made a living as
employees or entrepreneurs, the roles of patrons and employers, and of
contracts, drawings and models in the manufacturing process. As regards
the sculpture, speakers might consider the following: the advantages,
disadvantages, popularity and prestige of different media (e.g. bronze,
marble, wood) or examine how the appearance of an artist's work changed
depending on the medium employed; the factors that affected its
appearance (e.g. the sculptor's training, his travels, his need to adapt
to local taste or to the audience for whom the work was made); tradition
and innovation in the choice of subjects across the period; the display
of sculpture at various sites (e.g. city portals, the town square, the
home); the materiality and connotations of sculpture in various media
and the language used by contemporaries (e.g. laymen, priests and poets)
to describe, eulogize or condemn it; and the purposes that sculpture
served and how people responded and behaved towards it (e.g. crying,
laughing or kissing it, decorating or mutilating it). The above are only
suggestions, they are not meant to be prescriptive. Consideration will
be given to any proposal that addresses the general theme.

Please submit a 150-word abstract and one-page CV to Brendan Cassidy at
bfc1st-andrews.ac.uk by May 25, 2013.