Enfilade

While the main deadline for submitting paper proposals for consideration for CAA 2015 passed earlier this month, here’s a late due date for a 90-minute session sponsored by the Historians of British Art:

CAA 2015 Session | Home Subjects: Domestic Space and the Arts in Britain, 1753–1900
College Art Association Conference, New York, 11–14 February 2015

Proposals due by 15 August 2014

Session chairs:
Dr. Melinda McCurdy (Associate Curator of British Art, Huntington Art Collections), mmccurdy@huntington.org
Dr. Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University), morna.oneill@gmail.com
Dr. Anne Nellis Richter (independent scholar and adjunct instructor, American University), anne.nellis@gmail.com

Home Subjects is a new research working group which aims to illuminate the domestic display of art in Britain. Our goal is to examine the home as a place to view and exhibit works of art within the historical context of the long nineteenth century. Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of the house itself and notions of ‘domesticity’ as important touchstones in British culture. At the same time, art historians have tended to focus on a history of British art premised on the display of art in public; according to this important narrative, British art developed in relationship to the public sphere in the eighteenth century. Art institutions and exhibitions asserted the importance of the display of art in forming audiences into publics in cultural and political terms. Such efforts continued in the ‘exhibition age’ of the nineteenth century, when display of artwork in museums, galleries, and special exhibitions solidified the important role given to art in articulating a public sphere. This narrative overlooks the continuation of older paradigms of display, especially those premised on the private and domestic audience for works of art. Within this context, the country house takes it place alongside the townhouse as an important venue for the display of art. We aim to explore this ‘counter-narrative’ of the home as the ideal place to view works of art, a view which permeated all areas of art and design and which persisted throughout the nineteenth century, despite the prevailing narrative of the development of public museums.

Also at stake in this project is a reconsideration of domesticity and its relationship to modernity. Important recent scholarship has illuminated some of the ways in which entrenched narratives of modernity and artistic modernism were defined in opposition to the domestic sphere. In a typical avant-garde gambit, artists distinguished works of art from objects of interior decoration by rejecting the private and the domestic. This session aims to bring together scholars whose work addresses this topic in order to posit a new trajectory for modernity, one that can be traced through the private, domestic sphere.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• the display of easel painting and its relationship to the domestic interior
• decorative arts, their status as works of art and relationship to interior decoration
• domestic architecture and museum/gallery architecture, both public and private
• collecting and taste
• the interrelationship between private and public modes of display and decoration

Proposal abstracts should be no more than 500 words, and should be accompanied by a current 2-page c.v. and must be received by email to homesubjects@gmail.com by August 15, 2014. Please also include a mailing address, telephone number, and email.

As posted at H-ArtHist:

The Material Culture of Magic
Book Project Edited by Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie and Leo Ruickbie

Proposals due by 1 August 2014

Magic is a wide field of research comprising what we might call the occult, paranormal events, anomalous experience, spirituality and other phenomena throughout human history. However, research has often been focused more narrowly on the historical analysis of written sources, or the anthropology and occasionally sociology of practitioners and their communities, for example. What is often overlooked are the physical artefacts of magic themselves.

In all areas of research, ‘material culture’ is becoming increasingly important—the ‘material turn’ as it has been labelled. This is particularly the case for disciplines that traditionally have not focused on object studies but on theory such as historical or social sciences. However, it is self-evident that the objects emerging from a culture provide valuable information on societies and their history. This is also and particularly the case for magic and related phenomena. Magic, especially, became divorced from its concrete expressions as academic study focused on problems of rationality and functionalist explanation. (more…)

As posted at H-ArtHist:

The Ends of American Art
Stanford University, 7–8 November 2014

Proposals due by 9 June 2014

The Art & Art History Department at Stanford University invites submissions from advanced graduate students for a unique opportunity to share your work in a collaborative setting with leading scholars of American art and visual culture. The Ends of American Art International Conference is designed to explore new possibilities for
thinking about, performing, producing, and writing the history of American art.  It will meditate on the ‘ends of American Art’ by questioning whether certain longstanding tropes within the field may now be outmoded (e.g. nationalism, American art as a history of painting and sculpture). Looking forward, we will also ponder what the new goals (or ‘ends’) of the field should be in the 21st century.

The two-day event will feature papers by senior scholars as well as two ‘workshop’ panels in which selected graduate students will present a 5-minute presentation of their project using only 1 slide. These workshops are designed to both gain a sense of the current landscape of the field and to offer participating students feedback from a diverse interdisciplinary audience in a workshop context.

