Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Visita Interiora: Re-Imagining Allegory in the Alchemical Tradition, 1400–1800
Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, University of Warwick Venice Centre, Venice, 16–17 June 2025

Keynote Speaker: Jennifer M. Rampling

Organized by Sergei Zotov

Proposals due by 15 April 2025

Alchemy is often associated with the imagery of flasks, furnaces, and laboratories. However, the universe of alchemical iconography extends far beyond these familiar motifs, encompassing a rich tapestry of symbols and allegories tied to both chemical processes and cultural phenomena. Thanks to extensive archival efforts and digitisation projects, we now have access to thousands of alchemical image series preserved in manuscripts and printed books. How might our understanding of this visual tradition deepen if we approach alchemical allegorical iconography using the same methodologies applied to other forms of imagery—such as iconographic analysis and the study of text-image relationships?

This conference invites case studies on the allegorical iconography of alchemy (1400–1800), aiming to foster new perspectives on the role of visual culture in the history of science. We particularly emphasise manuscripts and material culture and encourage submissions that engage with previously unstudied or undigitised sources. The key topics include, but are not limited to:
• Iconographic Trends: What trends emerge in alchemical iconography? Why did certain allegories gain widespread popularity while others remained obscure?
• Sources of Influence: What visual or textual traditions—including non-European and non-alchemical ones such as sacred art, emblem books, or scientific imagery—influenced specific images or image series in European alchemy?
• Methods of Analysis: How can we assess the role and function of allegorical images in alchemy? For instance, what do variations in the same image series across different manuscripts reveal about cultural, religious, or laboratory contexts?
• Material Evidence: What insights can be gained from the imagery on objects such as alchemical medals, coins, book covers, or laboratory apparatus like furnaces?
• Reception: How was allegorical alchemical imagery received in later alchemical or non-alchemical traditions?

We warmly invite you to the historic Palazzo Giustinian Lolin in Venice this June, where the Baroque setting will provide a fitting backdrop for scholarly discussions on alchemical allegories and their visual traditions. Please complete the registration form here. Alternatively, send your submissions to sergei.zotov@sas.ac.uk, including a short biographical note (50 words) and a presentation abstract (250 words) by 15 April 2025.

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Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde, The ‘Dam’ in Amsterdam, 1668, oil on canvas
(Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts)

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From the Call for Papers and ArtHist.net, which includes the French version:

Trade and Its Representations: Commercial Activity in Art and Architecture in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Le commerce et ses representations: L’activite marchande dans ses arts t l’architecture aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris, 12–13 June 2025

Proposals due by 31 March 2025

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the many transformations and significant expansion of commercial activities led to the diversification of consumption and the expansion of commercial areas. These phenomena reflected improvements in transport conditions, better organisation of trade networks and the resources of capitalism. The images and literature related to the world of commerce diversified and transformed society’s perception of this practice and its players (pedlars, itinerant merchants, manufacturers, wholesalers, entrepreneurs, etc.). While the ideal of the mercator sapiens (Caspar van Baerle, Athenaeum illustre, 1632) gradually came to fruition, culminating in the eighteenth century, the opposition between otium and negotium continued to change, with the nobility becoming increasingly interested in the lucrative activities of commerce and industry. How did artists perceive these sociological transformations, which thrust into the spotlight characters who had hitherto often been ignored?

The development of trade in all its forms also calls for the renewal of existing types, their multiplication and the introduction of new programmes. From the shop counter to the square, from the market and the bazaar to the annual fair, from the Atlantic ports to the great Dutch and Hanseatic exchanges, to the han of the Islamic world, the places of exchange are multiple, polymorphous and hybrid. In their turn, specialised trading spaces transformed the city (major routes, storage areas, etc.), whose urban growth could no longer be confined to guild houses and market squares.

Anchored in the city, the corporate system was shaken by the transformation of trade. Although they had helped to defend and protect the interests of each profession since the Middle Ages, the arts and crafts associations in Europe were increasingly seen as restrictive. Conflicts between these different players and institutions changed the way trade was conducted in the city. How do the representations of these places of professional sociability reflect these societal changes?

The rise of commercial capitalism was accompanied by an improvement in communication routes: river navigation benefited from the expansion of canals and road links were developed and paved, supporting the development of both domestic and foreign trade. Founded in the seventeenth century, the European colonial companies underwent unbridled expansion in the eighteenth century, as trade shifted into triangular. How did artists reflect this attraction to international trade? What emblematic projects did architects undertake to establish the reputation of companies involved in transatlantic trade?

The conference is organised around the following three main themes:
• Axis 1 | Merchants’ strategies of representation
• Axis 2 | Ways in which commerce is represented ‘in action’ and places where it is practised
• Axis 3 | Commercial activity as a vector of forms, ideas and images on a European and extra-European scale

Proposals may fit into one or more of these areas, but the axes remain indicative. It should be noted that the selection committee will favour contributions that break out of the paradigm of the art dealer and the marchand mercier. The first axis looks at the merchants’ strategies of representation. In addition to the varied images of these actors—often positive, sometimes picturesque—this section will look at the artistic practices and representations they have used to develop an image of themselves, their role or their place in society. These practices include patronage, collecting, speculation and socially valued techniques such as learning and drawing. The different types of portraits, whether individual or group, can also be explored. Similarly, we could look at architectural formulas that were codified or designed to be practical in terms of the status and activity of the client. These various approaches will also provide an opportunity to question the existence of a distinctive ‘merchant taste’, whether it was voluntarily established by the merchants themselves or formed on the basis of criticism from other classes in society and disseminated through printmaking, among other means. However, the aim will not be to essentialise the bourgeois merchants, but to identify in greater detail common representations or specific features.

