Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

Dress and Painting: Clothing and Textiles in Art
The Association of Dress Historians International Conference
National Portrait Gallery, London, 7–8 October 2024

Proposals due by 28 April 2024

The Association of Dress Historians are delighted to introduce our two-day autumn conference for 2024 on the theme of Dress and Painting: Clothing and Textiles in Art. The conference aims to bring together scholars, professionals, and practitioners to explore and examine the wide range of interconnections between dress, textiles, and painting across any culture or region of the world, from before classical antiquity to the present day.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers
– Aileen Ribeiro, Professor Emeritus of the Courtauld Institute of Art
– Timothy McCall, Associate Professor of Art History at Villanova University
– Anna Reynolds, Deputy Surveyor of The King’s Pictures at Royal Collection Trust

Papers are invited that investigate, but are not limited to, any of the following prompts:
• The value (and limitations) of painted sources for historians of dress including portraits, genre scenes, illuminated manuscripts, frescoes, and miniatures
• The reality (or otherwise) of clothing portrayed in paintings through comparison with extant garments, documentary sources, etc
• The practices of dressing up (e.g. fancy dress, professional robes) or dressing down (e.g. déshabillé) for portraits
• The symbolism of dress in paintings
• The role of clothing in interpretations of meaning or narrative
• Individual artists and their different approaches to depicting dress
• Artists’ involvement in decisions about what sitters should wear for portraits
• Artists’ personal attitudes to fashion and the selection of clothing worn in self-portraits
• Techniques used by artists to represent textiles and three-dimensional garments in paint
• The draped figure in painting, depictions of the clothed and unclothed body
• The role of the specialist drapery painter in artists’ studios
• Overlapping spheres of production in the raw materials for paintings and textiles e.g. pigments and dyes, linen canvas, animal hair
• Paintings as fashion illustration, and their role in the fashion design process
• Textile designs inspired by paintings
• Painters who were also fashion/textile designers
• Museum practices of exhibiting paintings alongside items of dress

We welcome submissions for 15- to 20-minute research presentations. To submit a proposal, please send an abstract of no more than 200 words alongside a biography of no more than 50 words and an optional illustrative image* with caption to be included in an online programme to dressandpainting@dresshistorians.org by 00:00 BST on 28 April 2024. The conference is guest chaired by Anna Reynolds (Royal Collection Trust) and co-convened by Kirsten Burrall (Deputy Chair of ADH).

* Please send images as separate tiff or jpeg attachments and include the relevant caption beneath your abstract. Image captions are not included in abstract word count.

From the Call for Papers (see the DFK’s website for the German and French versions) . . .

‘The Hearts of the Leuchtenberg’: Cultures of Remembrance of a 19th-C. European Noble Family
‘Die Herzen der Leuchtenberg’: Erinnerungskultur(en) einer europäischen Adelsfamilie im 19. Jahrhundert
Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, 24–26 October 2024

Proposals due by 15 April 2024

On the occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of the founding father of the Leuchtenberg dynasty—Eugène de Beauharnais, who died on 21 February 1824 in Munich—the German Center for Art History Paris (DFK Paris) is co-organizing, with the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, an international colloquium on the cultures of remembrance within the Leuchtenberg family. The Leuchtenbergs’ French-Napoleonic origins, as well as the loss of former greatness that accompanied the family’s exile in Bavaria and change of name, had a lasting impact on their position in the Kingdom of Bavaria, where, following Eugène’s appointment as the Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstätt by Maximilian I Joseph on 15 November 1817, they were the highest-ranking nobles outside the royal family.

The development of the various memorial practices and/or memorial concepts of this important noble family is to be examined against the backdrop of the specific cultures of remembrance that characterized the first half of the nineteenth century, which were shaped equally by the new emotional culture of the era of sentimentality as by the Restoration period with its anti-French tendencies. Their rich material legacy—which includes souvenir albums, commemorative pieces of jewellery, hand-crafted objects and furnishings, which today remain preserved in public and private collections—partakes of the epochal phenomenon of the “unübersehbare[n] Konjunktur des dinglichen Andenkens in der materiellen Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts” (unmistakable boom in souvenirs within the material culture of the nineteenth century) [Holm/Oesterle 2005]. In addition to objects, the Leuchtenbergs left behind abundant correspondence and diaries. Along with collections, libraries, and archives; moreover, they bequeathed a aristocratic culture of remembrance and a material culture that consisted not only of monuments—such as the heart urns, former in the chapel of the Palais Leuchtenberg in Munich and today in the Wittelsbachergruft in St Michael—but also charitable foundations and portraits. As “means of remembrance,” these are eloquent expressions of the intimate relationships among the individual family members, which intensified with the early death of the father and with the conditions of spatial separation that resulted from the family’s successful marriage politics. Aside from its main historical residences in France, Italy, and Bavaria, the family is traceable through the marriages of Joséphine von Leuchtenberg (1807–1876) in Sweden, of Amélie (1812–1873) in Brazil, of Auguste (1810–1835) in Portugal, and of Eugénie (1808–1847) and Théodelinde (1814–1857) in southern Germany (principalities of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Württemberg). The Russian phase of the family’s history began on 14 July 1839 with the marriage of the youngest son and heir, Maximilian, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg (1817–1852), to Maria Nikolaevna, the daughter of Tsar Nicholas I.