Conference Features for Selected Participants
• Round-trip airfare to SFO International Airport, lodging while in Palo Alto, and ground transportation during the conference
• Opportunity to workshop your project in a collaborative setting with leading scholars from multiple fields
• Opportunity to witness the current shape of scholarship in American Art and Visual Culture as animated in the work of other advanced graduate students in the U.S. and abroad
• Be among the first scholars to view the Anderson Collection of American Art soon to be installed in a new building next to Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center
•Participate in the live webcast of the conference, which will feature real-time forums online in addition to the discussions taking place at Stanford

Eligibility
• Dissertation project must address issues in American art and visual culture, broadly defined in terms of historical period and interpretive approach (projects from all disciplines are welcome and encouraged)
• Students must be in the writing stage of the dissertation (ABD status or equivalent)

Requirement for Submission
1. CV (including university affiliation, contact information for Dissertation Committee Chair, and expected date of completion)
2. 250-word abstract of your project
3. 1 image that will be the subject of your 5-minute presentation

Please send all documents to ebennet@stanford.edu by 9 June 2014.

Now accepting proposals for this panel for next year’s ISECS Congress in Rotterdam:

The International Thread: Lace and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century Europe
ISECS Congress, Rotterdam, 26–31 July 2015

Proposals due by 15 June 2014

Chairs: Tara Zanardi, (Department of Art & Art History Hunter College/CUNY 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065; tzanardi@hunter.cuny.edu), and Michael Yonan, (Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Missouri, 21 Parker Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211; yonanm@missouri.edu)

Enormous amounts of lace flooded the marketplaces of eighteenth-century Europe, which fostered a vibrant international trade. This marketplace centered on competition between the Low Countries (especially the regions that now comprise Belgium) and northern France, two areas that included Europe’s most technically accomplished lacemaking centers, including Alençon, Argentan, Brussels, Mechlin, and Valenciennes. These towns exported huge quantities of lace to an international clientele and competed with locally manufactured lace. Our panel seeks papers that examine how lace operated within eighteenth-century mercantile networks, economic systems, and black markets. What were the trade factors that affected the distribution of lace, both locally and globally, and how did those factors affect working conditions, design choices, and the objects created? How did these market conditions affect what lace was used for, be it garments, decorative items, or household textiles? Topics might include treatments of lace and lace making in gendered terms, as statements of regional or national pride, labor practices in lacemaking, techniques and materials, and the industry’s global ambitions. Interdisciplinary papers are especially welcome.

As noted at The History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland (among other places) . . .

Intersections: Yearbook for Early Modern Studies 2017
The Global Republic of Sacred Things: The Circulation of Religious Art in the Early Modern World

Proposals due by 30 June 2014

Sixteenth-century Europe was a time when monarchial territories were redrawn, permanent schisms split a single church, and sustained, repeated circumnavigation of the globe was achieved for the first time. The ‘globalization’ of the early modern world expanded and transformed the ‘Republic of Things’. While there has been an increasing literature on biographies and itineraries of objects, European religious overseas networks, often at the heart of Protestant Reformation and post-Tridentine political, geographical and theological reform, have received considerably less attention to date. How, for example, did points of contact by agent, merchant and missionary impact the early modern imagination as a social practice? And how did the journeys of images, artifacts, and precious cargoes across intersecting networks affect their value and use? Previously, these webs of communication
bore only incidental information about the material cultures their presence at the frontiers of known lands stimulated at home and abroad. Further still, as European systems largely governed by and for Europeans, the things that linked religious and commercial networks have the potential to offer insight into Europe’s initial attempts to grapple with long-distance contact zones. In a challenge to models of individual organizations, cultural comparisons, and post-colonial theories of industrialized societies, this volume seeks to consider how a sacred Republic of Things—material residues of global encounter most broadly conceived (masterpieces, decorative art and functional objects)—can cast light on the dramatis personae of the fifteenth- to eighteenth-centuries as they came to terms with an expanding world.

Objects should give some evidence of the interaction of Europe with Asia, Africa or the Americas, and religious ‘things’, or objects of devotion, that have not yet had their moment in the sun are ideal. We are particularly interested in the production of artisanal cultures, local accommodation via technologies and materials, shifting currencies of value and objects used against the grain of their intended purpose. Issues at stake could include, but need not be limited to, the globalization of different types of religious subjects or objects, the use of new media (either alone or in conjunction with others), mimesis and memory, spolia and translation, commoditization and mobility.