The second axis will explore the ways in which commerce is represented ‘in action’ and the places where it is practised. How did the visual arts and architecture reflect, accompany, frame or guide the practice of commerce? The economic upheavals of pre-industrial societies and the expansion of the field of the representable by artistic modernity have challenged the iconography of commercial practices. This focus will encourage formal and iconographic analysis of trades that are poorly represented in the arts; studies questioning the iconographic domination of certain commercial scenes; and examinations exploring the gap between the reality of practices and their representation. Alongside the study of the shop, its decorations and the art of “window-dressing”, the aim will also be to open up perspectives to European and nonEuropean ommercial architecture. How do architects design these commercial buildings? This type of architecture will be understood in its broadest sense: all buildings with a commercial purpose as well as buildings and public spaces linked to the commercialisation of pleasure and leisure.

This corpus of graphic, pictorial, sculptural and architectural works will be enriched by all the images which, without representing a specific commercial practice or location, convey a commercial discourse with political or religious connotations. What representations and iconography do artists use to evoke the idea of commerce in their work? Drawing on allegory, fable, philosophy or books of words, these discourses, often disseminated through engraving, were also displayed on façades or asserted through major building programmes. The third axis will aim to open up the subject to the various forms of commercial activity, understood as a vector of forms, images and ideas, as well as the circulation of people and materials, on a global scale. Trade between cities and nations encouraged the development of trade routes (roads, bridges, lighthouses, ports, etc.) and the production of facilities (trading posts, stock exchanges, new cities, etc.). Here we examine the impact of the development of internal and external trade on the territory, in terms of architectural and visual production.

Proposals for papers, individual or collaborative, in French or English, of approximately 300 words, may take the form of general statements or case studies. Please send proposals and a curriculum vitae, along with any questions, to asso.grham@gmail.com by 31 March 2025.

Organising Committee
Élisa Bérard (doctoral student, Sorbonne Université), Maxime Bray (doctoral student, Sorbonne Université), Justine Cardoletti (doctoral student, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Florence Fesneau (PhD, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Barbara Jouves-Hann (PhD, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Maxime-Georges Métraux (expert, Galerie H. Duchemin), Alice Ottazzi (post-doctoral fellow, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Maël Tauziède-Espariat (lecturer, Université Paris-Nanterre), members of the board of the Groupe de Recherche en Histoire de l’art moderne (GRHAM). Clémence Pau (Phd, Sorbonne Université), Jean Potel (doctoral student, Sorbonne Université), members of the Board of Directors of the Groupe Histoire Architecture Mentalités Urbaines (GHAMU).

s e l e c t e d  b i b l i o g r a p h y

ABAD Reynald, Le grand marché. L’approvisionnement alimentaire de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime, Paris, Fayard, 2002.

AGUILAR Anne-Sophie, « L’enseigne, histoires et représentations », dans Anne-Sophie Aguilar et Eléonore Challine (dir.), L’Enseigne. Une histoire visuelle et matérielles (XIXe– XXe siècles), Paris, Citadelles & Mazenod, 2020, p. 18–33.

ANGIOLINI Franco et ROCHE Daniel (dir.), Cultures et formations négociantes dans l’Europe moderne, Paris, EHESS, 1995.

BAKER Emma (dir.), Art, Commerce, and Colonialism 1600–1800, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2017.

BENTLEY Tamara H. (éd.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2020.

BOUCHERON Patrick, « Espace public et lieux publics : approches en histoire urbaine », dans Patrick Boucheron et Nicolas Offenstadt (dir.), L’espace public au Moyen âge. Débats autour de Jürgen Habermas, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2011, p. 99–117.

BRAUDEL Fernand, Civilisation, économie et capitalisme, Paris, Librairie générale française, 1993, 3 vol.

CABESTAN Jean-François, La conquête du plain-pied. L’immeuble à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Picard, 2004.

CASTELLUCCIO Stéphane, Le prince et le marchand. Le commerce de luxe chez les marchands merciers parisiens pendant le règne de Louis XIV, Paris, SPM, 2014.

CHRISTENSEN Stephen Turk et NOLDUS Badeloch, Cultural Traffic and Cultural Transformation around the Baltic Sea, 1450–1720, numéro thématique du Scandinavian Journal of History, n° 28, 2003, 3/4.

COQUERY Natacha (dir.), La Boutique et la ville. Commerces, commerçants, espaces et clientèles. XVIe–XXe siècles, Tours, Centre d’histoire de la ville moderne et contemporaine / Publications de l’université François Rabelais, 2000.

COQUERY Natacha, Tenir boutique à Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Luxe et demi-luxe, Paris, Éd. du CTHS, 2011.

COQUERY Natacha et VARLET Caroline, « Urbanité, rationalité, fonctionnalité : la ville des Lumières et ses boutiques (Paris, XVIIIe siècle) », Annuaire de l’EHESS, 2002.

CROUZET François et DAUDIN Guillaume, Commerce et prospérité : la France au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2005.

