Andrew J . Horn | University of St Andrews (original) (raw)

Books by Andrew J . Horn

Saint Joseph's University Press, Philadelphia Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, Vol. 18, 2019

This book offers a contextual examination of the life and work of the Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo ... more This book offers a contextual examination of the life and work of the Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709), known for his large-scale works of painted perspectival illusionism. The book presents Pozzo’s career and his multifaceted practice--which included painting, scenography, architecture, and a two-volume treatise on perspective--together as a prime case study for understanding the relationship of the religious art and architecture of the seventeenth century to the period’s culture of theatre and ritual. Pozzo's work, I argue, is religious theatre, and the key to reading both his ephemeral scenographies and his permanent works of painting and architecture lies in religious performance. Highlights include Pozzo’s first major surviving fresco cycle in the church of San Francesco Saverio, Mondovì, his scenographies for the Devotion of the Forty Hours at the church of the Gesù in Rome, the Corridor of Saint Ignatius, and the monumental vault fresco in the church of Sant’Ignazio.

This is only the second monograph on Pozzo in English, and the first to undertake an expanded study of the artist, his work, and the culture in which he formed as a religious artist. The book seeks to complete our picture of Pozzo by tracing his religious, artistic and cultural roots. It studies his development and his artistic activity prior to his arrival in Rome, situating him within the intellectual and religious culture of the Jesuits, and within the theatrical culture of seventeenth-century Italy. By highlighting the early works which have been largely neglected in the anglophone scholarship, the book brings to light the foundation of Pozzo’s artistic practice and the basis of his well-known Roman “masterpieces.”

As it illustrates Pozzo’s development, his origins, and the historic and regional contexts in which his practice took shape, the book features images from a wide range of sources, including Pozzo’s major works in fresco, images from his treatise Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693, 1700), prints and written accounts of seventeenth-century festivals and theatrical productions, important works of art and architecture, and Jesuit devotional treatises and publications in the fields of emblem studies, religious devotion and science.

Articles by Andrew J . Horn

Comunicazioni sociali 2024, n. 2. Becoming agens: Synesthetic and Active Processes of image Reception in the Middle Ages, 2024

From the late Middle Ages through the early modern period, scenes from Christ's Passion portrayed... more From the late Middle Ages through the early modern period, scenes from Christ's Passion portrayed in devotional literature, liturgical drama and art represent a devotional and meditative strain in religious culture in which powerful emotions are elicited in the individual and the community of faithful, in order to empathically involve them in this tragic narrative. In northern Italy, sculpted ensembles of the Compianto sul Cristo morto, or Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, rendered in terracotta and wood, serve as some of the best examples of 'performing' works of religious art designed to inspire this empathic response in the viewer. Concentrating on the theme of compassio-shared suffering-this paper examines the 'embodied emotion' represented by individual characters in Lombard examples of the sculpted Lamentation, highlighting how specific actions and gestures of the performing figures draw on the tradition of funerary practices as well as devotional and dramatic traditions of the Lamentation, as evidenced in texts from Lombardy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Sacri Monti and Beyond: Holy Land Simulacra and Monumental Stational Programs Across Europe, c. 1400-1700, ed. Achim Timmermann. Turnhout: Brepols (forthcoming), 2024

This essay offers an examination of the Sacro Monte of Varese as a locus of 'sacred drama' which ... more This essay offers an examination of the Sacro Monte of Varese as a locus of 'sacred drama' which involves the pilgrim in a performed, embodied experience of gospel narratives as part of the wider drama of salvation history. The objective is to qualify the long-held notion of the Sacro Monte as sacra rappresentazione, and move the discourse beyond ocular engagement, imaginative contemplation, passive sensory experience, or even the 'affective meditation' typically described in in relation to these sites, and consider the important role of action as part of the dramatic system represented in the scenes, the viewer's response, and the pilgrimage as a whole. After establishing the theological themes of the Incarnation, the humanity of Christ and the body, I closely analyse a selection of chapels portraying scenes from the Passion--the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary--comparing the characters and actions with texts from late-medieval Passion dramas as well as vividly descriptive devotional treatises of the period. I demonstrate how the chapels and the site function as a place of internally and externally performed devotion, appealing to the pilgrim to engage not only empathically as a spectator, but directly as a participant in the dramatic narrative. This performance involves the body, by means of dramatic and ritual gesture as well as the experience of walking and climbing, as one proceeds through the stational programme and ascends the mountain. The essay thus seeks to illustrate how the dramatic system of the Sacro Monte is emblematic of the drama of human existence, which turns on the salvific act of Christ's Passion and death, aiding the believer in achieving the ultimate goal of spiritual understanding and union with Christ.

