[1] “I am seen, therefore I am” – Framing strategies and scenic integrations in the Early Modern period

Deadline: 10 June 2014

This session will focus on the concept of framing in the arts and architecture of the Early Modern period.
Irrespective of the actual form, framing devices serve to singularize an object, a scene, or a figure. In this regard architectural forms of various scales like aediculae, ciboria and even proclamation loggias coincide not only with each other but also with painted and sculpted portraits and devotional images with inner compositional framing (e.g. Andrea Mantegna, San Marco, 1448). Giving prominence to a figure by means of such an extrinsic emphasis corresponds to an act of individualization that elicits an immediate process of visual hermeneutics.
Architectural frames hardly ever have real constructive function and are considered mostly from the perspective of order and decorum. This is actually the case for most framing devices. Here the possibility of transgression of purpose in the work itself should be taken into account. Thus a frame is a ‘suggestion’ of a virtual space, meaning that it simulates an intangible space while conceptually configuring such a vessel.
We welcome papers from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Papers could include:
- Gestures of display and self-representation in art and architecture
- Rhetoric strategies of self-reflection and self-dramatization: Are there absolutistic tendencies avant la lettre which bring forth this kind of political staging
- Framing strategies through transfer of forms and functions from one medium to another or from one scale to another, e.g. dilatations of proportions etc.
- Philosophical theories of plurality of perception, meaning the multiplication of visual axes and the expansion of the field of vision

(*Randolph Starn, State as a Work of Art - Again: A Comment, in: Schifanoia: notizie dell’Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali di Ferrara, vol. 10, Modena 1990.)

If interested, please send an abstract (150 words) with paper title, and curriculum vitae (one page) by June 10 to Ioana Jimborean (i.jimboreanunibas.ch) and Henry Kaap (henry.kaapkhi.fi.it). Submissions may be in German or English.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[2] Arts in Quattrocento Pisa I-II

Deadline: 12 June 2014

The Quattrocento was a dramatic century for Pisa. The Tuscan town, formerly a leading "Maritime Republic" and one of the wealthiest and most splendid Mediterranean centers in the Middle Ages, lost its independence in 1406 and fell under the dominion of Florence. The political, economic and social crisis reached its apex in the first half of the century: thousands of people, both locals and foreigners, migrated elsewhere. Despite this, many of the foremost artists of the period were present in town, personally or through their works, from the International Gothic champs Lorenzo Monaco and Gentile da Fabriano to the founders of the early Renaissance revolution, Masaccio, Donatello (with Michelozzo), Fra Angelico. Their influence can be seen in the locally active painter Borghese di Piero and in the prolific sculptor Andrea Guardi.

In the second half of the Quattrocento the archbishop Filippo de' Medici and Lorenzo il Magnifico himself patronized notable architectural and artistic commissions (such as the Archbishop's and the Sapienza University Palaces). The Opera del Duomo promoted the completion of the fresco decoration of the Camposanto, which was entrusted to Benozzo Gozzoli who prevailed over such competitors as Andrea Mantegna, Vincenzo Foppa and the Lucchese Michele Ciampanti. Other notable painters, all of them Florentine, active in Pisa in those decades were Paolo Schiavo, Alesso Baldovinetti, Cosimo Rosselli, Domenico Ghirlandaio; not to say of the Flemish presences (e.g. the Master of the Legend of St. Lucy), or of the glazed-terracotta creations of the Della Robbia and Buglioni workshops. The only local talent, emerging in the last years of the century, was Niccolò di Bartolomeo dell’Abbrugia, better known as Niccolò Pisano, who then moved to Ferrara.

The century ended with the descent of French King Charles VIII in 1494: Pisa regained its liberty for fifteen years, rediscovering an ephemereal but intense civic pride in the profoundly changing assets of Italy and Europe.

The two sessions aim to give a proper critical and historical consideration to this still fragmentary and little studied chapter of Italian Quattrocento Art. Please send paper proposals – in English, Italian, or French – of 150 words (with keywords) and a cv of 300 words by June 12, 2014, to < gerardo.desimonegmail.com >
https://accademiadinapoli.academia.edu/GerardodeSimone