CUVELIER Laurent, « Les codes de l’enseigne dans l’espace public parisien, XVIIe–XXe siècles », dans Anne-Sophie Aguilar et Eléonore Challine (dir.), L’Enseigne. Une histoire visuelle et matérielle (XIXe–XXe siècles), Paris, Citadelles & Mazenod, 2020, p. 34-37.

DAVIS Dorothy, Fairs, Shops, and Supermarkets. A History of English Shopping, Londres, Routledge & K. Paul, 1966.

DENNISON Patricia, EYDMANN Stuart, LYELL Annie et al., Painting the Town. Scottish Urban History in Art, Edimbourg, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013.

DESCAT Sophie, « La boutique magnifiée : commerce de détail et embellissement à Paris et à Londres dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècles », Histoire urbaine, n°6, 2002, p. 69–86.

DESSERT Daniel, Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle, Paris, Fayard, 1984.

FINDLEN Paula et SMITH Pamela (dir.), Merchants and Marvels. Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, Londres, Routledge, 2002.

FOURNIER Guenièvre, « La mise en image du port méditerranéen à travers les vues et les plans de Marseille, Gênes et Barcelone », dans Lionel Dumond, Stéphane Durand et Jérôme Thomas (dir.), Les ports dans l’Europe méditerranéenne. Trafics et circulation, images et représentations, XVIe–XXIe siècles, Montpellier, Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2007, p. 359–386.

FROMONT Cécile, « The Taste of Others. Finery, the Slave Trade, and Africa’s Place in the Traffic in Early Modern Things », dans Paula Findlen (éd.), Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800, 2e édition, Abingdon, Routledge, 2021, p. 273–292.

GARRIOCH David, « House Names, Shop Signs, and Social Organization in Western European Cities, 1500–1900 », Urban History, 1994, n°21, p. 20–48.

GAUVIN Alexander Bailey, Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire. State, Church and Society, 1604–1830, Montréal / Londres / Chicago, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018.

GOMEZ Y CACERES Georges et PIERREDON Marie-Ange de (dir.), Le Décor des boutiques parisiennes, Paris, Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1987.

GRANDJEAN Gilles, « Les Marchands Levantins, un décor inspiré par Claude-Joseph Vernet », dans Autour de Claude-Joseph Vernet. La marine à voile de 1650 à 1890 (cat. exp.), Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1999, p. 69–75.

HAMON Philippe, L’or des peintres. L’image de l’argent du XVe au XVIIe siècle, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

JACOB Margaret C. et SECRETAN Catherine (éd.), The Self-Perception of Early Modern ‘Capitalists’, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

JEANNIN Pierre, Marchands d’Europe. Pratiques et savoirs à l’époque moderne, Paris, Éd. rue d’Ulm/Presses ENS, 2002.

LAND Jeremy, Colonial Ports, Global Trade, and the Roots of the American Revolution, 1700–1776, Leyde, Brill, 2023.

LYON-CAEN Nicolas, « Les marchands du temple. Les boutiques du Palais de justice de Paris aux XVIe‑XVIIIe siècles », Revue historique, 2015/2, n°674, p. 323–352.

LYON-CAEN Nicolas, « L’immobilier parisien au XVIIIe siècle. Un marché locatif », Histoire & mesure, 2015/43, n°2, p. 55–70.

MARGAIRAZ Dominique, Foires et marchés dans la France préindustrielle, Paris, Éd. de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1988.

MARRAUD Mathieu, Le pouvoir marchand. Corps et corporatisme à Paris sous l’Ancien Régime, Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2021.

MILLIOT Vincent, Les Cris de Paris ou le Peuple travesti. Les représentations des petits métiers parisiens (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles), Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2014.

NÈGRE Valérie (dir.), L’Art du chantier. Construire et démolir du XVIe au XXIe siècle, Paris, Snoeck/Cité de l’architecture, 2018.

NÈGRE Valérie et VICTOR Sandrine (dir.), « L’Entrepreneur de bâtiment : nouvelles perspectives (Moyen Âge-XXe siècle) », Aedificare. Revue internationale d’histoire de la construction, no 5, février 2020, p. 23–39.

NÈGRE Valérie, « Remarques sur les entrepreneurs-architectes parisiens du siècle des Lumières », dans Thomas Kirchner et Sophie Raux (dir.), L’Art de l’Ancien régime. Sortir du rang, Paris, Heidelberg University Library / Centre Allemand d’histoire de l’art, 2022, p. 37–55.

NOLDUS Badeloch, Trade in Good Taste. Relations in Architecture and Culture between the Dutch Republic and the Baltic World in the Seventeenth Century, Turnhout, Brepols, 2005.

NOTTER Annick et METREAUX Maxime Georges (dir.), Chic et emprise : culture, usages et sociabilités du tabac du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (cat. exp.), La Crèche, La Geste, 2019.

OTTENHEYM Koen E., CHATENET Monique et DE JONGE Krista, Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe, Turnhout, Brepols, 2006.

OTTENHEYM Koen E. et DE JONGE Krista, The Low Countries at the Crossroads. Netherlandish Architecture as an Export Product in Early Modern Europe, 1480–1680, Turnhout, Brepols, 2013.

PICON Antoine, Architectes et ingénieurs au siècle des Lumières, Marseille, Éditions Parenthèses, 1988.

PINON Pierre, « Lotissements spéculatifs, formes urbaines et architectes à la fin de l’Ancien Régime », dans Soufflot et l’architecture des Lumières, Paris, Ministère de l’environnement et du cadre de vie, Direction de l’architecture, C.N.R.S, 1980, p. 178–191.

