CAA News Today

Recognizing the value of the exchange of ideas and experience among art historians, the Kress Foundation is offering support for scholars participating as speakers at the 2024 CAA Annual Conference. The scholarly focus of the papers must be European art before 1830. 

Samuel H. Kress Foundation CAA Annual Conference Travel Fellows 2024 

Michela Degortes, Researcher, University of Lisbon

“Approaching the Portrait Gallery of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon”

Art Collections of Academies of Sciences

Chair: Viktor Oliver Lorincz

The Academy of Sciences of Lisbon was founded in 1779 under the patronage of Maria I of Braganza, thanks to the effort of enlightened figures of the Portuguese aristocracy, clergy, and scientific elite. A print published the same year in the Jornal Enciclopedico to celebrate the event represents the queen surrounded by a circle of learned courtesans while holding hands with a figure symbolizing Knowledge. A portrait of Maria I located in one of the main rooms of the Academy celebrates her role as a patron.

Painted by the Irish artist Thomas Hickey in 1783, it is part of the gallery of paintings held by the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, which brings together the portraits of remarkable figures of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Portuguese cultural milieu. It includes portraits of other members of the royal family as well as of important members of the institute, such as José Francisco Correia da Serra, Manuel de Cenaculo, and Joseph Mayne, whose cabinet of curiosities constitutes the museum of the Academy. Despite the remarkable quality of many of these artworks and their influence on the Portuguese artistic context, the collection still lacks a deep investigation. This paper focuses on the sitters, the artists involved, and the donations that formed the collection, and gives rise to interesting comparisons to similar art collections held by other academies of science.

Charline Fournier-Petit, PhD candidate, University of Maryland and Lecturer, École du Louvre

“Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi and Diplomacy: A Gift of Fourteen Portraits,”

Women and Diplomatic Art

Chair: Silvia Tita

Tense, if ever conflicting, were the relationships between Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and her brother, the emperor Napoleon I. A clever ruler, she rapidly exploited the marble quarries of Carrara for diplomatic purposes, producing abundant portraits of the great sovereigns of her time. Sculpture also served her as a surrogate for diplomatic dialogue with the emperor to affirm her legitimacy as the sovereign of Tuscany and her daughter’s dynastic succession. In 1809, Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi gifted a series of fourteen marble portraits depicting members of the Bonaparte family to Napoleon I, including her own bust and that of her daughter, Napoléone-Elisa. Extracted from her own quarries and intended for the busy Galerie de Diane at the Palais des Tuileries, this series in marble was both a political message sent not only to the childless emperor, but also to their siblings and to the court. With this gift, Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi demonstrated her capability to impose her authority over a conquered province and restore the prestige of Carrara. And, by gathering quickly such a large number of sculptures, she was also displaying the production capacity of her marble quarries. The gift also epitomized her diplomatic strategy and dynastic aspiration, thorugh which Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi turned her motherhood into a powerful argument supporting her political ambitions.

Gohar Grigoryan, Senior Researcher, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

“An Illustrated Armenian Law Book and the Ceremonial Mise-en-scène of the King’s Body”

Medieval Ritual Representations: Model of or Model for?

Chairs: Alice Isabella Sullivan and Robert Nelson

A miniature created in 1331 in the Cilician Armenian capital of Sis depicts the young king Lewon IV (r. 1321–1341) at the tense moment of executing—according to the nearby inscription— “just judgment.” The full-page image serves as frontispiece to the oldest extant copy of the Assizes of Antioch—a now-lost Frankish legal code. An important monument of secular law, the Assizes of Antioch was influential beyond the Principality of Antioch and the crusader states, reaching the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (1198–1375). Its main purpose was the regulation of the relationship between the suzerain and his vassal lords, and it is exactly these relationships that are represented in the miniature in question, with the king seated on an elevated throne and executing justice over his lords. Initiated by the king himself, the juridical image of Lewon IV was heavily charged with realistic codes, idealizing symbols, and eschatological messages, the intended meanings of which will be tackled in my paper. I will first focus on how the king’s painter, Sargis Pitsak, visualized the ceremonial mise-en-scène around the sovereign’s imposing body and how the latter’s political agenda is reflected in this and other portrayals of him. The discussion continues with questions of visibility and the particular occasions at which the target audience could possibly see an emblematized image like this.

