IMC 2020: Sessions

The fourth and last session will follow up the aspect of materiality, and address issues of framing and reframing. Composite manuscripts provide instructive material for research, because in putting together content of a sometimes heterogenous nature, interpretative frameworks are created by the book in its very character as a material unit (Wimmer). In late medieval manuscripts, borders and frames become areas of predominant artistic attention with a stunning variety of decorative means. They also lend themselves as representative spaces for indications of ownership, and in that sense are the area where owner and manuscript meet (Wijsman). The sessions will be rounded up by addressing questions of cuttings of borders and the changing perspective of the book/art market (Cleaver). It is somewhat ironic that the appreciation of medieval manuscripts and their borders as artful objects often led to their destruction when manuscripts where (and are) cut up. Their rearrangement, however, is often instructive for our understanding of the art market and the changing taste of collectors.