Enfilade

As many of you will already know, H-ArtHist has returned from summer break:

Heritage Revisited: Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands in Enlightenment Europe
Kunsthistorisches Institut, University of Vienna, 20–21 September 2018

Registration due by 15 September 2018

Organized by Isabelle Dolezalek and Mattia Guidett

For centuries, objects from Islamic lands were unquestioned parts of the material and visual culture of pre-modern Latinate Europe. A textile from Fatimid Egypt, for instance, the so-called ‘Veil of Sainte Anne’, was kept in the cathedral treasury of Apt and venerated as a Christian relic.

The workshop Heritage Revisited: Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands in Enlightenment Europe is dedicated to the long eighteenth century, a period in which, so we believe, an important shift in the perception of such objects took place. Islamic provenances were rediscovered, objects were studied, drawn and discussed. Finally, they were subjected to the classificatory scheme of European modernity, which leaves little space for conceptions of a historically entangled heritage.

Object case-studies shed light on the networks of scholars and institutions involved in the rediscoveries and will be framed in the discussions within broader discourses on (European) cultural heritage. Ultimately, we wish to offer new perspectives on the history of scholarship, notably Islamic art history, but also on perceptions of cultural belonging, of ‘Europeanness’ and ‘Otherness’, which deeply resonate with current societal concerns.

Attendance is free. Please register by 15 September 2018, mattia.guidetti@univie.ac.uk. The workshop is kindly supported by the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation, the Chair of Islamic Art History and the Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät of the University of Vienna.

T H U R S D A Y ,  2 0  S E P T E M B E R  2 0 1 8

10:00  Visit to the Dom Museum Wien with Gregor Pirgie (Universität Wien), Pia Razenberger (Tabadul Project), and Markus Ritter (Universität Wien). Places for the visit are limited; please register by 15 September 2018, mattia.guidetti@univie.ac.uk.

13:30  Welcome and Introduction — Isabelle Dolezalek (Technische Universität Berlin/SFB ‘Episteme in Bewegung’ Freie Universität Berlin) and Mattia Guidetti (Universität Wien)

14:00  Collections
Chair: Ebba Koch (Universität Wien)
• Elisabeth Rodini (Johns Hopkins University Baltimore), The Redaldi Inventory: A Prologue to Enlightenment Collecting
• Federica Gigante (Ashmolean Museum Oxford), Objects of a ‘Certain Antiquity’ and the Quest for Their Cultural Context

15:20  Coffee

15.50  Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands
Chair: Barbara Karl (Textilmuseum St. Gallen)
• Claire Dillon (Columbia University New York), The Many Dimensions of a Work of Art: The Mantle of Roger II as a Case Study in Imperial Representation, Origin Stories, and the Formation of Specific Others
• Michelina di Cesare (Sapienza Università di Roma), Four Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Islamic Tombstones Discovered in Pozzuoli in the Seventeenth Century
• Carine Juvin (Musée du Louvre Paris), The ‘Baptistère de Saint-Louis’ through the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Making of a ‘Historical Monument’
• Anna Contadini (School of African and Oriental Studies London), Changing Perceptions of the Pisa Griffin and Other Objects

19:00  Dinner

F R I D A Y ,  2 1  S E P T E M B E R  2 0 1 8

9:30  Protagonists of the Rediscoveries
Chair: Johannes Wieninger (MAK Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien)
• Mattia Guidetti (Universität Wien), Reading Ottoman Flags in the Marches Region, 1684–1838
• Markus Ritter (Universität Wien), A Documentary Encounter with Medieval (Islamic) Art in Eighteenth-Century Vienna
• Tobias Mörike (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg), Knowledge-Brokers and Object-Interpreters: Maronite Christians and the Redefinition of ‘Islamicate Objects’ by the 1800s

11:30  Coffee

12:00  Discussion Tables
Table 1 with Isabelle Dolezalek (TU/FU, Berlin), On the Concept of Cultural Heritage: What Is European and What Is Not?
Table 2 with Tobias Mörike (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg), Art Market Networks and Their Role in Constituting ‘Islamic Art’ Objects
Table 3 with Barbara Karl (Textilmuseum St. Gallen), Object Biographies and Dynamics of Collecting

12:45  Plenum Discussion

13:30  Lunch

14:30  Classifiying, Framing, Exhibiting
Chair: Markus Ritter (Universität Wien)
• Sabine Du Crest (Université de Bordeaux), Islamic Border Objects in Seventeenth-Century Europe
• Gül Kale (McGill University Montreal), Image as Text: Fischer von Erlach’s Take on Guillaume Grelot’s Drawings of Islamic Monuments in the Eighteenth Century
• Ebba Koch (Universität Wien), Mughal Miniatures at Habsburg Vienna

16:30  Final Discussion