The aim of the colloquium is to document, for the first time, the “artifacts and media” scattered around the world from the Leuchtenberg estate and to jointly reassess them through the lens of the culture of remembrance, including questions of materiality and mediality, investigation of haptic properties and performativity, and the presentation of exact provenances. The ways in which objects were gifted, dedicated, passed down, and perhaps exchanged among the Leuchtenbergs are crucial for understanding their precise location in the memorial practices of the family. In addition to the sentimental-emotional orientation—e.g. commemorative objects “die der bedürftigen Seele zur Anlehnung dienen” (that offer support for the needy soul) [Praz], or the “Interieur als Fluchtorte in die Erinnerung” (interior as a place of escape into memory)—the question of commemorative motivation also arises in the case of the newly princely Leuchtenbergs. The exploration of “sozialer Sinn- und Zeithorizonte” (social horizons of meaning and time), for instance by examining the referentiality to the past and a still-to-be-defined orientation of the family’s culture(s) of remembrance, is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the Leuchtenberg family, which had to reinvent and assert itself as a dynasty in its time—as a Gedächtnisgemeinschaft, or community of memory [Jan Assmann; Pierre Nora].

The colloquium marks the conclusion of a long-term research project, wherein, after France and Italy, Bavaria is the current focus of research as the last of the three stages of Prince Eugène’s life. The period under investigation includes the lifetime of his wife Augusta Amalia of Bavaria (d. 1851), who as a supervisory entity decisively steered and shaped the mementos of Prince Eugène (Honneur et fidelité), as well as his direct descendants. Comparative examples from other families or national contexts that address questions around the aristocratic culture of remembrance in the nineteenth century are just as welcome as transdisciplinary and transcultural research approaches. Possible topics are: objects and object biographies (e.g. souvenirs, memorial jewellery, hand-crafted items); the culture of gifting; commemorative albums, including questions about performativity; communication culture (e.g. letters, diaries); memory in literature (e.g. biographies, editions of letters); monuments (e.g. commemorative plaques, grave monuments); collections (e.g. archives between Funktionsgedächtnis and Speichergedächtnis, libraries, art collections); places; domestic culture and materiality; festivals; travel; image culture (e.g. portraits); and the cults of family and friendship.

The colloquium will take place 24–26 October 2024 in the Mars-Venussaal of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich. Junior scholars are welcome to submit their proposals. Presentations are limited to 20 minutes, followed by a 15-minute discussion. Proposals are requested in German, French, or English by 15 April 2024 and should not exceed approximately 3,000 characters (including spaces), a short biography and contact details (email address, address, and institution). Submit proposals to the following address: leuchtenberg@dfk-paris.org. A notification of the acceptance of submissions will be made by the beginning of May 2024.

Organizing Committee
• Elisabeth Caude, Director of the Service à Compétence Nationale des musées nationaux des châteaux
de Malmaison et Bois-Préau, de l’île d’Aix et de la Maison Bonaparte à Ajaccio
• Dr Jörg Ebeling, Research Director, German Center for Art History Paris
• Dr Sybe Wartena, head of department, Furniture, games, musical instruments and models, Bavarian
National Museum, Munich

Scientific Committee
• Dr Birgit Jooss, Head of Art and Tradition, Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds
• Dr Sylvia Krauss-Meyl, Former Archive Director, Bayerischen Hauptstaatsarchiv München
• Lars Ljungström, Head of the Department of Collections and Documentation, Swedish Royal Collections
• Prof. Dr Hans Ottomeyer, Former President, Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
• Marina Rosa, Chair, Centro documentazione Residenze Reali Lombarde

A select bibliography for the Leuchtenberg Family is available with the full Call for Papers.

From the Call for Papers and ArtHist.net (which includes the Call for Papers in German). . .

Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints —
Part III: Collectors, Artists, Scholars: Knowledge and Will in Collection Catalogs
Bildwerdung der Antike: Zur Episteme von Zeichnungen und Druckgrafiken der Frühen Neuzeit — III: Sammler, Künstler, Gelehrte: Wissen und Wollen in Sammlungskatalogen
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 21 June 2024

Organized by Ulrich Pfisterer, Cristina Ruggero, and Timo Strauch

Proposals due by 17 March 2024

Lorenz Beger, Numismatum Modernorum Cimeliarchii Regio-Electoralis Brandenburgici Sectio Prima … (Coloniæ Brandenburgicæ 1704), p. 1 (Photo: UB Heidelberg).

The academy project Antiquitatum Thesaurus: Antiquities in European Visual Sources from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, hosted at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (thesaurus.bbaw.de/en), and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich (zikg.eu) are organizing a series of colloquia in 2023–2025 on the topic Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Drawings and Prints in the Early Modern Period. The significance of drawings and prints for ideas, research, and the circulation of knowledge about ancient artifacts, architecture, and images in Europe and neighboring areas from the late Middle Ages to the advent of photography in the mid-19th century will be examined. The two previous colloquia were dedicated to the topics of the ‘unrepresentable’ properties of the depicted objects and the documentation of different states and contexts of ancient artifacts. This third conference will explore the questions of form, purpose and meaning of images and illustrations in collection catalogs and the role of the people involved.

Collecting is one of the oldest human activities. The interest in gathering objects of varying artistic, scientific, historical, religious, idealistic and emotional value or antiquitates, realia, naturalia, and curiositates was initially documented primarily by written sources such as inventories, but since the 16th century there has been an increase in illustrated (drawn or printed) evidence of the passion for collecting. Our colloquium questions possibilities and strategies to visualize a collection. Descriptions of private or public collections, Thesauri, Monumenta, Specimens, Recueils, Specula, Theatra mundi, Segmenta nobilium, Admiranda antiquitatum, Corpora, and Commentaria are the most common titles of publications dedicated to the various types of collections of (antique) objects. The need to record their holdings in pictures, to give them a classificatory order, to supplement or interpret them descriptively with commentaries, grew particularly with the development of printmaking, while the drawn collection was usually the privilege of a few, mostly wealthy or educated personalities.

We would like to examine the illustrated collection catalogs and analyze the role of the collectors, artists, and scholars involved in relation to the knowledge and intentions expressed in the collection catalogs. Furthermore, we are interested in different uses of these important visual sources and strive to gain new insights into the functions and impact of these catalogs on the art world. Possible contributions can address the following aspects, but further suggestions are also welcome:
• First genre-specific or heterogeneous collection catalogs in Europe
• The role of collectors in the art world and their influence on the construction of collection catalogs
• The relationship between artists and collectors in relation to the presentation of artworks in catalogs
• The importance of scholars and experts in the creation of collection catalogs and their involvement in the creative process
• The range of visualization of collections as a whole and of the individual collection object; formats, techniques, plate vs. text illustration, etc.
• The possibilities of comparative representation, displaying different sizes, quantities, formal characteristics, thematic focuses, material values, etc.

Solicited for the third colloquium are papers in English, French, German, or Italian, 20 minutes in length, ideally combining case study and larger perspective. Proposals (maximum of 400 words), together with a short CV (maximum of 150 words), can be submitted until 17 March 2024 to thesaurus@bbaw.de, keyword ‘Episteme III’. Publication in extended form is planned. Travel and hotel expenses (economy-class flight or train; 2 nights’ accommodation) will be reimbursed according to the Federal Law on Travel Expenses (BRKG).

The fourth and final study day in the series—expected to take place in January 2025 on the occasion of a planned exhibition at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte—will be entitled Fake-News? Fantasy Antiquities and will address the problem of the authenticity of the antiquities depicted.

From ArtHist.net:

Valuing Luxury: Controversial Collections, Divisive Displays, and Ethical Exhibits
Collection of essays edited by Elisabetta Maistri and Robert Hanson

Proposals due by 15 March 2024; complete essays due by 1 November 2024

In an era concerned with social and historical injustices, of wealth inequality and exploitation, and increasing awareness of the anthropogenic ecological impact, the vast collections of luxury goods that fill museums seem at odds with the current political mood. Whilst luxuries have driven much of human development, our attitude towards justice compels us to ask the question: how should museums present their collections in a manner that celebrates humanity’s triumphs without erasing the injustices that fuelled them? This interdisciplinary anthology focuses on the dark side of luxuries from early modern empires, exploring the questions of how we should acknowledge, respond to, and represent their problematic legacies in the contemporary era in public and private collections. The book investigates the role and responsibilities of museums, our relationship with luxuries, and our duties to historical legacies, both good and bad.