Rivista de História da Arte , 2021

State funerals were among Milan’s most distinctive contributions to the world of the early modern... more State funerals were among Milan’s most distinctive contributions to the world of the early modern spectacle. The ephemeral scenographies constructed for these occasions transformed both the interiors and the exteriors of the churches in which they were held into great “theatres of death.” In this paper I offer an examination of three such occasions from the late sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries. Using the engraved and printed records of these events as a means of reconstructing the experience, I consider how visual rhetoric, including image, word and gesture, functions together with light and ritual movement to appeal to both the emotions and the intellect in order to persuade, engaging the participant in the cathartic performance of mourning. As highly choreographed rituals of devotion and reflection, Milanese funerals are eloquent illustrations of early modern understandings and beliefs regarding death, mortality and commemoration.

Journal of Jesuit Studies , 2019

Considered within the context of Jesuit theatre and liturgy, and within the broader culture of sp... more Considered within the context of Jesuit theatre and liturgy, and within the broader culture of spectacle and ritual in the era of Counter-Reform, the works of art and architecture commissioned by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century can be read as 'theatres' of religious performance. In this paper I will present several examples of religious scenographies of the Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709), comparing them with his permanent works of illusionistic painting. I will use them to illustrate the idea of a 'total rhetoric' designed by the Jesuits in this period as the ultimate tool of religious persuasion. In addition to analysing these works as visual environments of performance––comprising iconography, allegory, emblems and symbols, visual narratives, spatial illusions, and architecture––I will discuss the performances themselves––the liturgical rites and methods of prayer which comprise the 'interior' and 'exterior' theatre in which both visitors and the faithful engage.

The Holy Name. Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age, 2018

The Holy Name. Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age , 2018

North Street Review, Vol. 18, 2015

Book Reviews by Andrew J . Horn

Renaissance Quarterly 75/3, 2023

Following Genevieve Warwick's innovative study Bernini: Art as Theatre (Yale, 2012), this importa... more Following Genevieve Warwick's innovative study Bernini: Art as Theatre (Yale, 2012), this important new contribution by Carolina Mangone proves that there is still much to be said about Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), his working process, and particularly his relationship to the artistic principles of the Renaissance as represented in the work of Michelangelo (1475-1564). Mangone's study sheds new light on the artistic and historiographic relationship of the two artists by closely examining Bernini's imitatio Buonarroti across his career as a sculptor and architect, arguing that "by imitating Michelangelo's art and its principles, Bernini constructed a theoretical foundation and vocabulary for his own art" (p. 1). This calls for a return to the basics: close comparative visual analysis of selected works of Bernini and Michelangelo, situated within a comprehensive discussion of the art theory of the period, which Mangone provides in following chapters. The choice of case studies, particularly the sculptures, is both unusual and significant, granting long overdue attention to works that have been all but eclipsed by the highly studied multimedial works and urban monuments. Moreover, Mangone turns aside from the laudatory and often mythologizing biographies of Bernini to craft a more nuanced account of his practice and reception, incorporating an impressive range of well-known as well as lesser-known documents, texts and critical voices of the period.

Renaissance Quarterly, 2022

Journal of Jesuit Studies , 2020

Conference Presentations by Andrew J . Horn

Panel: ‘Race and Blackness Transnationally in the Early Modern Period', Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, March , 2024

Conference: ‘Sacred Drama’: Art, Devotion and Performance in the Age of Religious Reform (c. 1500–c. 1700), School of Art History, University of St Andrews , 2023