Laura Hutchingame, PhD candidate, University of California Los Angeles

“Red Larch at San Fermo: Ligneous Knowledge in the Upper Adriatic”

Wood: Medium Specificity in the Global Early Modern Period

Chair: Tatiana String

In the late medieval Adriatic, wood was a crucial natural resource and building material that required highly specialized knowledge. From felling alpine trees, preparing logs into rafts, floating rafts downriver, to storing and seasoning timbers, the preparation of lumber involved labor-intensive processes. The “ship-hull ceiling,” in the form of an inverted ship, was an important artifact that proliferated throughout the region from ca. 1300–1450 and was fostered by the collaboration between different wood-based artisans. The ceiling at the church of San Fermo in Verona, executed from ca. 1300–50, offers an exceptional case study. In addition to its innovative design, recent conservation work has uncovered material evidence of how artisans sourced appropriate lumber, prepared timbers, and crafted the ceiling from local red larch. I highlight the specialized ligneous knowledge of artisans who contributed to the production of the ceiling. I show how the ceiling (and wood itself) is a source of interconnections between patrons, artisans, political regimes, and religious orders of this time. At San Fermo, the material and physical qualities of wood are neither representational nor represented but are made visible through crafting.

Cynthia Kok, PhD candidate, Yale University, and Stephanie Archangel, Curator, Rijkmuseum

“Edvardt Abraham Akaboa de Moor, a Master Silversmith from Angola”

Center and Periphery?: Mapping a Future for Research in Netherlandish Art

Historians of Netherlandish Art

Chair: Stephanie Dickey

With origins as a “prestige project,” the Rijksmuseum grapples with the legacy of prioritizing upper-class artworks and narratives, leading to criticisms that the institution is a place of and for elites. Decorative arts within the collection, however, were rarely made by the upper classes. We turn to objects and archives to consider these marginalized makers more closely. We take as a case study a gun by Edvardt Abraham Akaboa de Moor. From archival research, we learn that de Moor was a Black man from Angola who likely found his way to the Netherlands via modern-day Ghana. By 1665, however, de Moor worked as a skilled weapons engraver as a member of the silversmith’s guild and lived with his Dutch wife and children in Utrecht. The Rijksmuseum’s flintlock hunting gun is signed “Edvardt Abraham de Moor” and “tot Utrecht,” claiming ownership of the lock, the most technically difficult part of the gun. As with other marginalized figures, little information remains of de Moor—certainly no portraits nor personal archives—yet traces of him and his descendants remain in the state archives and in museums. We ask, How do we recover the identity of individuals who operated and worked in craft workshops? Can a shift in focus to makers and archives allow museums to interrogate the narratives of marginalized peoples? And how can museums conscientiously address the question, to whom does the agency of craftsmanship belong?

 Caroline Delia Koncz, Assistant Professor, Angelo State University

“Lavinia Fontana’s Minerva Unarmed: The Female Nude, as Seen and Painted by Woman”

What Did Women See? Gender and Viewing Experience in Early Modern Italy

Chair: Sabrina De Turk

Created shortly before the artist’s death in 1614, Lavinia Fontana painted a rather curious rendering of the virginal goddess of wisdom for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Standing in profile, her head tilted speculatively towards the viewer, Minerva holds in her arms a sumptuous dress of luxurious fabrics and gold trim, which she is presumably about to don. Beside her in the room, one can find the deity’s pet owl alongside her previously adorned armor, helmet, and shield, all of which serve to identify the goddess. Such objects were likely necessary to include, since, beyond the subject of the Judgment of Paris, remarkably few Italian artists in the early modern period depicted Minerva unrobed, and even fewer were women. I consider the unique iconography of Fontana’s painting as well as the intended message this work held for its viewers in seventeenth-century Italy. In addition to considering the male owner’s reception of the piece, this talk will more closely study how female beholders of the period might have analyzed the nude Minerva, when fashioned by the hand of a woman painter.

Matthew Sova, PhD candidate, Johns Hopkins University

“Representations of Performance in the Konstanz Holy Sepulcher”

Medieval Ritual Representations: Model of or Model for?

Chairs: Alice Isabella Sullivan and Robert Nelson

Located in Konstanz Cathedral, a thirteenth-century holy sepulcher stands as significant material evidence for widespread medieval practices of architectural copying. Understood as a reconstruction of the Tomb of Christ aedicule in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, scholars emphasize the Konstanz holy sepulcher’s reliance on the plans, dimensions, spaces, and structures of its illustrious model. These interpretations often downplay variations in appearance and function between the two microarchitectural objects, as well as regional contexts for these deviations in the Konstanz copy. Specifically, the Konstanz holy sepulcher features an extensive sculptural program of figures from Christmas, Easter, and the early church, which has no precedent in the Jerusalem aedicule. My paper investigates these sculptures, linking them to a local tradition of religious performances undertaken in and around the Konstanz holy sepulcher. Numerous medieval texts from Konstanz describe ritualized Holy Week reenactments in the city’s cathedral, performed by the clergy outside of the Mass. These paraliturgical events emphasized the roles of the three Marys, apostles, and angels, central figures in the Konstanz object’s artistic program. I show that these sculptures not only visualized the scriptural events of Easter, but served as permanent, idealized representations of Holy Week performances. Consequently, I argue that the Konstanz holy sepulcher’s sculptural program both enhanced the function of the copy as a stage for paraliturgical drama, and perpetually reinscribed historical and spiritual connections between its associated medieval community and the site of Christ’s death and resurrection in Jerusalem.