We invite scholars to contribute case-study driven chapters which will see authors discuss the history, concept, and normativity of luxury status through the following thematic lenses:
1  Conceptualising Luxury
2  Decolonisation and Social Justice
3  Environment and Sustainability
4  Negative Heritage
5  Inequality and Excess
6  Appropriation and Repatriation
7  Luxury and Desperation

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words and should be submitted to rwhem19@gmail.com by 15th March 2024. Authors should state which theme their paper should be associated with. Please name the file as follow: Surname_THEME NUMBER_TOPIC

Successful abstracts will be called to submit the complete paper to the same email address by 1 November 2024, and will be subject to double-blind peer review prior to the submission of the anthology to the publishing house. Priority given to submissions on objects created prior to the 20th century and to objects associated with the global south. We are also particularly keen to promote the work from underrepresented demographics in the scholarship, particularly women and scholars from the global south.

More information is available here»

The Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies annual conference will be held in Lisbon, 8–12 July 2024.

Ships and Their Contents: Shipbuilding, Shipwrecks, and Global Circulation in the Iberian World, 1600–1800
Chaired by Sabina de Cavi and Luis Gordo Peláez

Proposals due by 21 January 2024

In a recent talk organized by the Getty Research Institute, Mirko Sardelić (Senior Research Associate of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts / The University of Western Australia) theorized about Renaissance ships as mobile cross-cultural systems. In response to the increasing academic interest in maritime history, ars navigandi, and maritime archaeology, this panel aims at discussing the materiality of ships and their role as cultural and artistic media in a transoceanic context. It focuses on the global trade in the Iberian World that was dominated by the two main urban centers and port cities of Seville and Lisbon and often interacted and clashed with English and Dutch interests. We welcome contributions on topics such as: the materiality and daily life on the early modern ship; economic partnerships for shipbuilding; shipwrecks, their representation and remains; the iconography of transatlantic cargo ships and the global trade (cartography); cargoes of art and precious goods; smuggling, docks and customs across the globe; marines and the maritime society in the broadest sense (gente di mare). Please submit a 300-word proposal, 5 keywords and a one-page CV before 21 January 2024 to Sabina de Cavi (scavi@fcsh.unl.pt) and Luis Gordo Peláez (luisgordopelaez@csufresno.edu).

As noted at Le Blog de l’ApAhAu:

Transferts culturels et tensions autour du modèle exogène: Architecture et aménagement du territoire: Le royaume de France et ses provinces dans l’Europe, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles
Université de Poitiers, 28 March 2024

Proposals due by 31 January 2024

Durant l’Ancien Régime, un réseau de relations intense a alimenté les échanges entre les foyers artistiques principaux mais également à travers des centres de production dits secondaires voire subalternes. L’étude des mobilités des hommes, des objets et des idées montre une variété des pratiques et des circulations qui oblige aujourd’hui à opérer des décentrements vers des modèles de compréhension des territoires et des phénomènes d’appropriation, hors du schéma, initié dès les années 1980 par E. Castelnuovo et C. Ginzburg sur le rapport entre centre et périphéries[1]. Dans un renouvellement des perspectives d’étude, ce cadre analytique fondateur mais désormais trop restrictif doit être reformulé pour mettre en place une réflexion autour de dynamiques spatiales qui s’intéressent aux capitales provinciales, aux villes frontières, aux territoires ruraux et aux arcs de circulation qui traversent l’Europe en marge des axes principaux.

Pour cette première journée d’études, l’approche privilégiée vise à mesurer si le concept de centralisation des standards culturels reste pertinent face à des territoires larges, rarement connectés par les études contemporaines.

• Un premier axe s’intéressera à la question de l’étude des constructions historiographiques autour des nationalismes artistiques, de la mise en place des principes de domination centre / périphérie et marges, etc.
• Un deuxième axe examinera le rapport au lieu, la prise en compte des qualités intrinsèques des contextes pour mieux comprendre les schémas de diffusion dans un système où modèles et vocabulaires exogènes peinent souvent à s’imposer.

Nous attendons des communications portant spécifiquement sur l’aménagement du territoire et l’architecture.

Les communications dureront 30 minutes. Les propositions de communication d’environ 200 mots, accompagnées d’une courte notice bio-bibliographique seront à envoyer, au plus tard le 31 janvier 2024 à marie.luce.pujalte.fraysse@univ-poitiers.fr, magaly.piquart@gmail.com, et poteljean@gmail.com.

