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This volume explores the various strategies by which appropriate pasts were construed in scholarship, literature, art, and architecture in order to create “national”, regional, or local identities in late medieval and early modern Europe. Because authority was based on lineage, political and territorial claims were underpinned by historical arguments, either true or otherwise. Literature, scholarship, art, and architecture were pivotal media that were used to give evidence of the impressive old lineage of states, regions, or families. These claims were related not only to classical antiquity but also to other periods that were regarded as antiquities, such as the Middle Ages, especially ...
This multidisciplinary collection of essays explores the functions, meanings and use of images and objects in various late Medieval and Early Modern social practices, which were linked by their ritual character. The book approaches ‘ritual’ as an action which is discussed under the general umbrella term “performative practice”, and is characterised by a synthesis between the repetitive and the extraordinary that carries an intense symbolic meaning and is emotionally charged. Images, spaces and rituals were closely interconnected in both the religious and the secular spheres, and played a relevant role in the symbolic communication of the time. The essays in this volume are devoted to a complex study of these phenomena in Northern and Central Europe, including regions which, due to linguistic or cultural barriers, have thus far received comparatively little attention in Anglo-American scholarship, including Scandinavia, Poland and the Baltic states.
This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture, Histories of Ornament offers a nuanced examination that integrates medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and modern Euroamerican traditions with their Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican counterparts. At a time when ornament has re-emerged in architectural practice and is a topic of growing interest to art and architectural historians, the book reveals how the long history of ornament illuminates its global resurgence today. Organized by thematic s...
In early modern times scholars and architects investigated age-old buildings in order to look for useful sources of inspiration. They too, occasionally misinterpreted younger buildings as proofs of majestic Roman or other ancient glory, such as the buildings of the Carolingian, Ottonian and Stauffer emperors. But even if the correct age of a certain building was known, buildings from c. 800–1200 were sometimes regarded as ‘Antique’ architecture, since the concept of ‘Antiquity’ was far more stretched than our modern periodisation allows. This was a Europe-wide phenomenon. The results are rather diverse in style, but they all share an intellectual and artistic strategy: a conscious revival of an ‘ancient’ architecture — whatever the date and origin of these models. Contributors: Barbara Arciszewska, Lex Bosman, Ian Campbell, Eliana Carrara, Bianca de Divitiis, Krista De Jonge, Emanuela Ferretti, Emanuela Garofalo, Stefaan Grieten, Hubertus Günther, Stephan Hoppe, Sanne Maekelberg, Kristoffer Neville, Marco Rosario Nobile, Konrad Ottenheym, Stefano Piazza, and Richard Schofield.
Painting has long dominated discussions of Netherlandish art. Yet in the sixteenth century sculpture was held in considerably higher regard than painting, especially in foreign lands. This beautifully illustrated book is the first comprehensive study of sixteenth-century Netherlandish sculpture, and it opens an important window onto the works and milieu of these artists. Netherlanders dominated the sculptural world of northern Europe. They made the most prestigious tombs and altarpieces, alabaster reliefs, and boxwood collectibles for patrons throughout Iberia, France, and Central Europe. Even in Italy they were a formidable presence; the most famous sculptor in Europe in the second half of ...
Edinburgh was an Enlightenment city of regional, national and global influence. But how did the people of Enlightenment Edinburgh understand and order their world? How did they encounter, compare and produce different kinds of spaces, from the urban to the world scale? And how did this city set the universal standards by which other places should be judged and transformed? The Geographies of Enlightenment Edinburgh answers these questions by exploring the thousands of urban plans, county surveys, travel accounts and encyclopaedias that passed through a busy Edinburgh bookshop over four decades. It reveals how these geographical publications were produced and shared, and sheds light on the people who bought and used them - including moral philosophers, silk merchants, school teachers, ship's surgeons and slave owners. This is the story of how specific methods of mapping space came ultimately to predict and organize it, creating a new world in Edinburgh's image. By connecting global processes of knowledge production to intimate accounts of its reception in the city, this book deepens our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment and the world it made.
Displacing and Displaying the Objects of Others is a thought-provoking collection that brings together a diverse range of contributions inspired by research from the "Hamburg's (post-)colonial legacy" research center. The authors explore new perspectives in provenance research by situating it within the broader contexts of global history, colonial history, and postcolonial studies. This volume goes beyond simply tracing the origins of objects, considering the significant impact on the societies from which these objects originate. It also critically examines how these objects were used in collections and museums and how the process of musealization shaped collecting practices. With its multiperspective approach, Displacing and Displaying the Objects of Others encourages readers to reflect on the deep connections between past and present and to consider responsible ways of engaging with colonial collections.