IMC 2019: Sessions
Session 136: Reconstituting the Middle Ages: Using Medieval Sources to Recover the Material Past, I - The Problem of Reconstructing Lost Monuments
Monday 1 July 2019, 11.15-12.45
| Organisers: | Laura Cleaver, Department of History of Art & Architecture, Trinity College Dublin Kathryn Gerry, Department of Art History, University of Kansas |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Laura Cleaver, Department of History of Art & Architecture, Trinity College Dublin |
| Paper 136-a | The Forgotten Colossus: Reconstructing a Cross-Cultural Biography of a Mediterranean Monument (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Art History - Sculpture, Byzantine Studies |
| Paper 136-b | Anchorites' Cells and Lepers' Squints: Medieval or Modern Materialities? (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - General, Architecture - Religious, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
| Paper 136-c | Visualizing the Material Past at Later Medieval St Albans Abbey (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Art History - Painting, Historiography - Medieval |
| Abstract | The material turn has put art history at the forefront of historical and cultural studies. Yet for medievalists the loss of so much material evidence continues to be a frustrating reality. Textual accounts of buildings, interiors, and objects, together with documentation of secular collections and sacred treasuries, appear to offer tantalizing glimpses of medieval life, but these accounts sometimes sit awkwardly with surviving objects. These linked sessions will examine how we can attempt to reconstruct the lost material past and what we might hope to gain by doing so. The first session tackles the challenge of reconstructing lost monuments from written sources and introduces some possible approaches. |