1 Enrico Castelnuovo et Carlo Ginzburg, « Domination symbolique et géographie artistique dans l’histoire de l’art italien », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 40, novembre 1981, Sociologie de l’œil, p.51–72.

Comité d’organisation
• Marie-Luce Pujalte-Fraysse, Maître de Conférences HDR en histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Poitiers
• Magaly Piquart-Vesperini, Doctorante en histoire de l’architecture moderne, Paris I, Ater en histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Poitiers
• Jean Potel, Doctorant en histoire de l’architecture moderne, Sorbonne Université

From ArtHist.net:

Nature and Landscape in Schubert’s Time: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Schubert Research Center, Wien / Vienna, 23–25 October 2024

Proposals due by 14 April 2024

The relationship between nature and landscape on the one hand and the arts on the other changed during the early nineteenth century. Due to fundamental developments in the history of ideas, nature and landscape experienced manifold increases in significance and often served as a reflection of the inner state of individuals and groups. These phenomena affected not only the music of Franz Schubert (1797–1828), but also compositions of his contemporaries as well as literature, theater, and the visual arts in the Habsburg Empire.

This conference, therefore, encourages an interdisciplinary approach. We particularly invite contributions on the following topics:
• Relationships between the individual and nature, e.g. the motif of the ‘Wanderer’
• The (re)discovery of nature and landscape in the Habsburg Empire, the use and instrumentalization of nature for political purposes, and the beginning of nature-oriented tourism
• Social components of nature, e.g. urban-rural polarizations
• Topics of environmentalism in Schubert’s time
• Ecomusicological approaches

We are also open to other related topics. Applications should include a short CV and an abstract of about 300 words. These materials should be sent to schubert@oeaw.ac.at no later than 14 April 2024. The Schubert Research Center will cover travel expenses and accommodation. The conference language is English.

From ArtHist.net:

The Environmental Impacts of Early Modern Catholic Missions in the Atlantic Space
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 9 March 2024
Université du Québec à Montréal, 18 March 2024

Proposals due by 31 December 2023

These series of workshops aim to explore the role of the Catholic Church, through its missionary undertaken, in the global environmental upheavals and discoveries of the early modern period. Venturing wide and far beyond the familiar European sphere, early modern missionaries frequently used the rhetoric of Theatrum Mundi to reflect on their encounters with previously unknown cultures. What has escaped scholars’ attention, however, is how these rapidly evolving dramas of evangelization in turn shaped the seemingly timeless backstage setting of Nature. As the missionaries voyaged away and established new religious communities, they were not only faced with social and cultural challenges raised by the vastly different linguistic, political, and philosophical traditions, but they also had to adapt to unfamiliar geographical, climate, and material conditions as they sought to construct churches or realize liturgical rituals, not to mention the extensive agricultural and medical activities they had to pick up for personal survival in often severe natural conditions.

We would like to ask and try to answer questions such as:
• How did the missionaries adapt to local conditions of climate, sunlight, and building technologies when constructing churches?
• How did the missionaries accommodate rituals and its theological implications (such as the presence of wine and bread in the Mass) in reaction to local natural resources?
• How did early modern missionaries develop survival precautions over time to adapt to the dangers of these new natural environments?
• To what extent were the early modern global missionary activities impacted by major environmental crisis of this period, such as the epidemics or the Little Ice Age?
• How did the missionaries’ encounters with new geographical spaces and conditions stimulate knowledge creation and circulation, such as in the areas of cartography, botany, zoology, and medicine?

These are a few of the many possible new questions we hope to explore in this workshop. One overarching method we want to propose is to think about early modern Catholicism in the plural term, as theorized by Simon Ditchfield. Studies on post-Tridentine missions tended to emphasize the central authoritative role of Rome, focusing especially on the role of the missionary as leader in the creating of new religiosity, new economical exchanges, or new societies. The new attention paid to missionaries’ interactions with local natural conditions will complexified our understanding of Rome as one of the few truly global institutions of the early modern period acting not only as a religious and evangelist force but also in the colonialist expansions.

These two workshops will be consecrated to the missions in the Atlantic space. It will be followed by a second series of workshop in 2025 to look over the Pacific space and will be concluded by an edited volume. Please send an title, a short abstract (300 words) and a one-page CV to harvey.isabel@uqam.ca, Alysee.Le-Druillenec@univ-paris1.fr, and wenjies@princeton.edu, before 31 December 2023.

Organizers
Isabel Harvey (Université du Québec à Montréal), Alysée Le Druillenec (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne), and Wenjie Su (Princeton University)