Working Schedule
Proposals are due June 30, 2014.
Applicants will be notified no later than July 31, 2014.
First drafts of papers (approximately 8,000 words, including endnotes) will be expected by December 15, 2015.
An intensive workshop (pending funding) will take place the week of January 18, 2016.
Final papers should be sent to the editors by July 1, 2016.
Publication is scheduled for 2017.

Please send proposals (PDF format preferred) before June 30, 2014 to both editors (Prof. Dr. Christine Göttler, Prof. Dr. Mia M. Mochizuki)
with:
1. A one-page abstract (300 words) with at least one exemplary image
2. A curriculum vitae (maximum two pages)
christine.goettler@ikg.unibe.ch
mia.mochizuki@nyu.edu

Tableau Vivant: La Politique de l’Interruption
Paris, 31 October 2014

Proposals due by 15 June 2014

Journée d’études organisée par Michel Poivert et Julie Ramos

Désormais étudié dans ses différentes modalités historiques et esthétiques, le tableau vivant ne cesse de nous interroger sur la puissance d’un arrêt (du geste comme de l’image) : quelle est la nature de la force expressive de l’immobilité ? Considérer parfois comme anachronique au regard des arts du mouvement, le tableau vivant dans ce qu’il peut avoir d’archaïque propose une intensité que le théâtre ou l’arrêt sur image au cinéma ont largement expérimentée. L’artifice de l’immobilité contrainte des tableaux vivants peut-elle se comprendre à l’aune d’une réflexion sur les rapports entre l’image et le politique ? En performant le tableau vivant, la scène et le corps s’inscrivent dans une relation à l’espace social qui n’est pas dénué d’enjeux idéologiques. Objet singulier de l’histoire de l’art, le tableau vivant ouvre en réalité des perspectives plus larges qui concernent toutes les pratiques artistiques, le théâtre et la danse, la vidéo et la performance, ou bien encore l’installation. En proposant de repérer les enjeux politiques de l’immobilité à travers le paradigme du tableau vivant, il sera question d’autorité et de liberté, de l’économie générale du rapport entre le spectateur, l’auteur et l’acteur, et peut être aussi de penser la question de la création en dehors de l’image.

Date limite de réception des propositions de communication : 15 juin 2014.Les propositions doivent être adressées à Michel Poivert (m.poivert@orange.fr) et Julie Ramos (julie.ramos@free.fr). Les propositions de communication ne devront pas dépasser 300 mots et comporter : nom et prénom de(s) auteur(s), court C.V. et bibliographie sélective, titre(s), fonction(s) et institution de rattachement, coordonnées (adresse postale et électronique, téléphone), titre de la communication et principaux arguments.

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Le « tableau vivant » questionne les définitions traditionnelles de l’art. Communément défini comme un arrangement de personnes vivantes reproduisant de manière immobile une composition artistique, que ce soit une peinture, une sculpture ou une estampe, le tableau vivant aurait, selon un récit largement admis, connu son apogée au XIXe siècle (notamment par sa désignation en 1839 dans le récit La Toison d’or de Gautier.) C’est toutefois à cette période qu’il commence à être dévalorisé pour ses rapports avec le divertissement populaire, la photographie, voire l’érotisme. Cette croyance en un déclin du tableau vivant a contribué à concentrer son étude autour de 1800 (voir l’étude pionnière de Kirsten G. Holmström), à occulter ses origines plus anciennes, ainsi qu’à négliger ses évolutions ultérieures et son apport à l’histoire de l’art. L’objectif de la journée d’étude est de pallier ces manques en rassemblant des spécialistes du Moyen Âge, de l’époque moderne (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles) et de la période contemporaine, afin d’en saisir les enjeux dans la longue durée.

Les études sur le tableau vivant ont jusqu’à présent majoritairement été menées par des historiens du spectacle. Ils l’ont en effet rattachés aux réformes scéniques du XVIIIe siècle, qu’il s’agisse de la redécouverte de la pantomime antique chez les théoriciens de la danse (Cahusac, Noverre, etc.) ou de la théorie du « quatrième mur » de Diderot, qui valorise l’immobilisation de l’action théâtrale en un « tableau dramatique ». À ces éléments s’ajoute l’ascendant, analysé par les historiens de l’art, des théories néo-classiques (Winckelmann, Lessing, etc.), qui préconisent pour les arts visuels la représentation du « moment fécond » d’une action, rendu sensible dans un geste suspendu exprimant la vie intérieure des figures. La plupart des spécialistes identifient ainsi le premier tableau vivant moderne dans la reproduction de L’Accordée de village de Jean-Baptiste Greuze au milieu de l’acte II des Noces d’Arlequin donné par Carlin à la Comédie Italienne, en 1761, l’année même de l’exposition de la toile au Salon.

Le tableau vivant s’émancipe ensuite rapidement de la scène pour se propager comme genre autonome dans les salons privés de l’élite cultivée européenne. S’y associe la pratique dite des « attitudes », inaugurée par Emma Hart, épouse de Sir William Hamilton, qui adoptait des « poses plastiques » inspirées des statues antiques et des silhouettes des vases étrusques de la collection de son époux. Enfin, Goethe contribue à la vogue des tableaux vivants au XIXe siècle, en les insérant dans la trame de son roman Les Affinités électives (1809). Il avait non seulement assisté au « attitudes » de Lady Hamilton lors de son voyage à Naples en 1787 et avait inclus le tableau vivant à ses réflexions sur le théâtre (voir l’essai sur son monodrame Proserpine) mais il en avait aussi été l’ordonnateur à la cour de Weimar.

Le tableau vivant et ses genres connexes (les attitudes et « poses plastiques ») questionnent les frontières à la fois esthétiques et sociales : entre œuvre originale et reproduction, imitation d’une image et présence des protagonistes, auteur et spectateur, mise en scène de soi et voyeurisme. Il contribue notamment à briser le contrôle à l’accès culturel, par son lien aux pratiques amateures et par ses déplacements d’un monde « aristocratique » et « artiste » aux scènes populaires, aux ateliers de photographie et aux premières projections filmiques. Au-delà de l’histoire du tableau vivant durant les XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, qui contribue à l’arrimer à la question du « faire tableau » dans l’ensemble des arts, l’étude de ses précédents dans les Mystères médiévaux et les fêtes d’Ancien Régime ouvre d’autres perspectives. Si les chercheurs n’ont repéré, pour ces périodes anciennes, qu’une seule occurrence d’une performance réalisée d’après une œuvre d’art (la reproduction du fameux polyptyque de l’Agneau Mystique des frères Van Eyck lors de l’entrée de Philippe le Bon à Gand en 1458), nombreuses sont les performances de personnes s’immobilisant pour « faire image » à l’occasion des rituels religieux et princiers. Leur disparition progressive au profit des « machines » et des décors imposés par la monarchie absolue pose la question du pouvoir qui s’y déploie. Pouvoir de figer l’infigurabilité du vivant ? Ou revanche du vivant sur l’image lors de performances dont l’hybridité fondamentale (entre l’art et de la vie) permet d’en briser l’efficacité ? Ces questions semblent réactualisées par les pratiques plus contemporaines du tableau vivant, du cinéma à l’art contemporain, en passant par le très populaire festival Pageant of the Masters, organisé à Laguna Beach depuis 1933. Elles permettent d’envisager les relations entre image et performativité, leurs affinités et leurs tensions dans l’instant suspendu. Elles supposent d’interroger le rôle de l’auteur de ces images collectives, mais aussi leur dimension politique.

Images IV: Images of the Other: Istanbul—Vienna—Venice
Austrian Cultural Forum, Istanbul, 2–4 September 2014

Proposals due by 20 June 2014

After the conferences Images I: Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters (2011), Images II: Images of the Poor (2012), and Images III: Images of the City (2013), the Images Project is planning to focus on ‘Images of the Other’ as documented in images and representations of Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice in its 2014 conference.

Since the Middle Ages all three cities have been (culturally) mythologized as points of cultural intersection in works of literature, arts and film—be it as the spaces where East meets West, where lines blur between the conscious and the subconscious, between life and death, between the visible/ the seen and the invisible/ the unseen, or as spaces identified with the evil, as the Moloch luring—all these mythologizations being part both of the self-perception documented in the native cultural production and of the perception from the (cultural) ‘outside’. Regarding this fact the Images project has decided to discuss the (historically) changing representation and perception of the three cities in its 2014 conference Images IV: Images of the Other: Istanbul—Vienna—Venice, with the representations being seen as documentations of cultural approaches and also of cultural concepts. Hence, the historically grown mythologizations of the three cities create a sheer unlimited number of potential cases of both cultural encounters and conflicts, including most of the socially relevant fields in the academic discourse on the topic, like politics, communication, culture, and migration.

