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IMC 2014: Sessions

Session 1120: Immigrants in the Empire, 10th-12th Centuries

Wednesday 9 July 2014, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Conventus: Problems of Religious Communal Life in the High Middle Ages
Organiser:Diane J. Reilly, Hope School of Fine Art, Indiana University, Bloomington
Moderator/Chair:Steven Vanderputten, Vakgroep Geschiedenis, Universiteit Gent
Paper 1120-aOn the Move: Medieval Artists, Objects, and Art History
(Language: English)
Sigrid Danielson, Department of Art & Design, College of Liberal Arts & Science, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
Index terms: Art History - General, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Local History
Paper 1120-bImperial Defamation and Graphic Dissent in a Figure of Joachim of Fiore
(Language: English)
Heather Coffey, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Ontario College of Art & Design University
Index terms: Art History - General, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Abstract

Scholars have long recognised that decorative objects, artistic motifs, and architectural techniques accompanied migrants on pathways in and out of the Empire during the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. Did artistic conceits travel from as far as the Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia, which also reached its heyday in the 11th century, to inhabit the peripheries of European buildings? Did European artists apply traits identified with migrants and outsiders to imperial figures who were undeniably homegrown, like Constantine or Henry II? Or were these artistic hitch-hikers imagined by inter-war and post-war European scholars eager to identify with migrant artists as they fled the collapsing 'Empires' that reimagined had their Ottonian predecessors? These papers will explore concrete examples of artistic motifs in order to reconstruct the more ephemeral pathways of visual and intellectual exchange that may have inspired them.