Lombardy in the early modern period witnessed a proliferation of religious scenes formed from gro... more Lombardy in the early modern period witnessed a proliferation of religious scenes formed from groupings of polychromed sculpture, rendered in both wood and terracotta, representing episodes from Christ’s life and Passion. These works, I argue, are expressions of an important religious and social phenomenon in the region: the insistent and widespread representation of the Passion, in theatrical, devotional and artistic contexts, signals an evolving understanding of salvation history as a performed drama in which all are called to actively participate. Important on this 'stage' of the Passion are characters representing what we may refer to as social or cultural 'marginality'. Among Christ's followers, these include the figure of Mary Magdalene, the penitent sinner and one of the most important witnesses to Christ's death and resurrection; and the figure of John the Baptist, the 'one whom Christ loved' and a possible representative of 'queerness' in Christian history, discipleship and religious experience. Finally, the mysterious, recurring figure of the 'Gittana', the gypsy mother and child, is an opportunity to examine the issue of race and the socially marginal in the economy of Christian salvation.

Conference: The Art of Devotion. The Agency of Sculpture (9th Annual ARDS Colloquium) , M Leuven, 2022

This paper concentrates on sculptural ensembles of the Compianto, or Lamentation Over the Dead C... more This paper concentrates on sculptural ensembles of the Compianto, or Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, rendered terracotta and wood, northern Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although studies have concentrated on well-known examples of Compianti in Emilia-Romagna by artists such as Niccolò dell'Arca (c. 1435–94) and Guido Mazzoni (c. 1450–1518), this tradition also flourished throughout Lombardy and Piedmont. These sculptural ensembles, which can be viewed as 'dramatized' religious narratives, have been described by scholars as teatri sacri, indicating their relationship to late-Medieval Passion plays and dramatic sermons on the Passion, as well as ritual performances such as funerary laments. Scholars have also demonstrated that these works relate closely to meditative practices promoted by religious orders and confraternities, which appealed to the inner senses, as well as the emotions, to immerse individuals in the religious narratives they 'perform'.

This paper aims to qualify the reading of sculpture as 'sacred drama' by working through both the religious themes and the components of this drama––narrative, character, setting, action, emotion, gesture and even speech––as represented in these ensembles. Their remarkable dramatic agency derives, to a large extent, from the medium of sculpture itself: the 'shared corporeality' of the figures, inhabiting the space of the viewer, grants them unusual potential for 'modelling' emotions, for eliciting empathic responses and even encouraging a sense of identification on the part of the viewer, thus enabling him or her to participate in the 'emotional performance' and experience a kind of dramatic-spiritual catharsis. The body, both as agent and as metaphor, is essential to the meanings of these works, how they function and how the viewer responds to them. The materials of polychromed wood and terracotta, evoking the themes of creation, incarnation and the reality of human flesh––its fragility and its mortality––offered artists the possibility of producing strikingly 'realistic' figures. This was achieved through the imitation of the colours and textures of flesh and hair, as well as the behaviour and weight of costumes and drapery, which contributed to the intense emotions of the dramatic situation conveyed by facial expressions, gestures and figural relationships.

As I examine case studies of Compianti and related scenes from the Passion in Piedmont and Lombardy by artists including Agostino de Fondulis (d. 1522) and Giovanni Angelo del Maino (c. 1475–1536), I will seek to draw direct connections between these works and the texts and accounts of theatrical and paraliturgical performances of the Passion from which they are thought to derive. I will also examine their relationship to the 'internal' religious theatre of devotional and meditative practice in the period. These ensembles, I contend, are evidence of a religious culture that viewed human life in dramatic terms, and salvation history as a performed drama.

Association for Art History Annual Conference. Panel: Towards an Affective History of Art: Vision, Sensation, Emotion, 2022

From the late Middle Ages through the early modern period, images of the Passion, and specificall... more From the late Middle Ages through the early modern period, images of the Passion, and specifically the sufferings of Christ and the Virgin Mary, represent a devotional and meditative strain in religious culture in which powerful emotions are elicited in the individual and the community of faithful, in order to empathically and penitentially involve them in this sorrowful narrative and to understand its meaning.

Concentrating on a selection of polychromed sculptural groupings of the Passion from churches and pilgrimage sites in early modern Lombardy, this paper will examine the emotions and emotional responses represented in these works through systems of facial expressions and bodily gestures. The question of how such emotion is understood and utilised in devotion will be discussed with reference to two genres of religious texts: Passion dramas of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries--which could be regarded as direct or indirect sources for such 'staged' scenes in religious art--and the analogous, highly descriptive and emotionally-charged scenes of the Passion featured in late-medieval and early modern spiritual treatises. The paper will propose embodied emotion as a means of dramatic catharsis and spiritual transformation--both essential to the performed drama of human existence and salvation which underpins early modern Catholic religious belief and practice. This discussion will be informed by theories concerning emotion, gesture and the body as represented in religious art, prayer and ritual by authors including Leon Battista Alberti, Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Federico Borromeo and Gabriele Paleotti.