RABREAU Daniel, « Royale ou commerciale, la place à l’époque des Lumières », Revue des monuments historiques, n°120, 1982, p. 31–37.

RABREAU Daniel, Apollon dans la ville. Essai sur le théâtre et l’urbanisme à l’époque des Lumières, Paris, Éditions du Patrimoine, 2008.

ROCHE Daniel, « Négoce et culture dans la France du XVIIIe siècle », Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, t. XXV, n°3, juillet-septembre 1978, p. 375–395.

ROCHE Daniel, Histoire des choses banales. Naissance de la consommation dans les sociétés traditionnelles (XVIIe–XIXe siècles), Paris, Fayard, 1997.

SARGENTSON Carolyn, Merchants and Luxury Market. The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth‑Century Paris, Londres, Victoria and Albert Museum Ed., 1996.

SECRETAN Catherine, Le « Marchand philosophe » de Caspar Barlaeus. Un éloge du commerce dans la Hollande du Siècle d’Or. Étude, texte et traduction du Mercator Sapiens, Paris, Champion, 2002.

STROSETZKI Christoph (dir.), El poder de la economía : la imagen de los mercaderes y el comercio en el mundo hispánico de la Edad Moderna, Madrid, Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2018.

YAMEY Basil, Art & Accounting, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989.

From the Call for Papers:

The Business of Art, au féminin: Women’s Enterprise in the French Art Economy, Late 1600s to 1945
Centre André-Chastel, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), Paris, 26–27 September 2025

Proposals due by 16 March 2025

Waldon Fawcett, U.S. Treasurey: Two Women with Stacks of Paper Money, ca. 1907 (Washington: Library of Congress, 96510963).

Bringing together the history of art, the history of women, and economic history, this colloquium will investigate women’s role in the financing of artistic production and development in France (painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, engraving, photography, etc.). Embracing an extended time frame, we intend to interrogate both continuities and transformations in their roles across a significant period, starting from the policies and practices of artistic patronage initiated by Louis XIV up to the particular circumstances of the Occupation. Across this longue durée, women will be approached as agents making and moving the money required for artistic invention and production (their own as well as others’) and as integral actors in the operation of art markets, within the bounds imposed by their marital and legal status.

The colloquium will particularly focus on strategies of adapting, circumventing, and assertion deployed by French women or women working in France to negotiate masculine circuits of capital(ists)—strategies that may have gone beyond a mere male/female coexistence to include collaboration, emulation, competition, and conflict. Determined by their access to education, knowledge, and economic information, this positioning emerges clearly in discussions about the financial and legal subordination of women, whether single, married, or widowed. We will study their ability to assemble capital, invest in their own names or via proxies, operate shops, form enterprises, and organize companies. We will also interrogate the limits of their range of action and empowerment, and inquire into the possible existence of economic practices specific to women in the arts.

Contributions will take the form of individual or collective case studies addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:
• Figures and dynasties of female merchants, gallery owners, publishers, sponsors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, investors, shareholders, and borrowers
• Collective modes of financing (religious orders, committees of female patrons, lay women’s associations) and defense of women’s economic interests (trade unions, networks of female solidarity, etc.)
• Modes of wealth accumulation (inheritance, dowry, marriage, salaries), dissolution (sales, liquidations, bankruptcy, misappropriation), and transmission (legacies, gifts, succession)
• Financing strategies (banking, personal loans, investment) and their institutional contexts (financing specific to wartime, black markets, etc.)
• The visibility or invisibility (purposeful or not) of women at the head of businesses and in financing operations
• The spectrum and specificity of artistic domains in which women invest (for instance, favored arenas like engraving and decorative arts)

Proposals (in French or English) should be sent to the three organizers Nastasia Gallian (nastasia.gallian@sorbonne-universite.fr), Elsa Jamet (elsa.jamet@hotmail.fr), and Justine Lécuyer (justine.lecuyer@hotmail.fr) by 16 March 2025. Please include a summary of the paper (500 words maximum) and a short biographical note (300 words maximum). This call is open to students holding a MA2 and to current doctoral candidates, as well as to all established researchers. Presentations can be in French or English and will last twenty minutes. This is an in-person colloquium, though in exceptional cases the organizers may be able to accommodate virtual participation. The scientific committee will inform participants of their acceptance or rejection in early April. Publishing a volume of proceedings based on the colloquium presentations is envisioned.

Scientific Committee
• Jérémie Cerman, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History (France, Université d’Artois, CREHS)
• Natacha Coquery, Professor Emeritus of Early Modern History (France, Université Lumière Lyon, LAHRA)
• Clare Haru Crowston, Dean of the Faculty of Artsn Professor of History (Canada, The University of British Columbia)
• Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian, Scientist, Modern and Contemporary Art History (France, EHESS, CRAL)
• Nastasia Gallian, Associate Professor of Early Modern Art History (France, Sorbonne Université, Centre André- Chastel)
• Charlotte Guichard, Professor of Early Modern Art History (France, École normale supérieure, PSL)
• Melissa Hyde, Associate School Director, Professor and Distinguished Teaching Scholar (USA, University of Florida, College of the Arts)
• Elsa Jamet, Temporary Research and Teaching, PhD in Modern and Contemporary Art History (France, Université de Lille, IRHIS)
• Justine Lécuyer, PhD in Modern and Contemporary Art History (France, Sorbonne Université, Centre André- Chastel)
• Kim Oosterlinck, General Director of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Professor of Finance (Belgium, Université libre de Bruxelles)
• Anne Perrin, Professor of Early Modern Art History (France, Université de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès / FRAMESPA)
• Élodie Vaudry, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History (France, Sorbonne Université, Centre André-Chastel)
• Alexia Yates, Professor of Modern History, historian of economic life (Italy, Florence, European University Institute)

