You are warmly invited to an afternoon ‘double-feature’ seminar, Art of the Global Middle Ages: Exchange and Ecology, March 4th, Hunter Building, Hunter Lecture Theatre (017), 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh.
**In the event of strike action, this event may be rescheduled or relocated somewhere near George Square (but off-campus) and in lieu of coffee break there will be a roundtable on decolonising the Middle Ages—if you wish to be sent a notification of any changes 24 hours before the event, please send an email to art.admin@ed.ac.uk subject header: Global Middle Ages Seminar**
2:30-3:30pm Dr Umberto Bongianino (University of Oxford) | The Mediterranean horizons of Norman Sicilian art: new evidence from Arabic epigraphy. Chair: Glaire Anderson
The establishment of the Norman kingdom of Sicily in 1130 prompted the development of an unparalleled artistic milieu, encompassing elements from the Latin West, the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. The new palaces and churches founded on the island became a stage where the Mediterranean ambitions of Roger II and his successors could be boasted through images and texts, some of which in Arabic. This paper will consider the aesthetic impact and stylistic variety of the Arabic epigraphy produced under the Norman kings, focusing in particular on its links with coeval royal inscriptions from Tunis and other Muslim courts in North Africa. The 12th century was a turning point in the history of Arabic calligraphy and epigraphy across the Mediterranean, and the craftsmen working at the Norman court of Palermo were up to date with the latest trends and participated fully in the artistic networks of the time.
3:30-4:00pm Tea and Coffee Break
4:00-5:00 pm Dr Ben Tilghman (Washington College) | Stillness, Sanctity, and Ecological Aesthetics in Early Medieval Art Chair: Heather Pulliam
Art historical studies of the histories of objects have enriched our understanding of how the use and reception of artworks can change across contexts. These “biographies” often quickly pass over the long stretches of time during which a work stays in one place. But perhaps the stillness of art objects should not be seen as a kind of downtime, but as an essential element in their agency and meaning. As a first step toward theorizing the stasis of art objects, this talk will consider how saints and their objects were often characterized through miraculous feats of persistence in the early Middle Ages. This sanctified stillness, moreover, was often enacted within a natural world that was seen as both mutable and eternal. To think the stillness of early medieval art, is to think about the relationship of humans to the larger flows of time, energy, and matter in which we exist.
About the speakers
5:00pm Drinks Reception, John Higgitt Gallery, Hunter Building, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
Umberto Bongianino is Departmental Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford. He is principally interested in the architecture and material culture of the Islamic dynasties that ruled across the medieval Mediterranean between the 9th and the 13th centuries. His studies have focused on a number of topics, including the Islamic components of Norman Sicilian art, ceramic production and trade in Fatimid Egypt and Syria, Fatimid architecture and archaeology in Cairo, Tunisia, and Libya (Ajdabiya), Arabic epigraphy and palaeography in the Medieval Maghrib and al-Andalus.
Ben Tilghman is assistant professor of art history at Washington College in Maryland. He is also a member of the Material Collective, a collaborative working group of medieval art historians that explores innovative and more humane modes of scholarship. His previous research has covered the calligraphy and ornament of early medieval manuscripts such as the Book of Kells, and he has forthcoming essays on calligraphic ornaments as abstractions in early medieval Spanish manuscripts and the role of pseudoscripts in the paintings of Filippo Lippi. Currently he is working a new project that examines stillness as a feature of art and the natural world in the early middle ages.