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (Dublin) Panel: New Avenues for Processional Devotions, 2022

Devotion to the Passion and to the suffering and saving Body of Christ are themes which define th... more Devotion to the Passion and to the suffering and saving Body of Christ are themes which define the intensely pious and penitential religious culture of the diocese of Milan during and after the era of Cardinal Archbishop Carlo Borromeo (1538–84). This paper offers an examination of processional Passion devotion in northern Italy as an internally and externally performed drama. Here the medieval tradition of the sacra rappresentazione--vigorously suppressed by Borromeo--is transferred to ritual contexts in which the participant is engaged in vividly imagining and mimetically re-enacting the life and Passion of Christ. In the urban context, the frequent penitential processions of Borromeo's Milan centred on events of the Passion and on the physical substance and evidence of Christ's body. Within the pilgrimage settings of the Sacri Monti of Varallo and Varese, the visitor progresses through a series of performed sacred mysteries set within a landscape that engages the mind and the body in a spiritual itinerary of prayer, contemplation and action.

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting , 2021

The Sacri Monti at Varallo and Varese in Northern Italy are two of Europe’s best-known “holy moun... more The Sacri Monti at Varallo and Varese in Northern Italy are two of Europe’s best-known “holy mountains.” Featuring series of chapels combining architecture, highly realistic polychrome wood, terra cotta and mixed-media figures, and illusionistic fresco painting, these mountains reproduce sacred narrative scenes from the life of Christ and the Passion; and in the case of Varese, the mysteries of the rosary. The chapels are arranged and placed within their topographical settings to produce a dynamic experience of image, space, architecture, and landscape. Apart from the striking emotive quality, visual effects and overall artistic merit of these multimedia works—historically problematic for art historians to evaluate or categorize—how were they meant to be read and experienced, individually and as a whole, within their ritual and devotional contexts? In this paper I shall present these sites as places of pilgrimage and as sacred theatres, where the visitor-as-performer completes the “total work of art” through an immersive, empathic and active experience involving contemplation, sensory engagement, prayer and movement.

Association for Art History Annual Conference, Session 'Mysticism and The Visual Arts , 2021

Early modern Catholic religious culture is known for a widely popularized method of prayer which ... more Early modern Catholic religious culture is known for a widely popularized method of prayer which involves employing the inner senses to recall scenes from Christ’s life in the most vivid possible terms, in order to enter the sacred narrative and imagine oneself present as a participant. This method of prayer, often associated with the Spiritual Exercises (1548) of St Ignatius of Loyola, is based on a centuries-old tradition evidenced in late medieval Franciscan, Carthusian and Benedictine texts. At the centre of such narratives, and at the centre of Christian belief, is the body of Christ: one is called to adore his divinity as represented in his bodily perfection, but also to identify with his humanity as represented in his bodily suffering. In this paper I propose a kind of mysticism not divorced from or seeking to transcend the body or the physical senses, but in fact centring on them, as one engages in an embodied, performed response to both relics and works of art representing or associated with the Passion and Christ’s suffering. This process, guided by relevant devotional texts, is meant to lead the believer to identification with Christ’s experience as well as greater understanding of the meaning of his sacrifice. As I consider the relics of the Passion in Carlo Borromeo’s Milan and the rituals and devotions associated with them, paintings of the tortured and dead Christ by artists including Caravaggio and Zurbarán, and the striking multimedia Passion scenes of the Sacro Monte of Varallo, I will argue that the physical senses and bodily experience--including movement, gesture, and penitential practice—function together with the inner senses and the imagination to achieve the ultimate goal of union with Christ.

