- NoB Lecture: Maria Alessia Rossi, Princeton University, and Alice Isabella Sullivan, Tufts University – “Women’s Impact: Byzantium in the Visual Culture of Medieval Eastern Europe” – University of British Columbia | 22 March 2023
- Abstract: Byzantium has long shaped the history and visual culture of medieval Eastern Europe, which have transformed in local contexts the rich legacy of the medieval Eastern Roman Empire before and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This lecture explores the history and artistic production of medieval Eastern Europe in relation to Byzantium through the lens of two notable women and their impact: Simonis, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II (r. 1282–1328) and wife of the Serbian King Milutin (r. 1282–1321), and Maria Asanina Palaiologina of Mangup, the second wife of Stephen III of Moldavia (r. 1457–1504). These royal women played critical roles in establishing diplomatic connections and promoting artistic contacts between the Byzantine cultural sphere and the Serbian and Moldavian realms, respectively. The analysis of key objects and monuments – ranging from monumental building projects to mural cycles, textiles, manuscripts, and metalwork – reveals local adaptations of competing traditions and how interconnected the regions of the Balkans and the Carpathians were relative to Byzantium and to each other during and after the empire’s collapse. In addition, the lecture outlines current scholarly approaches to the study of the visual culture of medieval Eastern Europe, and engages with theoretical concerns and issues of terminology around the study of art and architecture in cross-cultural and transcultural contexts.
- Conference session: What is Eastern European Art? – SHERA-sponsored session at the 111th Annual College Art Association Conference – New York City | 17 February 2023
- Speakers:
- Catherine Volmensky (The University of British Columbia) – “Byzantine Embroideries and the Entangled Visual Traditions of Eastern Europe”
- Radek Przedpełski (Trinity College Dublin) & Marta Zboralska (University of Oxford) – “Problematising the Notion of ‘Eastern European Art’: Two Case Studies of a Multiplicity”
- Jelena Bogdanović (Vanderbilt University) – “Women Architects at the Intersection of Contested Narratives and Research Methods about Eastern Europe”
- Nicoletta Rousseva (Indiana University, Bloomington) – “‘Tear Down and Rebuild’: New Political Horizons in Eastern European Art”
- NoB Lecture: Ivan Drpić, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania – “The Gold of Banjska” – Dumbarton Oaks | 24 March 2022
- Abstract: Midway through the quick succession of brief biographical notes about Serbian monarchs and potentates that comprise the so-called Genealogy of Karlovci, a fifteenth-century text, the reader comes across a passage of considerable art-historical import. Writing about the great works of royal and clerical patronage, the anonymous author declares that “the pavement of the church at Prizren, the church of Dečani, the narthex of Peć, the gold of Banjska, and the paintings of Resava are to be found nowhere else.” This lecture takes the peculiar reference to “the gold of Banjska” as the point of entry into an exploration of a little-studied phenomenon—the extensive use of gilding in medieval Serbian wall painting. The results of recently conducted technical analyses will be used to illuminate this phenomenon and clarify its significance for finding the place of Serbia on the artistic map of the later Middle Ages.
- Co-sponsored Lecture: Michele Bacci, Professor of Medieval Art, University of Fribourg, Switzerland – “Conceptualizing the ‘Adriatic’: Artistic Interactions in Late Medieval Dalmatia” – Joan Carlisle-Irving Lecture Series, University of British Columbia | 26 January 2022
- Abstract: The artistic production of medieval Dalmatia has long been interpreted as the outcome of artistic interactions between different cultures. The present paper will propose a reconsideration of the conceptual grounds on which the “Adriatic” has been construed as a liminal, or hybrid, artistic context. Emphasis will be laid on a relatively large number of 14th-century paintings which came to be attributed to the Adriatic Eastern coast on account of their distinctive mixture of Venetian and Byzantine forms. It will investigate the extent to which an unconventional combination of forms was understood as a clue to the origin from an area deemed to be the site of overlapping artistic geographies. At the same time, it will delve into the analysis of some distinctive case studies that may shed light on the multifarious approaches toward styles and pictorial traditions encountered in the multi-layered societies of Dalmatia’s port towns in the late Medieval period.
- Call for Papers: Women and Artistic Production Beyond the Borders of Byzantium – International Medieval Congress | Leeds