s e l e c t i v e  b i b l i o g r a p h y

D’ERCOLE Maria Cecilia et MINOVEZ Jean-Michel (dir.), Art & économie: Une histoire partagée [actes du colloque international de l’Association française d’histoire économique, Toulouse, 18–19 novembre 2016], Toulouse, Presses universitaires du Midi, 2020.

DERMINEUR Elise, Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial Europe, Turnhout, Brepols, 2018.

DOUSSET Christine, « Commerce et travail des femmes à l’époque moderne en France », Les Cahiers de Framespa, 2, 2006, en ligne : https://journals.openedition.org/framespa/57.

DUBY Georges et PERROT Michelle (dir.), Histoire des femmes en Occident, Paris, Plon, 1991–1992, vol. 3, 4 et 5.

FONTAINE Laurence, « Espaces économiques féminins et crédit », dans L’économie morale. Pauvreté, crédit et confiance dans l’Europe préindustrielle, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 134–163.

GREEN David R., OWENS Alastair, MALTBY Josephine et RUTTERFORD Janette (dir.), Men, Women, and Money: Perspectives on Gender, Wealth, and Investment, 1850–1930, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.

KHAN B. Zorina, « Invisible Women: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Family Firms in Nineteenth-Century France », The Journal of Economic History, 76, n°1, mars 2016, p. 163–195.

LABARDIN Pierre et ROBIC Paulette, « Épouses et petites entreprises: Permanence du XVIIIe au XXe siècle », Revue Française de Gestion, 188–189, 2008, p. 97–117.

LALLIARD François, « Femmes d’argent, argent des femmes: construction du genre et monétarisation de la vie sociale dans la haute société aristocratique. L’exemple des Wagram (XIXe siècle-début du XXe siècle) », dans L’argent des familles. Pratiques et régulations sociales en Occident aux XIXe et XXe siècles, (dir. Florent Le Bot, Thierry Nootens et Yvan Rousseau), Trois-Rivières et Québec, Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises, 2019, p. 179–192.

LANZA Janine, From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris: Gender, Economy, and Law, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007.

LAURENCE Anne, MALTBY Josephine et RUTTERFORD Janette (dir.), Women and their Money, 1700–1950: Essays on Women and Finance, New York, Routledge, 2009.

MARTINEZ Cristina S. et ROMAN Cynthia E. (dir.), Female Printmakers, Printsellers, and Print Publishers in the Eighteenth Century: The Imprint of Women, c. 1700–1830, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024.

THÉBAUD Françoise, Écrire l’histoire des femmes et du genre, Paris, ENS Éditions, 2007.

TILLY Louise A. et SCOTT Joan W., Les femmes, le travail et la famille, Paris, Rivages-Histoire, 1987 (édition originale 1978).

YATES Alexia, « The Invisible Rentière: The Problem of Women and Investment in Nineteenth-Century France », Entreprises et histoire, 2, 2022, p. 76–89.

Cat. expo. [New York, Grey Art Museum ; Montréal, Musée des Beaux-arts ; Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, 2024–2025], Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde, Paris, Flammarion, 2024.

From the Call for Papers (Dorothy Johnson is slated to give a keynote address). . .

VariAbilities 2025 | Exploring Representations of the Body across Visual Disciplines
Mercy University, New York, 11–15 June 2025

Proposals due by 14 February 2025

The representation of the body is a fundamental aspect of human culture, reflecting societal values, norms, and power structures. From ancient civilizations to contemporary times, various visual disciplines have been employed to create different forms of bodily representation to convey meaning, express emotions, to teach and tell stories. This conference seeks to examine a wide range of representations across multiple visual forms, and across a wide history, shedding light on the ways in which they intersect, diverge, and influence one another.

Some of the key questions we shall address might be:
• How do different visual disciplines (e.g., medical imagery and illustration, painting, photography, sculpture) represent the human body, and what are the implications of these representations?
• What role does performance play in bodily representation, and how do various forms of performance (e.g., doctor/patient interactions, dance, theatre, music) shape our understanding of the body?
• How do word-based and image-based portrayals of the body differ (e.g. literary and cinema, poetry and portraits), and what insights can be gained by comparing these approaches?
• In what ways do representations of the body reflect social attitudes towards gender, race, class, VariAbility, and other forms of identity?

These some of the many questions you may wish to explore, you may have others! Please email a 300-word proposal to Variabilities8@gmail.com by 14 February 2025. The event will take place at the Mercy University Campus in Manhattan, where there is some dorm accommodation for delegates should they choose it. There is also some scope for online presentations for those who have travel issues. Come and tell us what the ‘body’ means to you. More information is available here.

