Conference: Probing the Interior, 1800-2012

The Courtauld Institute of Art (London) / Early Modern International Symposium, 2009

It is a well-known and established fact that the origins of early print making bare a close relationship with goldsmith workshops, with Albrecht Dürer as the most celebrated representative of this development. Surprisingly, the printed output of these early engravers for goldsmith- and architectural design is a field which gained little attention by print scholars so far. This paper examines the professional position and production of this particular new genre of ornament prints from goldsmith-engravers in the Low Countries such as the architect Alart DuHameel (c. 1460 – c. 1506) or the anonymous Master W with the Key (active c. 1465-85). A major part of these engravers’ output consisted of designs for metalwork such as reliquaries, censors, chalices or crosiers. By providing designs for a wide range of craftsmen - ranging from architects, over wood carvers to goldsmiths – this group of goldsmith-engravers can be interpreted as intermediate players in the dissemination of geometrical designing knowledge to a great variety of media. This paper addresses issues such as the dissemination of design skills, the practical and aesthetic function of design prints, the interdisciplinary crossovers between craftsmen by printed media, and the self-representation of the artist by the use of house marks and monograms.

Traditionally, the history of printmaking has fallen in the space between art history and the history of the book. Often ‘reproductive’ and multiple in nature, prints have long been marginalized in art historical scholarship in favour of the traditional ‘high’ arts. The inherent complexities in the manufacture and sale of print, often involving multi-faceted networks of specialist craftsmen, artists, publishers and sellers, has also led to much confusion. Not knowing how prints are made has affected our ability to understand the medium and its aesthetic qualities. However, recent scholarship has opened up new avenues for placing prints in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. From the techniques applied in the making of prints to the individuals involved in their production, distribution and use, current research is continuing to shape our understanding of this complex field. This two-day conference, in collaboration with Print Quarterly, aims to showcase new developments in the study of prints, challenging and developing traditional approaches. It is organized around a series of panels dedicated to different themes and is accompanied by a pop-up display in the Courtauld's Prints and Drawings Study Room: 'Courtauld Prints: The Making of a Collection'.

The southern border areas of the Voivodat of Transylvania and Hungarian Kingdom (the so-called terrae of Haţeg and Zarand), even though integrated to different political structures, represented throughout the Middle Ages a region with ethnical and confessional individuality. Enjoying a certain autonomy within the kingdom's structure, these districta Valachorum were inhabited mainly by Vlachs (Romanians), which adopted earlier on Christianity in its Byzantine-Slavic variant, but needed continuously to cope with their Catholic and more powerful lords. A consequence of the activity of the local landowners (cnezi, sing. cnez) in the 14th and 15th century is the foundation of churches on their estates and their decoration with mural painting. These pastiches of western ecclesiastical architecture, embellished with Romanesque and Gothic stonework, display either a good-quality or provincial mural decoration, but attests unequivocally their usage by the Orthodox. By examining the selection of particular themes belonging to traditional Byzantine iconography and their enrichment with motifs coming from apocryphal sources, as well as the preference for Western iconographic redactions, or even the presence of Catholic saints in the iconographic program of a series of Transylvanian churches, the present paper seeks to challenge the traditional categories of Orthodox/Eastern and Catholic/Western art; these categories prove themselves inapplicable to the religious art of 14th- and 15th-century Transylvania, a region situated in between two cultural traditions, East and West, and a culture which gave birth to a hybrid art escaping traditional art-historical labeling.

In the culture of the European Renaissance, the ceramics production of the French potter Bernard Palissy, who devoted his art to the perfect reproduction of nature, remains an atypical phenomenon. The technique he used -casting from life-, and the iconography he chose – animals, plants and stones from his native region-, were also practiced by Italian and German goldsmiths like Andrea Riccio (1470 ca-1532) and Wenzel Jamnitzer (1507ca-1585) - as Ernst Kris showed in Der Stil Rustique (1926)-, but Palissy was the only one who applied them to ceramics. Moreover, his autodidactic technique of enameling, which enabled him to reach a perfect illusion of life, is so original that the C2RMF Louvre laboratory of restoration is still examining it. Prior to his departure to the French court around 1566, his oeuvre was directed to the perfect representation of life, a quality he claimed in his writings as well. Palissy is in fact one of these rare artists whose texts offer the attentive reader a better understanding of his artistic creations. Although the expression “au vif” was probably the most commonly used to define depictions made directly after the living model, Palissy preferred to qualify his own work “au plus pres du naturel”, a significant variant that we’ll examine. We will also show how the iconography of naturalistic microcosms and his casting technique were conscious and meaningful choices in sync with his very own reformed religious views.

The early Palaiologan period is characterised by the abundance of religious commissions and the increase of ecclesiastical operae. This proliferation of monumental decorations and written works relating to miraculous shrines and miracle accounts, has long been ascribed to Andronikos II’s policy to empower the Orthodox Church. Yet, few attempts have been made to pair the two manifestations, considering the different media as a fixed boundary. This paper aims to unravel the balance between words and images, suggesting a greater fluidity between the two, resulting in an intricate hybridity characteristic of the early Palaiologan period. Two case-studies will be presented. First, the iconographic programme of the southwest chapel of the Protaton church on Mount Athos and the naos of St Catherine in Thessaloniki will be compared to the liturgical homilies of Theoleptos of Philadelphia. Second, the Miracle Cycle in the narthex of the Aphendiko in Mistra will be paired with Nikephoros Xanthopoulos’ account of the miracles that occurred at the Zoodochos Pege. The comparative framework proposed by this paper will explore how rigid boundaries become blurred, questioning whether text and image influence or complement each other and suggesting the possibility that they were meant to be watched, read and listened together

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Musicología en web. Patrimonio musical y Humanidades Digitales, eds. María Gembero-Ustárroz y Emilio Ros-Fábregas (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2021), pp. 163-187

Desde su presentación pública a mediados de 2017, la plataforma digital Books of Hispanic Polyphony IMF-CSIC (en lo sucesivo BHP), creada y desarrollada desde la Institución Milá y Fontanals del CSIC (Barcelona) bajo la dirección de Emilio Ros-Fábregas, se ha convertido en una relevante herramienta que ofrece acceso universal y gratuito a información variada sobre libros de polifonía manuscritos e impresos conservados en España, o bien ubicados en otros países pero con repertorio hispano. A partir de mi experiencia como miembro del equipo de investigación que ha implementado este recurso, el propósito de este trabajo es ofrecer un balance sobre la presencia actual de Hispanoamérica en BHP, presentar los aspectos más destacados del menú “Documentación” (al hilo de la reciente incorporación de tres nuevos inventarios de bibliotecas hispanoamericanas) y reflexionar críticamente sobre las potencialidades presentes y futuras de esta plataforma, que se encuentra en pleno desarrollo.

Few Definitions of Principle of Management