Baroque Festivals between the sacred and the profane: Europe and the Atlantic, Loures, Portugal, 2019

From the last decades of the sixteenth century and continuing to the end of the seventeenth, the ... more From the last decades of the sixteenth century and continuing to the end of the seventeenth, the city of Milan was characterised by a particular confluence of political and religious ideologies: reformed Catholicism, represented in the figure of archbishop Carlo Borromeo and his successors, and expressed in an intensely devout and performative religious culture; and the rule of the Catholic Spanish Habsburgs, represented in the person and the court of the Spanish governor and expressed in major events celebrating Spain’s monarchs. Spectacle in Spanish Milan played a defining role in urban life throughout this period, involving the citizenry of the city and its territories as performers in elaborate civic and religious rituals and ceremonies.

State funerals were among Milan’s most distinctive contributions to the world of the early modern spectacle. The ephemeral scenographies constructed for these occasions—collaborations of the city’s artists, architects, scholars and religious orders––transformed both the interiors and the exteriors of the churches in which they were held into great ‘theatres of death.’ The elaborate decorative programmes of royal funerals in Milan’s vast Duomo, recorded in lavish commemorative publications, invariably celebrated the global reach of Spain’s power with figures, emblems and imprese representing Spanish territories. In this paper I offer an examination of the Milanese state funeral as it developed from the 1580s to the 1660s, demonstrating those aspects which make it distinctive among early modern exequies in Europe: the ritual itself and the performative role of the public as royal subjects; the language and symbolism used in narratives and panegyric sermons; the decorations and ephemeral structures—particularly the elaborate catafalques––and the systems of visual rhetoric they employed; and the roles of light, ritual movement and memory in the design and the experience of the event. As highly choreographed rituals of devotion and reflection, Milanese funerals are eloquent illustrations of early modern understandings and beliefs regarding death, mortality and commemoration.

Early Modern Rome 4, University of California, Rome , 2017

In this paper I offer an examination of the Quarant'ore in seventeenth-century Rome which highlig... more In this paper I offer an examination of the Quarant'ore in seventeenth-century Rome which highlights the elaborate scenographies produced for the devotion and focuses on their relationship to the rite itself. After briefly surveying the history of the rite and its evolution as documented in the instructions published and circulated by Urban VIII, Innocent X, and Alexander VII, I will concentrate on the Quarant'ore at the Gesù, where the tradition was faithfully maintained by the Jesuits in collaboration with the Congregation of Nobles during Carnival. I will analyse several key examples, focusing on the role of images and their meanings within the 'spiritual theatre' of the devotion. This theatre comprised both the externally performed rite and the 'interior theatre' of prayer and meditation which the faithful performed throughout period of the exposition. This discussion will be guided by the Quaranta essercitii spirituali per l'oratione delle Quaranta hore (1605) by the Jesuit Luca Pinelli.

Saint Joseph's University Press, Philadelphia Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, Vol. 18, 2019

Comunicazioni sociali 2024, n. 2. Becoming agens: Synesthetic and Active Processes of image Reception in the Middle Ages, 2024

Sacri Monti and Beyond: Holy Land Simulacra and Monumental Stational Programs Across Europe, c. 1400-1700, ed. Achim Timmermann. Turnhout: Brepols (forthcoming), 2024

Rivista de História da Arte , 2021

Journal of Jesuit Studies , 2019

The Holy Name. Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age, 2018

The Holy Name. Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age , 2018

North Street Review, Vol. 18, 2015

Renaissance Quarterly 75/3, 2023

Renaissance Quarterly, 2022

Journal of Jesuit Studies , 2020

Panel: ‘Race and Blackness Transnationally in the Early Modern Period', Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, March , 2024

Conference: ‘Sacred Drama’: Art, Devotion and Performance in the Age of Religious Reform (c. 1500–c. 1700), School of Art History, University of St Andrews , 2023

Conference: The Art of Devotion. The Agency of Sculpture (9th Annual ARDS Colloquium) , M Leuven, 2022

Association for Art History Annual Conference. Panel: Towards an Affective History of Art: Vision, Sensation, Emotion, 2022

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (Dublin) Panel: New Avenues for Processional Devotions, 2022

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting , 2021

Association for Art History Annual Conference, Session 'Mysticism and The Visual Arts , 2021

Baroque Festivals between the sacred and the profane: Europe and the Atlantic, Loures, Portugal, 2019

Early Modern Rome 4, University of California, Rome , 2017

University of Edinburgh Centre for Renaissances Studies , 2015

The early modern spectacle in Italy is known for its use of complex rhetorical systems of word, ... more The early modern spectacle in Italy is known for its use of complex rhetorical systems of word, image and performance, employed together to communicate religious and political messages, and ultimately to achieve persuasion. Due to their ephemeral nature, the scenographies, costumes and other elements featured in these events are somewhat elusive as objects of art historical inquiry. What is left to us, in many cases, are engravings and written accounts, from which we must re-construct the event, its images, colours, sounds, smells, and the words and actions of the ritual. In this paper I present commemorative pamphlets and engravings from several genres of spectacle in Milan and Rome in the seventeenth century. Focusing on the relationship of images with textual content, such as descriptive narrative, inscriptions, panegyric addresses and sermons, my inquiry considers two functions of these printed commemorative materials: how they called upon the 'arts of memory' of those in attendance, and the imaginations of those who were not, in order to reproduce the experience of the event; and how they function as rhetorical devices in themselves and serve to disseminate the event and its significance across boundaries of time and distance.

Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Conference, Glasgow , Jul 20, 2016

This paper will examine text, image, and performance as a total rhetorical strategy represented i... more This paper will examine text, image, and performance as a total rhetorical strategy represented in scenographies for triumphal processions, state funerals, religious festivals and devotional rituals in early modern Italy.

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Berlin , Mar 28, 2015

Beginning in the late sixteenth century and throughout the period of Spanish rule, the civic life... more Beginning in the late sixteenth century and throughout the period of Spanish rule, the civic life of Milan came to be characterized by a highly theatrical culture of religious ceremony and urban festival. Religious theatre was promoted and regulated as part of the agenda of Charles and Federico Borromeo to showcase the city as a model for the reformed Catholic Church. In this paper, I examine the scenographies produced for several major events of religious theatre in Milan in the seventeenth century. I demonstrate how their architectonic language and iconography illustrate the role of performative ritual as an expression of faith and civic identity in the life of the city, as it emerged from a turbulent past and continued to endure rule by a foreign power. I also discuss the relationship of these ephemeral scenographies to the urban fabric of the city and its permanent architecture.

Reading Architecture Across the Humanities, University of Stirling, 2016

The seventeenth century in Italy is known as a period in which illusion became a cultural preoccu... more The seventeenth century in Italy is known as a period in which illusion became a cultural preoccupation. Architecture of this period saw a flourishing of ideas and building decoration in which the illusion of space or of structure took a myriad of forms, from window openings and galleries rendered in foreshortened perspective to completely fictive structural and spatial illusions rendered in fresco, such as altars, domes, apses, and ceilings which optically extend the architectural space beyond its actual constructed limits, sometimes joining it with narrative or allegorical scenes.

The work of the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo, the seventeenth century’s undisputed master of perspective illusion, and the author of the canonical two-volume treatise Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum (1693 and 1700), represents what I consider a major cultural shift in the way real and illusory space and structure are perceived and understood. Pozzo’s career began with commissions of ephemeral decorations and stage sets produced for ritual devotions and theatrical presentations. As his career progressed, he applied the same methods and working principles of architecture and perspective illusionism to built altars, illusionistic frescoed ceilings, and ultimately entire church interiors. The public acceptance, and even embracing, of Pozzo’s scenographic 'illusions' of architecture place these works well beyond their obvious function as decoration or as temporary, economical solutions to unresolved construction problems.

This paper is a discussion of the complexities and implications—practical, cultural and philosophical—of real and fictive architecture and space, using key examples of Pozzo’s work. My central aim is to address the question of how fictive architecture and space are 'read' and how they function within the historical context of their production. I then consider how such uses and readings have changed as we view these works in our own time.

RSA 2020 (April 2-4, 2020), Philadelphia Multimedia artworks and installations, as well as the ... more RSA 2020 (April 2-4, 2020), Philadelphia

Multimedia artworks and installations, as well as the concept of intermediality, have long held a prominent place in modern and contemporary art and criticism. When considered within the early modern frame, these concepts are most closely associated with seventeenth-century art, and specifically with Bernini and the bel composto. This session addresses the concept of intermediality and the “fusion of the arts” in the early modern period. We invite papers that investigate the relationship between modes and materials within the multi-component art “installation,” artists working across media and fusing different types of media, and the questions which arise regarding the design, production and function(s) of such works. Topics should be situated within the time frame of roughly 1300 to 1700, and can focus on a single region or several regions; can examine a single work or installation, ephemeral, permanent, or both; and can address a single artist or several artists. Given that many works have complex and even inter-regional patronage and production histories, what qualifies a bel composto? Is it something designed or premeditated, or can it be something which occurs through happenstance? Papers can address, but need not be confined to, any or all of the following:

• Is it possible to identify when intermedial or multimedial art practice begins, and with which works?
• How do such works function within sacred or secular contexts?
• What is the role of the viewer within the multi-component system?
• What does a “fusion of the arts’’ bring to bear on the paragone, the visual arts as traditionally understood?
• What are the respective roles of architecture, painting, and sculpture within such works?
• How do these works make use of space and light?
• How do ephemeral and permanent modes of art production relate to each other within the intermedial context?
• How do we address the issue of intentionality: what happens, for example, when a multimedia work is produced more by “accident” than by design?
• How does the global turn in the study of early modern art change our approaches to multi-component works of art, especially in circumstances when each component was created in a different region, or even continent?
• Is there really such as thing as the bel composto?

Please send the following to Andrew Horn (Andrew.Horn@ed.ac.uk) and Rachel Miller (Rachel.miller@csus.edu) by July 18, 2019:

- Title (15-word maximum)
- Abstract (150-word maximum)
- Keywords
- Shortened CV including name, current affiliation, email address, and PhD completion date (5-page maximum)

School of Art History, University of St Andrews, 2023

This interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from nine countries, from fields i... more This interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from nine countries, from fields including history, art history, architectural history, theatre history, music, theology/religious studies, and literature, with two main objectives:

The first is to consider an inclusive definition of ‘sacred drama' that refers not only to religious theatre, as traditionally understood, but includes rituals and various forms of devotional practice, as well as engagement with sacred images, objects and spaces. What are the elements of this drama, and how does it function on various levels, such as affective, cognitive, corporeal, and phenomenological?

Secondly, what happens to religious theatre as we enter the early modern period? We will seek to address the question of the medieval inheritance versus change or transformation, as well as differences between regions, in a period of cultural change, religious reform and confessionalisation. What are the particular challenges presented by the religious debates and upheaval in Europe beginning in the early sixteenth century? Does the suppression of mystery plays across Europe in this period bring about an end to religious theatre, as traditionally understood? How do local practices compare with official policy?

Panel at the Society for Renaissance Studies Conference 2016, Glasgow. Wednesday 20 July, East Qu... more Panel at the Society for Renaissance Studies Conference 2016, Glasgow. Wednesday 20 July, East Quad Lecture theatre, 9.00-10.30 am. For more info see http://rensoc.org.uk/7thconference. All welcome!

I hereby declare that I have composed this thesis and that it is entirely my own work. This thesi... more I hereby declare that I have composed this thesis and that it is entirely my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except the degree specified. All published and unpublished material consulted, quoted, paraphrased, or transcribed in the writing of this thesis is acknowledged and properly cited throughout.

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2019

Considered within the context of Jesuit theatre and liturgy, and within the broader culture of sp... more Considered within the context of Jesuit theatre and liturgy, and within the broader culture of spectacle and ritual in the era of Counter-Reform, the works of art and architecture commissioned by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century can be read as “theatres” of religious performance. This concept is given an ideal case study in the work of Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709). In this essay I present Pozzo’s work within the context of ritual and prayer for which it was produced, focusing on two of his religious scenographies and two of his lesser-known painting projects. As I consider their use of allegory, emblems and symbols, visual narratives, spatial illusions, and architecture, I argue that both the scenographies and the permanent church decorations achieve persuasion through the engagement of the observer as a performer in a ritual involving both internal and external performance.

Birkbeck College, University of London, Murray Seminar on Medieval and Renaissance Art, February, 2024

Conference: Dis/simulation: constellations of deception and unmasking from a historical and systematic point of view, University of Stuttgart, September, 2023

Università degli Studi di Pavia, Collegio Ghislieri, April, 2023

Students of St Andrews Art History, 2023

Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, University of St Andrews School of Divinity, 2023

Edinburgh Early Modern Network, 2022