From ArtHist.net:

Lost Cities in a Global Perspective: Sources, Experience, and Imagery, 15th–18th Centuries
University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Caserta, 16–17 October 2025

Proposals due by 15 March 2025

In conjunction with the Research Project “The Vesuvian Lost Cities before the ‘Discovery’: Sources, Experience, and Imagery in Early Modern Period” (VeLoCi)

In 1972 Italo Calvino published the book Invisible Cities, encouraging a reflection on modern megalopolises starting from the reactivation of the imaginary arising from the memory of historical cities. In “Cities and Memory 3,” Calvino states that “the city does not tell its past, it contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, in the grilles of the windows, in the handrails of the stairs, in the antennas of the lightning rods, in the poles of the flags,” underlining how the knowledge of a city passes through the discovery of material elements (space) and immaterial elements (history).

More recently, Salvatore Settis (Se Venezia muore, 2014 / If Venice Dies, 2016) postulated that “Cities die in three ways: when they are destroyed by a ruthless enemy (like Carthage, which was razed to the ground by Rome in 146 BC); when a foreign people settles there by force, driving out the natives and their gods (like Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztecs that the Spanish conquistadores destroyed in 1521 and then built Mexico City on its ruins); or, finally, when the inhabitants lose their memory of themselves, and without even realizing it become strangers to themselves, enemies of themselves. This was the case of Athens.”

Many cities across the world have disappeared over the centuries, abandoned (but perhaps never forgotten), destroyed by natural disasters, or buried under new urban layers (Teotihuacán, Chichén Itzá, Copàn, Tulum, Angkor, Petra, Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Brescia), re-emerging for different reasons. Fascinating historians, explorers, archaeologists, architects, and artists, ‘lost cities’—both literally and metaphorically—have continued to exist in literary sources, descriptions, chronicles, and sometimes in iconographic representations.

Pompeii and Herculaneum are two of the most famous cities that disappeared due to natural disasters. Despite historiographical and narrative traditions claiming that their ‘discovery’ occurred only in conjunction with the start of the Bourbon excavations in the 18th century, the VeLoCi project has demonstrated that even before the start of systematic excavations, material traces of the existence of these ancient cities had emerged and that there was no lack of literary, antiquarian, and scientific sources dedicated to their history. In other cases, cities that disappeared following catastrophes or simple stratification were not unearthed, despite their historical past being well known.

What was then the perception, the relationship of coexistence and study and knowledge with the buried/lost cities in the different cultures of the world in the early modern era? What phenomena or episodes have reactivated their systematic research? What are the operational, scientific, and epistemological approaches to the discovery of the past? What are the reasons that suggest seeking and valorising the past?

Starting from the case study of the Vesuvian cities, the international conference Lost Cities in a Global Perspective: Sources, Experience, Imagery in Early Modern Period (XV–XVIII Century) aims to investigate in an interdisciplinary and comparative way the material and imaginary dimensions assumed by lost cities before the birth of archaeology as a science in the 18th and 19th centuries. We invite scholars from a variety of disciplines, including architectural history, art and literary history, history, history of science, archaeology, cultural studies, and other related fields, to submit papers examining cases from any geographical context. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome, as are contributions that reflect on the exchange of knowledge and cultures at a global level.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
• Travel Accounts and Exploration: the role of European explorers and missionaries in shaping the narratives of lost cities in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
• Historiographical approaches: the role of early modern historians and intellectuals in constructing and reconstructing the idea of lost cities.
• Myth and Reality: what role did legends and fantastic narratives have in shaping lost cities and how did they intertwine with emerging archaeological or geographical knowledge.
• Visual Culture and cartography: the role of representations of lost cities in art and cartography.
• Colonialism and Cultural Exchange: the impact of colonial expansion on the perception of lost cities and the relationship with native cultures.
• Material Culture and Archaeology: proto-archaeology and antiquarian research in exploring the physical remains of lost cities and ancient civilizations.
• Literature and Lost Cities: the role of literature in constructing of the idea of lost cities, from utopian and dystopian narratives to adventure tales.
• Cultural Memory and Identity: how did the notion of lost cities has served as a tool for constructing cultural memory and national identity, and how did societies have preserved or forgotten this memory.
• Environmental Factors and Natural Disasters: what role has climate change, natural disasters, and geographical displacement played in the disappearance of cities.

The two-day conference—organised by Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi, Francesca Mattei, and Danila Jacazzi—is promoted by the PRIN 2022 research project “VeLoCi — The Vesuvian Lost Cities before the ‘Discovery’: Sources, Experience, Imagery in Early Modern Period” at the end of its duration and will be hosted at the University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, in Caserta, Italy. VeLoCi will organise and pay for accommodation and reimburse travel costs (economy class) for the speakers. At the end of the conference, the publication of some contributions in a peer-reviewed collective volume will be evaluated. Scientific and organisational secretariat by Giorgia Aureli and Giorgia Pietropaolo.

Participation in the conference is free of charge. The conference languages are Italian and English. Abstracts, in PDF format (maximum 1500 characters, about 250 words) in Italian or English, must include a title and a short biography (maximum 1500 characters, about 250 words). Please send the material to ve.lo.ci.prin@gmail.com by 15 March 2025. Notification of accepted proposals will be sent around 15 April. Please note that this CFP is also open to PhD students and independent scholars.

