Transformation & Modernity around 1300: Medium, Spirituality, Experience in Giotto’s Arena Chapel
Due the limited number of seats in the event space, please RSVP if you would like to be added to the waitlist, indicating if you would like to attend the morning session, the afternoon session, or the entire day, under the subject line “RSVP Giotto Conference 2020” to henrike.lange@berkeley.edu.
Revolving around a new reading of Giotto’s acclaimed Arena Chapel (Cappella degli Scrovegni) in Padua, this international book conference will pair some of the most eminent art historians in the field of Italian Renaissance/Early Modern Studies from Europe and the US east coast with interdisciplinary responses from prominent local historians, art historians, and specialists in related fields such as Classics, medieval, Renaissance, and literature studies from California (UCB, UCD, Stanford, and UCLA).
On the conference day, speakers will engage themes from Henrike Lange’s book manuscript, Giotto’s Arena Chapel and the Triumph of Humility (Cambridge University Press) in five sections: I. The Sources of Antiquity as Other: Triumphal Architecture and the Lever of Humility, II. Crystallization: Matter and Illusion, III. Mystic Intelligence: Vision, Words, Cognition, IV. Giotto Historiographies, and V. Modernity & Modernities.
All respondents having read the manuscript beforehand, the five main speakers will offer comments on their section theme in relation to the manuscript as well as to their own expertise. Their presentations of about 30 minutes each will be complemented by two respective co-respondents adding a commentary of 5–10 minutes from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Graduate students from the Fall 2019 graduate seminar in Italian Studies “Spiritual Reading/Spiritual Seeing, from Dante to Montale” will introduce the speakers throughout the day and contribute comments on Giotto’s modernity in a grad round table towards the end of the conference day, followed by the author’s Q&A.
Transformation & Modernity around 1300: Medium, Spirituality, Experience in Giotto’s Arena Chapel
Conference schedule for February 21, 2020
9:30–10 am Coffee
10 (sharp)–10:20 am
Welcome (Whitney Davis)
Introduction (Henrike Christiane Lange)
Triumphs of Humility: A Giotto Conference in Memoriam Martin Warnke
10:20–11:15 am
I. The Sources of Antiquity as Other: Triumphal Architecture and the Lever of Humility
Ulrich Pfisterer
Looking at Henrike Lange’s Giotto’s Triumph from the following Centuries:
Triumphs in Aragonese Naples, Ciriaco d’Ancona, and the Rome of Raphael & Michelangelo
Andrew Stewart – Regarding Ancient Triumphs
Todd Olson – Regarding Early Modern Triumphs
Introductions: Sean Wyer
11:15–11:30 am Coffee
11:30 am–12:30 pm
II. Crystallization: Matter and Illusion
Whitney Davis
Medium and Illusion – On Henrike Lange’s Giotto’s Triumph
Christopher Hallett – Roman faux marble walls, faux marble veneer, and faux marble reliefs
Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli – Crystal Images: Between Civic Poets and Cinema of Poetry
Introductions: Daisy Ament
12:30–1:30 Lunch
1:30–2:30 pm
III. Mystic Intelligence: Vision, Words, Cognition
Brenda Deen Schildgen
The Paradoxical Triumph of Humility in Augustine, Dante, and Giotto
Thomas Dandelet – Reading St. John of Damascus in the Arena Chapel
Jonathan Sheehan – The Spoils of Theology
Introductions: Alice Fischetti
2:45–3:45 pm
IV. Giotto Historiographies
Roberta Morosini
Come pintor che con essempro finga” (Pg. XXXII 67):
Giotto, Dante and Boccaccio – Notes on Poetry and Painting
Anne Derbes – Giotto’s Heart: Historiography and Giotto Scholarship, 20th to 21st Century
Alessandro Nova – Giotto’s O & Vasari’s Giotto
Randolph Starn – Decoding and Recoding in the Arena Chapel: A Historiographical Triumph
Introductions: Daisy Ament
3:45–4:15 pm Tea
4:15–5:15 pm
V. Modernity & Modernities
Alexander Nagel
“Where is our God?”
Mario Biagioli – Medieval Modern Giotto
Michael Subialka – Alternative Notions of Modern Aesthetics: On Giotto’s Relief Effects
Introductions: Alice Fischetti
5:15–5:30 pm Tea
5:30–5:45 pm
Grad round table “Giotto moderno”
Sean Wyer: End of the Work and End of the World in Giotto and Dante
Alice Fischetti: Giotto’s Wit and Modern Poetry
Daisy Ament: Spectres of Giotto: Resurrection & Reconstruction in the Avant-Garde & Beyond
Introductions: Henrike Lange
5:45–5:55 pm
Final remarks (Henrike Christiane Lange)
Giotto’s Long Nineteenth Century: Lines, Sepia, and the Seven Lamps of Architecture
5:55–6:30 pm Final Author’s Q&A
Participants:
Daisy Ament (UCB Italian Studies)
Prof. Mario Biagioli (Stanford CASBS / UCLA Law and Communication)
Prof. Thomas Dandelet (UCB History)
Prof. Whitney Davis (UCB History of Art)
Prof. Anne Derbes (Hood College History of Art)
Alice Fischetti (UCB Italian Studies)
Prof. Christopher Hallett (UCB Classics & History of Art)
Prof. Roberta Morosini (Wake Forest University Italian & Spanish)
Prof. Alexander Nagel (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
Prof. Alessandro Nova (Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut – Max Planck Institute, Florence, Italy)
Prof. Todd Olson (UCB History of Art)
Prof. Ulrich Pfisterer (Director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte & Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany)
Prof. Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli (UCLA Film Studies)
Dr. Beatrice Rehl, Cambridge University Press
Prof. Brenda Schildgen (UCD Comparative Literature)
Prof. Jonathan Sheehan (UCB History)
Prof. Randolph Starn (UCB History)
Prof. Andrew Stewart (UCB Classics & History of Art)
Prof. Michael Subialka (UCD Comparative Literature)
Sean Wyer (UCB Italian Studies)
Henrike Christiane Lange is Assistant Professor in both the Departments of History of Art and Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in Italian medieval and early modern art history, architecture, and literature with a second area of expertise in late nineteenth/early twentieth-century art, literature, and historiography.
Co-sponsored by the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley, The Stoddard Fund in the History of Art Department UC Berkeley, the UC Berkeley Department of History of Art, the UC Berkeley Department of Italian Studies, the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, the UC Berkeley Department of German, and the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, The UC Berkeley Paradise Memorial Archive and Historical Slide Library, and Copy Central – 2411 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley