Medieval and Early Modern Art and Visual Culture
2 December 2022 at 2:30:00 am
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Session Convenors
Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne
Session Speakers
Amelia Pontifex, Monash University
Danielle Pezzi, Monash University
Dr Judith Collard, University of Melbourne
This session features papers about art and visual culture in the medieval and early modern periods.
From Paré to Fontana: Hirsute children and miracle working images
Amelia Pontifex, Monash University
In Les Monstres et Prodigies (1573) French Renaissance surgeon Ambroise Paré discussed the story of a woman who gave birth to a hirsute child as a result of having ‘gazed too intensely’ at a painting of John the Baptist in his hair shirt. Scholars such as Michael Baxandall and David Freedberg, among others have sought to draw attention to the history of the idea that images could exert extra-pictorial agency and affect as in Paré’s account. This paper will discuss a number of literary texts on visual culture at the time on the power of images, the extra-pictorial abilities and properties attributed to images and how these images were believed to create change. Developing from theories by Michael Baxandall and David Freedberg, among others, and referencing medical texts at the time, this paper will make a detailed study of the history of the trope of women influenced by images and consider images of hirsute children and images that might encourage such affects.
Medea the Wife: A Perfect Bride in Quattrocento Italian Domestic Art
Danielle Pezzi, Monash University
Medea the Wife: A Perfect Bride in Quattrocento Italian Domestic Art investigates Medea's representation in fifteenth-century Italian domestic art – her earliest appearance since antiquity in art outside of Medieval manuscript illumination. Quattrocento marital art such as cofanetti, cassoni, and spalliere were some of the earliest artworks to feature secular tales of this kind. The secular imagery featured in these pieces included popular chivalric Medieval tales, Old Testament stories, classical history, and mythological epics, especially that of Jason, Medea and the Argonauts. The imagery of these marital objects possessed a moralising function, specifically, to educate young brides in societal ideals and behaviour associated with marriage. This paper performs a literary and visual analysis of selected artworks by exploring the texts circulating during the fifteenth century that depicted Medea. It also draws on contemporary treatises about marriage and regional social customs to perform a concise social-historical analysis of the artworks. It seeks to understand how and why Medea appears in fifteenth-century marital artwork.
Diagrams in the work of Matthew Paris
Dr Judith Collard, University of Melbourne
Diagrams played an important part in medieval manuscripts. They appeared in a variety of texts, from religious to scientific. While the thirteenth-century monk Matthew Paris is best known for his chronicles and saints lives, his work also reveals an interest in the ways visual images could be used to demonstrate how the world could be recorded, and perhaps explained through the use of such devices. His use of diagrams combined both traditional forms such as in wind diagrams and in Easter Tables, to the innovative. Of these, his cartographical descriptions of Britain and the Holy Land are well-known. His interest in diagrams extends beyond these maps as in the manuscript of William of Conches’s Dragmaticon Philosophiae where he copied both the text and illustrations, demonstrating that the world is roundness and the idea of different climate zones. His innovative use of diagrams also appeared in his version of the fortune-telling Liber Experimentaris, ascribed to Bernard Silvestris, where he provided new and innovative illustrations and diagrams. Portraits of Plato and Socrates, Euclid and Herman Contractus also appeared in this manuscript.
Biographies
Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne
Anthony White is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary art. His current project, Recentring Australian Art, investigates artists who have been overlooked by mainstream art history. He is the author of Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism (Routledge, 2020); with Grace McQuilten, of Art as Enterprise: Social and Economic Engagement in Contemporary Art (IB Tauris / Bloomsbury, 2016); and Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch (MIT Press, 2011). His writing has appeared in Grey Room, October, Third Text, and Artforum.
Amelia Pontifex, Monash University
Amelia Pontifex is a Melbourne-based curator and writer currently completing a MA of Art History at Monash University. Her research interests include early modern art, domestic life in Renaissance Italy, the experiences of women, and the history of ideas.
Danielle Pezzi, Monash University
Danielle Pezzi is a second-year PhD student in art history at Monash University studying with the MADA faculty under the supervision of Professor Luke Morgan. Her dissertation title is Medea: The Artistic Evolution of a Classical Woman in Early Modern Italian Art. The research traces the aesthetic development and early modern society’s reception of the mythological woman in Italian art from the 1400s to the 1600s. Before her PhD, Danielle completed her MA in History of Art at The University of Warwick. Before that, she completed her BFA with Honours in art history at Monash University.
Dr Judith Collard, University of Melbourne
Judith Collard is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She was a Senior Lecturer in Art History at Otago University in New Zealand where she taught medieval, gender issues and contemporary art. She has published on medieval art, contemporary New Zealand art, feminism and on queer topics.