Gernsheim Study Days: Framing the Drawing – Drawing the Frame.

The 2026 Gernsheim Study Days will explore the relationship between early modern drawings, frames, and framing. Papers will consider both how the symbolic connotations associated with the frame in the early modern period functioned as part of artists’ generative creative processes as a cultural technique as well as the role that the physical act of framing drawings played within histories of collecting and reception. With this focus on the medium of drawing, this conference seeks to uncover new ways to think about the myriad semiotic potentials of the frame in the making and study of early modern art.

Program

Wednesday 13 May 2026

14:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Tatjana Bartsch, BHMPI, Ariella Minden, University of St Andrews

14:30 Section I
Chair: Ariella Minden

Interventions
Reinier Baarsen, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Who drew Frames?

Furio Rinaldi, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Leonardo’s Border Lines

15:50 Coffee Break

16:10 Section II
Chair: Silvia Massa, Kunstmuseum Basel

Interventions
Elizabeth Merrill, Ghent University
Copy, Snip, Cut, Collage: Drawing Practices in the Workshop of Lambert Lombard

Ludovico Maria Durante, Roma, Sovrintendenza Capitolina
Abitare la soglia. La cariatide come cornice incarnata nei disegni di Cherubino Alberti e Federico Zuccari

Helen Barr, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Cornice / senza cornice / fuori cornice. Il libro de’ disegni di Francesco Morandini

Thursday 14 May 2026

10:00 Section III
Chair: Francesca Borgo, BHMPI

Interventions

Laura Moretti, University of St Andrews
Framing the Disegno: Vincenzo Borghini’s Cultural Techniques and the Construction of the Vasarian Libro

Vera Hendriks, The Hague, RKD — Netherlands Institute for Art History
Framing Authorship: Drawn Borders and Inscribed Frames in Eighteenth-Century Dutch Artists’ Portraits

11:20 Coffee Break

11:40 Section IV
Chair: Tatjana Bartsch

Interventions

Gudula Metze, Kupferstich-Kabinett – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Creative Collecting. A Group of Baroque Drawn Frames at the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett

Elisabeth Oy-Marra, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Le scritture ai margini. Sebastiano Resta e la doppia incorniciatura dei disegni

13:00 Lunch Break

14:00 Section V
Chair: Anna Magnago Lampugnani, BHMPI

Interventions

Thomas Pöpper, Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau, Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg
Passage, Access, Depth: Mounting as Framing–The Window Mount in Albrecht Dürer and Michelangelo

Giovanni Santucci, Università di Pisa
Mounting, Borders, and Meaning in the Talman Collection

15:20 Coffee Break

15:40 Section VI
Chair: Giorgio Marini, Roma, Istituto Centrale per la Grafica

Interventions

Christoph Orth, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
Framing the Face. On the Role of Drawings in Lavater’s Ideas on Physiognomy

Kristel Smentek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Persian Muraqqa and Pierre-Jean Mariette’s Mounted Drawings

Friday 15 May 2026 (no streaming)

10:00 – c.13:00 Roundtable, chaired by Johannes Röll, BHMPI

Venue: Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Villino Stroganoff, Via Gregoriana 22, 00187 Rome

Please follow the event also online: https://vimeo.com/event/5864584