This conference wishes to expand and collectively rethink the “cumulative aesthetics” of the long late antiquity ranging from the 4th to the 9th century offering a shared interdisciplinary platform to study late antique aesthetic developments across different media and territories by bringing together specialists from different disciplines: art history, aesthetics, classical philology, and archaeology.

Argument

The interface among the material, visual, and literary cultures of the long late antiquity and beyond has become a topic of scholarly interest ever since the publication of the seminal 1989 book The Jeweled Style by Michael Roberts. The topical relevance of Roberts’ original concept more than 30 years after its invention is clear from, among other scholarly endeavors, the recent edited volume The Jeweled Style Revisited (2023), which offers numerous insightful contributions on the topic. Following this fruitful line of scholarly discourse, this conference wishes to expand and collectively rethink the “cumulative aesthetics” of the long late antiquity ranging from the 4th to the 9th century offering a shared interdisciplinary platform to study late antique aesthetic developments across different media and territories by bringing together specialists from different disciplines: art history, aesthetics, classical philology, and archaeology.

Program

Monday, November 11

• 9.00–9.20 Registration
• 9.25 Welcome speech
• 9.30 Alberto Virdis & Marie Okáčová (Masarykova univerzita, Brno) Introduction: From Jeweled Artefacts to Literary Jewels

Morning session: Jewels on the Page: Textual and Visual Experiments

Chair: Marie Okáčová (Masarykova univerzita, Brno)

• 10.00 Markus Kersten (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) Mist and Mosaic: The Politics of Metatextual Metaphor in (and in Relation to) Ausonius
• 10.30 Róbert Horka (Univerzita Komenského, Bratislava) A Closer Look at Fortunatus’ Poem De sanctae crucis signaculo (Carm. II, 4)

Coffee break

• 11.30 Daniel González Erices (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile) Seeing and Reading: The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Jeweled Aesthetics of Apophasis
• 12.00 Scott C. McGill (Rice University, Houston) Europa, Europa: The Virgilian Cento Europa and Ovid

Lunch

Afternoon session: Cloisonné, Opus Sectile, Stained Glass: Jeweled Fragments and Multimedia Aesthetics

Chair: Alberto Virdis (Masarykova univerzita, Brno)

• 14.30 Sylvie Balcon-Berry (Sorbonne Université – Centre André-Chastel, Paris)The First Examples of Stained-Glass Windows in Gaul in Housing and Religious Buildings (5th–7th Centuries)
• 15.00 Sébastien Bully (CNRS-UMR ARTEHIS, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon) The Early Medieval “Sectile Stained-Glass Windows” in the Abbey of Baume-les-Messieurs Abbey (Jura)

Coffee break

• 16.00 Lorenzo Mularoni (Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna) Coloured Window Glasses from the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna: Comparison Studies and Archaeometric Analysis in Aid to an Uncertain Dating
• 16.30 Elisabeth Niederdöckl (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven  – EHESS, Paris) Sacred Stones and the Consecration Rite: Exploring the Aesthetics of Early Medieval Portable Altars. The 8th-Century Portable Altars of Adelhausen and Seekirchen

Welcome drink

Keynote lecture

• 18.00 Jesús Hernández Lobato (Universidad de Salamanca) Beyond Laocoon: Spatialising Time in Late Antiquity

Dinner

Tuesday, November 12

Morning session: Jeweled Textiles in Material Culture and Literature

Chair: Jesús Hernández Lobato

• 9.00 Chiara Stombellini (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) Jeweled Fabrics: (Trans)Materiality, Patterns, and Functions of Embroidered Silks in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean
• 9.30 Hope Williard (Universiteit Utrecht) Textile Gifts in Late Antique Letters
• 10.00 Elena Castelnuovo (Università di Trento) Venantius Fortunatus, a Weaver of Jewels

Coffee break

• 11.00 Elizabeth Dospěl Williams (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) Making, Materiality, and the Late Antique Jeweled Style: Textiles and Mosaics, Then and Now
• 11.30 Francesco Lubian (Università di Padova) Materialization of Texts and Textualization of Materials in Claudian’s Poetry
• 12.00 David Ungvary (Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, New York) Aesthetics to Ashes, Design to Dust: The Sequential Structure of Eugenius of Toledo’s Libellus carminum

Lunch

Afternoon session: Syncretic and Eclectic Aspects of Jeweled Ornamentation

Chair: Ivan Foletti (Masarykova univerzita, Brno)

• 14.00 Nicolas Samaretz (Masarykova univerzita, Brno / Université de Fribourg) From Shard to Powder: Aesthetics and Technique of Glass Cloisonné between the 6th and 9th Centuries
• 14.30 Chiara Croci (Université de Lausanne) Cumulation of Materials and New Visual Principles: The Case of Lombard’s Goldsmithing
• 15.00 Conclusion

Broadcast

Topic:  CONFERENCE DAY 1: The Jeweled Materiality of Late Antique

Time: Nov 11, 2024 09:00 AM Vienna

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 859 906 9919

Passcode: 12345

Topic: CONFERENCE DAY 2: The Jeweled Materiality of Late Antique

Time: Nov 12, 2024 09:00 AM Vienna

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 859 906 9919

Passcode: 12345