Scientific Committee
Candida Carrino, Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi, Kathleen Christian, Bianca de Divitiis, Danila Jacazzi, Francesca Mattei, Tanja Michalsky, Massimo Osanna, Francesco Sirano

From ArtHist.net:

Edited Volume | Laughter and Medicine
Proposals due by 15 March 2025

We invite proposals for contributions to an edited volume exploring the interfaces between laughter and medicine. Developing from a British Academy/Wellcome Trust-funded conference held at the University of Birmingham in November 2024, this volume will put the medical humanities in dialogue with healthcare provision and the medical sciences so as to bridge the divides between the clinic, the laboratory, cultural history, literature, and the arts in Western cultures from the classical period to the present day.

The volume aims to present a transdisciplinary account of the cultural, social, diagnostic, therapeutic, and physiological implications of the laughter that characterizes—and is elicited by—real and fictional interactions among physicians, patients and the general public, inside and outside the clinic. Laughter is not always the ‘best medicine’, nor is laughter linked only to comedy and enjoyment. Without excluding the curative or the comic, this project hopes to uncover the more complex and sometimes darker aspects of the relationship between laughter (both voluntary and involuntary) and medicine that are often obscured by facile idioms and clichés. ‘Healing laughter’ differs markedly in character and effects from pathological laughter; hysterical laughter; forced or bitter laughter; laughter serving to mitigate awkwardness in, or failures of, communication; laughter intended to deceive; or laughter signifying fear, discomfort or aggression. The irony and other double-coded signifiers that abound in comic and parodic representations of medical practitioners and their patients, as well as in medical metaphors and allegories deployed in diverse discursive contexts, often reveal medicine’s paradoxical place in various cultural imaginaries and in individual and collective experience.

Submissions may respond to questions including, but not limited to, the following:
• How and why is laughter represented, elicited, and mobilized in connection with medicine in the temporal and spatial arts (literature, cinema, print and digital media, performing arts, sculpture, etc.) in particular historical and cultural contexts and moments? What ideological, aesthetic, cultural, and other issues are bound up with or thought through the nexus between laughter and medicine?
• What does synchronic and diachronic comparison reveal about the specificity of particular representations of laughter and medicine and about the historical evolution of their cultural construction? How do evolving cultural and artistic representations inform, and how are they informed by, the development of medical science and practice?
• How and why does laughter occur in the context of illness and death, as well as in routine healthcare provision? What is its significance? What functions does it serve?
• What are laughter’s causes and effects from a physiological and psychological standpoint? What does the phenomenon of laughter reveal about the relationships between mind and body and between physical, mental, and emotional health?
• How and with what stakes has the relationship between laughter and medicine been theorized at different moments in intellectual and cultural history? How does the thinking of laughter in medical contexts fit into larger cultural formations and reflect or revise scientific models?
• What are the poetic and ideological effects and stakes of the ludic medicalization, in various discursive contexts, of aspects of life and culture that are not (necessarily or customarily) imagined in medical terms?
• What are the implications of the relationship between laughter and medicine from a philosophical perspective?
• What are the sociological implications of the nexus between laughter and medicine, especially in relation to contexts and patterns of (mis)communication and to the negotiation of social identities linked to profession, class, gender, ethnicity, etc.?
• What roles does laughter play in relation to disability and disability studies?

In order to accommodate the different disciplinary norms corresponding to the diverse fields that will be represented in the volume, we will accept proposals for chapters ranging in length from 3,000 to 10,000 words. Each chapter should make a contribution in its own discipline while making an effort to remain intelligible to an interdisciplinary academic audience.

Chapter proposals should take the form of a 500-word abstract including a title; a brief overview of scholarly or scientific contexts; a concise articulation of the research question and/or aims to be addressed; the tentative theses, conclusions, and/or arguments to be advanced in the chapter; and an estimated word count for the chapter. Authors should also provide an abbreviated CV.

It is hoped that the volume proposal will be submitted in July 2025 to the Proceedings of the British Academy series, which has expressed interest in the project. Contrary to what its name might suggest, this series, currently published through Oxford University Press, produces high-quality, rigorously peer-reviewed themed volumes developing from conference projects that have earned support from very competitive British Academy grants. Following notification of the acceptance of the book proposal, contributors will be asked to submit their completed chapters within six months. Submissions should be sent to both p.barta@surrey.ac.uk and lucas.wood@ttu.edu by 15 March 2025.

As noted at the Groupe de Recherche en Histoire de l’Art Moderne (GRHAM) . . .

Ville désirable / ville désirée : Construire les imaginaires urbains par le visuel, XVIIIe–XXIe
Lyon, 10–11 June 2025

Proposals due by 31 January 2025

Les journées d’étude Ville désirable / ville désirée : construire les imaginaires urbains par le visuel, XVIIIe–XXIe, placent la notion de désir, jusqu’ici particulièrement investie par les études psychologiques et psychanalytiques, au cœur des interactions entre la ville et ses images. L’idée d’absence, de manque, ou d’envie à laquelle renvoie cette notion permet de relire et réinterpréter certaines productions visuelles urbaines produites entre le XVIIIème et le XXIème siècles. Si certains travaux notamment en géographie se sont intéressés à l’attractivité (Michel Lussault) ou à l’amabilité des villes (Denis Martouzet), ces journées d’étude permettront d’étudier d’autres dynamiques à l’œuvre au regard de la notion de désir. Qu’il s’agisse de portraits de ville (André Corboz, David Martens), des images du tourisme (Marie-Eve Bouillon, Valérie Perlès, Anne Reverseau), de projections de villes du futur (Marie-Madeleine Ozdoba) que nous disent les visuels dans leur rôle d’intermédiation avec la ville ? Quel rôle ces images jouent-elles dans la lecture de la ville ? Quelles sont les orientations politiques, sociales, économiques des producteurs et que nous révèlent les médias employés en termes d’intentions ? Pouvons-nous parler d’une recherche de désirabilité urbaine dans une pratique de la mise en scène du territoire ? A partir de sources visuelles variées, les journées d’étude entendent donc historiciser les relations complexes qui existent entre réception d’une image et production d’un désir, et ainsi contribuer à une histoire culturelle, sociale et visuelle de la ville.

Les journées d’études se dérouleront les 10 et 11 juin 2025 à Lyon. Les communications d’une durée de 20 minutes seront suivies d’échanges avec la salle. Les propositions de communication ne doivent pas excéder 3000 signes (espaces compris) et doivent être accompagnées d’une courte biographie précisant le rattachement institutionnel des participant.e.s. Merci de préciser à quel(s) axes(s) de l’appel votre proposition s’intègre. Elles sont à envoyer avant le 31 janvier 2025 à l’adresse mail : villedesirable@gmail.com. Une notification aux candidat.e.s les informant de la décision des organisateurs sera adressée fin février 2025.

Comité d’organisation et de sélection des propositions
• Marie Blanc (LARHRA / UGA)
• Johanna Daniel (LARHRA / Université Lyon 2)
• Loïc Sagnard (LARHRA / Université Lyon 2)
• Hugo Tardy (Framespa, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès)

The complete Call for Papers, detailing the four axes of the study days, along with an indicative bibliography is available here»
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Customs House, Copenhagen.

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From the Call for Papers:

Rome in the Nordic Countries: Images of Ancient and Modern Architecture, 17th–18th Century
Online and in-person, Rome, late November/early December 2025

This conference will draw attention to the artistic and architectural exchanges between Rome and the Nordic countries from the seventeenth to eighteenth century, focusing on the production, marketing, use, and conservation of images, including drawings and engravings, illustrated books, and suites of prints. These works found massive transnational circulation, and their adaptability made them indispensable tools in the history of the arts, and more generally in the broader European cultural expansion. The conference addresses the artistic-architectural relations between the Nordic countries (essentially Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, but with openness to the entire transalpine world), and the Italian peninsula. The pivot is ancient and modern Rome, the recognized crossroads of cultural elaboration and the centre of a massive and varied publishing production, through which the foundations were laid for the construction of a shared European artistic-architectural language based on Classicism.

Proposals should address issues of cross-cultural exchange, among which we suggest:

Travelling across Europe
• Travelling South, Renaissance to early 18th century: artists/architects, patrons, sketchbooks, diaries
• Travelling North: migration of Italian artists and architects

Books and Prints
• Producing and marketing images of architecture: Rome and the Nordic countries in the European context
• Using and collecting architectural prints
• Vitruvius and Palladio: architectural books in the North
• Architectural libraries

Rome in the North: Functions, Techniques, Styles
• Issues of style: Classicism, Baroque, post-Baroque and early classicism in the architecture of the Nordic countries
• Festive, funerary, and military architecture
• Urban planning and infrastructures: monuments and places
• Models and monuments

Nordic Rome
• The reception of Nordic architectural culture in early modern Italy

The conference will be in Rome, in person and hybrid. Travel expenses will be partially met. Participants will be expected to submit revised and expanded versions of their papers six months after the conference for publication as an edited volume. All proposals (max 1200 words) can be written in English, French, or Italian. Proposals should be sent to nordicromeconference@gmail.com by 31st January 2025.

Scientific Committee
• Antonello Alici, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona
• Mario Bevilacqua, Sapienza Università di Roma; Centro Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma
• Kristin Bliksrud Aavitsland, Universitetet i Oslo
• Kristoffer Neville, University of California, Riverside
• Sabrina Norlander Eliasson, Stockholms universitet; Istituto svedese di Studi classici a Roma
• Saverio Sturm, Università Roma Tre; Centro Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma
• Victor Plahte Tschudi, Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo

From ArtHist.net:

Mexican Art and Its Collections in Europe, 16th–21st Centuries: Interwoven Histories
Online, Institute of Art History at the University of Wrocław, 21 May 2025

Proposals due by 15 February 2025

The Institute of Art History at the University of Wrocław invites submissions for an international online conference examining the presence and reception of Mexican art in the European cultural context from colonial times to the present day. The conference aims to critically reflect on the complex processes of meaning-making, interpretation, and reinterpretation of Mexican art in European collections, museums, and galleries.

We welcome contributions addressing themes such as
• Postcolonial, decolonial, and transnational perspectives in studying Mexican art in Europe
• Methodologies for studying processes of cultural transfer
• Critical revision of European interpretations of Mexican art
• History of acquisition and movement of works
• Exhibition and curatorial strategies in shaping narratives about Mexican art
• Digital presence of Mexican collections
• Reception and hybridization of Mexican art in Europe
• Case studies of selected works in European collections

Selected papers will be published in a peer-reviewed conference volume following the event. The conference will be held online, and participation is free of charge. Please send inquiries and submissions—an abstract in English of approximately 250 words and a brief biographical note (up to 100 words)—to Dr. Emilia Kiecko, emilia.kiecko@uwr.edu.pl, before 15 February 2025.