The Mobility of Antiquities. Cultural Processes and Collecting Practices in Early Modern Italy

Warburg Institute, Friday 15th November 2013, organized by Dr. Kathleen Christian, The Open University, and Dr. Barbara Furlotti, Marie Curie Senior Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung at the Warburg Institute.

Speakers will include: Kathleen Christian (The Open University), Leah Clark (The Open University), Bianca de Divitiis (University of Naples ‘Federico II’), Barbara Furlotti (The Warburg Institute). Respondent: Prof. Evelyn Welch, King’s College.

In the last few years, research on mobility (of ideas, cultural phenomena, people, and art works) has increasingly engaged scholars in various disciplines. This workshop contributes to these studies by considering the mobility of antiquities in the early modern period from various perspectives, looking at mobility both as the physical process of moving objects and as a richly symbolic act. The papers in this study day will investigate the material context in which antiquities were discovered and the cultural and political processes involved in moving them from excavation sites to new locales. They will also deal with the issue of their ‘virtual’ mobility among collections and collectors by means of prints, drawings and casts.

• First Session: 2:30 – 4:00

Barbara Furlotti, ‘Antiquities Ripen in Wintertime. Excavations and the Search for Ancient Findings in Sixteenth-Century Rome’

Kathleen Christian, ‘Translatio and the Movement of Antique Sculpture in Early Modern Italy’

Break

• Second Session: 4:15 – 6:00

Bianca de Divitiis, ‘In Search of Identity: Moving Antiquities in Southern Italy between the Medieval and Early Modern Period’

Leah Clark, ‘Exchange and Replication: The Circulation of Antique Gems and Coins in the Italian Courts’