On the occasion of the restoration of the great Maestà and the Mocking of Christ, the Louvre Museum is organizing an exposition from January to May of 2025, themed as a sort of “file” concerning these two masterpieces of the artist. Issue 58 of Technè wishes to accompany this show by gathering together contributions pertaining to the materiality of painted works from the second half of the thirteenth century in Tuscany.

Argument

Over the last two decades, studies on Cimabue have been renewed by spectacular discoveries, such as the small Maestà panel now in the National Gallery of London or the panel showing the Mocking of Christ recently acquired by the Louvre. Several major works by the painter have been the object of large-scale restorations accompanied by unpublished laboratory studies, such as the Maestà di Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna, the great Maestà of the Louvre, or the Gualino Madonna of Turin, whose attribution to either Cimabue or Duccio divides the specialists.

On the occasion of the restoration of the great Maestà and the Mocking of Christ, the Louvre Museum is organizing an exposition from January to May of 2025, themed as a sort of “file” concerning these two masterpieces of the artist. Issue 58 of Technè wishes to accompany this show by gathering together contributions pertaining to the materiality of painted works from the second half of the thirteenth century in Tuscany.

These papers can deal with everything from pictorial techniques to materials and their supports.

The aim will be to shed light on the ways in which, by the middle of the thirteenth century, certain artists, then Cimabue and the artists of his close entourage, succeeded in creating a synthesis of the different traditions they were heir to, whether by enriching them or differentiating from them, in order to create resolutely innovative works.

The articles can also explore the exceptional conservation efforts conducted on these pieces since their creation. Finally, it would be desirable to have studies addressing the logistics of the work on these paintings in large format or other typologies (double-sided works, painted crosses, and more), as well as the adaptation of specific protocols implemented during the recent restoration campaigns.

Guest editors

The 58^th issue of Technè will be guest-edited by Thomas Bohl (Musée du Louvre), Marco Ciatti (Honorary director of the Opificio delle pietre dure, Firenze) and Elisabeth Ravaud (Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France).

Technè

Technè is edited by the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France. It was founded in 1994 as a biannual interdisciplinary scientific publication focused on both the study and the preservation of Tangible Cultural Heritage (excluding the field of architecture). It aims to disseminate new and original research in well-illustrated articles written either in French or English. Italian, German, and Spanish are also accepted. 

Each issue has both a print (https://www.lcdpu.fr/revues/techne/) and an online version (https://journals.openedition.org/techne/). The online version becomes openly accessible after a 12-month embargo.

Submission guidelines

Please send the guest-editors your title, list of authors, keywords and abstract as soon as possible, at c2rmf_techne@culture.gouv.fr

and no later than January, 10^th 2024.

You will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of your proposal before January 20th 2024.

The deadline for submission of your article (at the following address: c2rmf_techne@culture.gouv.fr.) is May 30th 2024. It will be submitted to a double-blind peer review process.

The authors of selected papers will then be kindly requested to provide a revised version of their article that includes, if any, the modifications suggested by the reviewers. The deadline for this final version will be communicated to the authors by the editorial team.

The expected length of papers is 10.000-25.000 characters (space, abstract, footnotes, and bibliography included). The articles may include up to 7 illustrations (color or black and white photographs, diagrams, graphs). They must comply with the Technè editorial rules described hereafter.

The papers will be selected according to the following criteria:

• the originality of the research: the author must inform the editorial board if the results presented in the paper were already published or will be published elsewhere. By submitting a paper, the author declares that they are rightfully authorized to publish its results,
• inter- or cross-disciplinarity: we welcome papers submitted by teams associating all the partners involved in the work (archaeologists, curators, chemists, conservators, etc.),
• the innovative character of the methodology,
• the presentation of the research questions in relation to their broader context (historical, technical, etc.), and
• the quality of writing and illustrations.

Technè requires neither a publication fee, nor an exclusive cession of rights. Published authors retain the copyrighting rights of their illustrations. Technè is referenced by BibCNRS.