In order to discuss issues like the above mentioned Images IV: Images of the Other: Istanbul—Vienna—Venice invites scholars, architects, photographers, writers, artists, and filmmakers to propose papers in the following fields of research and interest:

• The Making of a Myth (theoretical approaches with special reference to Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice)
• The psychology of feeling Istanbulite, Viennese and Venetian
• The psychology of attraction (theoretical approaches with special reference to Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice)
• Istanbul’s, Vienna’s, Venice’s cityscape as a (mythologized) statement
• The impact of the media (news, internet, daily soaps) on the perception of Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice
• Images of Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice in feature films (present and past)
• Images of Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice in the Arts (present and past)
• Images of Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice as seen by photographers (present and past)
• Images of Istanbul, Vienna, and Venice in literature (present and past)

The conference Images IV: Images of the Other: Istanbul—Vienna—Venice is planned as an interdisciplinary international conference. It will bring together senior scholars with PhD students, postdoctoral academics, and members of the artistic community without following the classical keynote speaker pattern but rather inviting all speakers either to present their research findings in 20-minute (paper) presentations plus 10 minutes for discussion or in 120–150 minute panels (4–5 panelists). There will be no parallel sessions. All sessions will be plenary sessions. The conference language is English. Selected articles of each session/ field of research will be published as a volume of conference proceedings. Münster, Berlin, Vienna and New York based LIT Verlag has already declared strong interest in publishing the conference proceedings. The publication will provide limited space for black-and-white illustrations. Please, send paper proposals to images-1@gmx.at and cc them to veronika.bernard@uibk.ac.at and otuzun@hotmail.com and gonul.ucele@bahcesehir.edu.tr

Deadline for paper submission for publication in conference proceedings: 1 month after conference
Planned date of publication of conference proceedings: July 2015

Images Project Director
Veronika Bernard (University of Innsbruck)

Conference Organizing Committee
Veronika Bernard (University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck)
Hatice Övgü Tüzün (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul)
Gönül Ücele (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul)

Thanks again to Christina Smylitopoulos, HECAA is scheduled to be represented at this year’s UAAC Conference! Details and a full list of panels are available here»

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Universities Art Association of Canada / l’association d’art des universités du Canada
OCAD University, Toronto, 20–26 October 2014

Proposals due by 18 June 2014

HECAA Open Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)
The objective of this society is to stimulate, foster, and disseminate knowledge of all aspects of visual culture in the long eighteenth century. This HECAA open session welcomes papers that examine any aspect of art and visual culture from the 1680s to the 1830s. Special consideration will be given to proposals that demonstrate innovation in theoretical and/or methodological approaches. Please email proposals for 20-minute papers to Dr. Christina Smylitopoulos (University of Guelph), csmylito@uoguelph.ca.

Collecting and Display: New Directions in Museology
MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen, 10–12 October 2014

Proposals due by 16 June 2014

Research in the history of collecting has often focused on the development and the uses of historical collections of art and artefacts, their composition and the choreography of display. Over the past decade, the international forum Collecting & Display has been investigating diverse aspects of Collecting History: female collectors, dynastic ambition, the role of nature, or the location of display rooms within the context of princely residences.

To celebrate the first decade of our existence as well as the launch of a dedicated series of publications—Collecting Histories under the editorship of founding member Andrea Gáldy, PhD, FHistS—we propose a conference dedicated to new directions in the areas of collecting, display, visitor experience and the use of modern media in today’s museums that might or might not dispel with the need to engage with actual objects, and whether and how the engagement with the history of collections has influenced and modified contemporary museology.

With this event we intend to look forward towards a future, which oftentimes looks bleak due to funding cuts but also offers exciting prospects as far as the diverse possibilities of display are concerned; not to forget the rising visitor numbers at many of the great museums worldwide. What is the mission of collections and museums? And, how does one balance the history of collections and the collections themselves against the need for outreach activities, the call for edutainment and popular access in conjunction with a sustainable use of collectibles? Is there a way in which the past of a collection may point the way towards the best practice in use and presentation of the exhibits? The organisers of this conference invite proposals from scholars of the history of collecting as well as museum professionals (curators, art historians, librarians, administrators, IT specialists) who intend to explore the intersection between scholarly approach to and hands-on occupation with collections.

Keywords
Target audience and visitor experience
Museum outreach and education
Technical innovation
Knowledge and collections
State of the art museum display in a period/listed building
Coping with diminishing funding
Who cares about cultural heritage and whose is it anyway?

Please send proposals of c. 250 words to Dr Andrea Gáldy collecting_display@hotmail.com and Dr Axel Lapp axel.lapp@memmingen.de by 16 June 2014.

While this is primarily a Renaissance and seventeenth-century project, the organ of San Pietro di Castello is the mid-eighteenth-century work of Pietro Nachini. Surely ‘San Pietro in the Eighteenth Century’ would make a fine epilogue to the proceedings . . .

The Church of San Pietro di Castello and the Birth of the Patriarchate of Venice
Venice, 10–12 December 2015

Proposals due by 15 June 2014

The research project Chiese di Venezia. Nuove prospettive di ricerca (Churches of Venice. New Research Perspectives), promoted by the Studium Generale Marcianum and representing one of the activities of the ISSR San Lorenzo Giustiniani, consists in a long-term program of multidisciplinary conferences, each focused on a particular church of Venice. The project aims at promoting the combination of the different disciplines in order to understand the complex phenomena and dynamics of which Venetian churches, in their articulate reality and manifold meanings, have been catalyst elements for centuries. Besides facing in an innovative way the study of the churches of Venice, ‘releasing’ the potentialities of each discipline through their mutual comparison, the project takes up the challenge of reaching a wider public than just the specialist one, whose contributions, constituting a central aspect, are collected in a special series of volumes edited by Marcianum Press.

After the study of  the churches of San Bartolomeo (2011), of the Scalzi (2012), of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti (2013) and of San Zaccaria (scheduled for 2014), the conference of 10–12 December 2015 will be dedicated to the study of the church of San Pietro di Castello. In the context of the urban development of Venice, the Olivolo Island, set at the extreme peripheral area of the town, was appointed to be the see of the Bishop’s complex (including the cathedral, the bishop’s palace and the residences of the canons) since the 9th century. Since 1451, when the island was chosen to be the seat of the Patriarch of Venice, a series of urban and architectural renewals led to a complete restoration of the complex by Mauro Codussi, Andrea Palladio, Francesco Smeraldi, Gerolamo Grappiglia and Baldassarre Longhena.

The conference will concentrate on the transformation from the Episcopate of Castello to the Patriarchate of Venice, in the framework of Renaissance Venice, and will focus the attention on the early patriarchs, particularly on Lorenzo Giustiniani. The figure of the proto-patriarch of Venice, who played a fundamental role in the history of the local Church, will be studied not only in the context of the changing fortunes of the Venetian Church of the 15th century but also in the wider context of the changing fortunes of the whole town during 16th and 17th centuries, when the process of canonization and the following worship of the Saint represented the key to discover the relationship between Church and state. The conference intends to reconsider, from a multidisciplinary point of view, the role of the Patriarchate in the history of the town, starting from the church of San Pietro di Castello in its architectural consistency, passing on to the following decoration campaigns and getting to the 17th century rebuilding.

In particular, the following topics will be analysed:
• The area of the parish: social and pastoral aspects
• The curia: the patriarchal palace and the residences of the canons. Historical-architectural aspects, fortunes of the chancellery and life of the familia patriarchalis
• The Giustinianean Reform in the context of the Italian Church of 15th century
• Worship and music in San Pietro di Castello
• The church’s interior decoration between the 15th and 16th century
• The façade: sacred liturgy and urban ritual
• The worship of Saint Lorenzo Giustiniani: religious and civil rituals. The worship of the Saint in the area of the Republic: prayers, churches, place names and festivals dedicated to San Lorenzo Giustiniani outside Venice
• The iconography of Saint Lorenzo Giustiniani
• Seventeenth-century church: the chancel (architecture, painting, sculpture), the Vendramin Chapel and Luca Giordano. The interior decoration of the church.

Proposals, accompanied by a brief abstract (200 words, max 1200 characters) and by a one-page cv, will have to be submitted sending an e-mail to chiesedivenezia@marcianum.it by 15th June 2014. Successful applicants will be notified by 31st July 2014.