  Mark H. Summers, Lecturer, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

“Ritual Practice as Community Building in the Birds Head Haggadah”

Medieval Ritual Representations: Model of or Model for?

Chairs: Alice Isabella Sullivan and Robert Nelson

The Birds Head Haggadah, dated to around 1300 and produced in the Upper Rhine region of Southern Germany, is one of the earliest extant illuminated Ashkenazic haggadot, or manuscripts, that contain the ritualistic text recited at the Passover Seder. The book is well-known for its unusual approach toward figuration, styling Jewish people as hybrids with human bodies and heads of griffins, featuring the curving beaks of eagles and the pointed ears of lions. Throughout the manuscript, figurative illuminations in this style occupy the margins, enacting the historical events remembered at Passover and performing ritualistic activities associated with celebration of the feast. A pair of openings from the manuscript exemplifies this twofold approach. On folios 24v-25r, a scene from the Exodus unfolds across the lower margins. Though the story here refers to historical events of persecution, the figures that receive loaves of unrisen bread and turn to follow Moses appear in medieval styles of dress. While the story relates the flight from Egypt and pursuit by Egyptian soldiers, here the aggressors are likewise rendered as contemporary figures. As non-Jews, Pharoah and his soldiers appear as fully human figures with blank faces and are outfitted as German knights bearing the black eagle flag of the Holy Roman Empire. On the next opening spanning folios 25v-26r, the marginal program presents a scene of the ritualistic practice of making unleavened matzo, an act of abstinence that makes the historical suffering of the Jewish people tangible for the duration of Passover. The figures animating this scene, which is presented as a contemporary activity rather than a historical narrative, appear visually indistinct from the actors rendered in the previous opening. Here, the Jewish men and women working together to prepare dough, divide portions, and bake bread are all dressed in the same kinds of clothing as the followers of Moses, complete with modest hair coverings for women and the pointed hats worn by adult men that were at times compulsory accessories for men in northern medieval Europe. The approach in the visual program outlined in these openings creates a temporal elision connecting historical events with contemporary ritualistic practices. The result establishes the Passover Seder as what Marc Epstein calls a “metahistorical topos,” or a kind of temporal interconnectivity that links past, present, and future events and practices for the book’s users/viewers. I consider how the representation of ritual in the Birds Head Haggadah engages with metahistorical narratives to build community and identity for its medieval users.

 Joyce Zhou, PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow, Yale University

“Playing with Porcelain: Reimagining the Self with the Early Modern Dutch Dollhouse”

Miniature Designs and Worldly Simulations: Questions of Scale in Early Modern Arts

Chair: Wenjie Su

Sometime between 1743 and 1751, a Dutch woman named Sara Rothé assembled two elaborate dollhouses. Rothé describes a porcelain display room in one of her dollhouses, which survives today in the Kunstmuseum in The Hague. The room contains a variety of miniature arts, including miniature porcelain imported by the Dutch East India Company from China and Japan, as well as domestic imitations in ivory and glass. Pioneered by Amalia van Solms, Princess of Orange (1602–1675), this practice of dedicating entire rooms to the collection and display of East Asian porcelain was associated exclusively with female members of the House of Orange. While Rothé did not have the status nor financial means to recreate van Solms’ porcelain display in full-scale, she was able to successfully do so in the intimate realm of her dollhouse.

I explore the intersection of two early modern Dutch female collecting practices: the curation of dollhouses by wealthy Dutch women, and the formation of dedicated porcelain display chambers in Dutch royal circles. Building on the work of Hanneke Grootenboer and Susan Stewart, I argue that early modern Dutch dollhouses facilitated aspirational and imaginative thinking. Rothé’s porcelain room, which encapsulates Dutch royal porcelain chambers on a reduced scale, was a controlled and manipulable space in which Rothé adopted an alternate subjectivity and engaged in imaginative play. Here, Rothé could take on the persona of a Dutch royal, handling the various fruits of global commercial exchange as she engaged in immersive self-fashioning.