Call for papers

Looking for Leisure. Court Residences and their Satellites, 1400-1700

This PALATIUM conference draws attention to small buildings in residential complexes – small in size but not in importance – which were meant only for temporary, seasonal use, unlike the permanent use of the main palace. The role of the palazotto (‘small palace’) was to be a place of rest, leisure and repose, but sometimes it also took on a representative role similar to the main palace. As these ‘satellites’ were usually new buildings rather than rebuilt older structures, they offer a much clearer view of the incentives, intentions and concepts of the clients and can be regarded as ideal models, or miniatures, of the main palace.
This colloquium will study the relationship of the satellite to the palace and examine its function as pendant but also as counterpart or even opposite to large palatial buildings. The small palace usually made it possible to develop certain ideological and spiritual programmes that would have been difficult to achieve within the large palace. Only residential complexes that contained not just the main palace but also the palazotto, aspired to create symbolic images of the universe, the earthly paradise. There was a ‘dialectic unity’ between the main palace as the permanent residence and the smaller, temporary and occasional house; the existence of a palazotto constituted an ‘added value’ to the actual residence, the palatium.

Papers may address one or more of the following themes:
1. From Solitude and Buen Retiro to Mon-plaisir and Sans-souci: Exploring the theory of the architecture of leisure within the palace
2. Tradition and modernity: Defining the palazotto as a spatial and functional type from the late middle ages to the early modern period
3. Decorating the architecture of leisure: Interpreting the satellite’s decor between politics and nature
4. The palazotto in context: Exploring the role of the satellite in the grand design of the residence and its gardens

This colloquium is organized by the European Science Foundation Research Networking Programme “PALATIUM. Court Residences as Places of Exchange in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1400-1700)”, in collaboration with the Institute of Art History (IAH) of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and with Masaryk University Brno.