Research Forum Spring Term 2012
17th annual Medieval Postgraduate student colloquium
Surviving the Middle-Ages: Art, Belief, and Preservation
Monday, 6 February 2012
10.00 - 17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Cutting from an illuminated manuscript, French mid fifteenth century (private collection, London)
Speaker(s): Niamh Bhalla (The Courtauld Institute of Art); Richard Braude (University of Cambridge); Iva Brusic (University of Ljubljana/The Courtauld); Marisa Costa (University of Lisbon); Antony Eastmond (The Courtauld); Jana Gajdošovà (Birkbeck College, London); Maria Grasso (The Courtauld); Rachel Hapoienu (The Courtauld); Emma Luker (The Courtauld); Helen Lunnon (University of East Anglia); Lesley Milner (The Courtauld); Joana Ramôa Melo (Instituto de História de Arte, Lisbon); John Renner (The Courtauld):; Jane Spooner (The Courtauld); Flora Ward (University of Toronto/Centro de Cienias Humanas y Sociales del CSIC)
Ticket/entry details: Admission free, all welcome. No booking is necessary
Organised by: Michael Carter (michael.carter@courtauld.ac.uk) and other Medieval postgraduate students
Life in the Middle Ages has traditionally been viewed in Hobbesian terms as nasty, brutish and short. However, more recent scholarship has challenged the notion that medieval men and women were helpless in the face of disease, war and famine, stressing instead the strategies they developed and deployed to help secure their safety. These included a preoccupation with the preservation of corporeal security; efforts to attain and maintain worldly status; and perhaps most importantly of all, an overriding concern for the eternal rest of the immortal soul.
This colloquium will explore the artistic and architectural manifestations of these concerns. Changes in belief, politics and fashion have taken a heavy toll on the art and architecture of the Middle Ages, and the colloquium will also examine the physical survival, restoration and conservation of the art and architecture of the Middle Ages
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