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IMC 2012: Sessions

Session 1706: Vicissitudes of Cultural Transfers: Case Studies from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages

Thursday 12 July 2012, 14.15-15.45

Moderator/Chair:Sieglinde Hartmann, Oswald von Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main
Paper 1706-a12th- and 13th-Century Ornamental Western Metalwork in Response to Islamic and Byzantine Luxury Objects
(Language: English)
Joseph S. Ackley, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Byzantine Studies, Islamic and Arabic Studies
Paper 1706-bPicturing Language and Landscapes in The Book of Sir John Mandeville
(Language: English)
Galia Halpern, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Index terms: Art History - General, Language and Literature - Other, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Social History
Paper 1706-cCultural Exchange between Late Medieval France and Early Renaissance Italy: The Case of the Petit Palais in Avignon
(Language: English)
Patricia Meneses, Instituto de Artes e Design, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora
Abstract

Paper -a:
My paper explores ornamental metalwork mountings (Lower Saxon and Venetian,12th- through 13th-century) that adorned, mimicked, and/or otherwise dialogued meaningfully with newly obtained treasury objects of Islamic and Byzantine origin. While art historians have studied overt ways in which high-medieval and post-1204 Western treasury objects emulated Islamic and Byzantine imports (e.g. regarding relic visibility), episodes of subtler metalwork evocation (eg, filigree patterns and ornament disposition) have yet to be firmly detailed and analyzed. My paper, broadly contextualized by debates over ornament-embodied meaning, specifically considers a narrow selection of Western, Byzantine, and Islamic treasury objects at Halberstadt, San Marco, and Eichstätt.

Paper -b:
In the late medieval period, no vernacular language text enjoyed as wide circulation as The Book of Sir John Mandeville. This travel account proposed an image of the knowable world, mediated by the eyewitness observations of its now infamous author/narrator. Included in Mandeville's description of diverse regions is a running commentary about the alphabets in use by exotic peoples. My investigation into the illustrated manuscripts of the Book conceives of these alphabets within cartographic and ethnographic systems upon which landscape and body are mutually constituted. This paper looks at the pictorial evolution of these alphabets throughout the book's transmission.