Inscriptions and Images in Secular Buildings: Examples from Renaissance Scania, Sweden, ca. 1450–1658 (original) (raw)
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Images and Inscriptions on Dwelling Houses in Livonian Towns, c.1450 – c.1550
Everyday Life in a Hanseatic Town = Alltagsleben in einer Hansestadt. Ed. by Ivar Leimus, 2021
The late medieval and early modern urban space was filled with all kinds of images and inscriptions. The representative and communicative power of buildings became widely acknowledged in the late 15th and even more so in the 16th century, when wealthy burghers increasingly began to decorate not only the interior but also the exterior of their homes. A house, especially its facade, served as a reflection of its owner, his social standing, and religious, ethical and moral beliefs. Indeed, the facade can be regarded as the owner’s public calling card. This paper studies the use of images and inscriptions on late medieval dwellings in three large Livonian Hanse towns: Tallinn (Reval), Riga, and Tartu (Dorpat). I will discuss what kinds of motifs, symbols and inscriptions were used, their function and what kinds of messages they conveyed. I will briefly outline the changes in pictorial motifs and inscriptions after the Reformation.
Antiquity, 2010
The author shows how houses in the northern Baltic were constructed using two realities: the reality of timber and the equally potent reality of spirits supporting and controlling the fate of structures. Excavations in seventeenthcentury Tornio (now in modem-day Finland) showed that houses were furnished with special offerings when founded and refurbished, while evidence from living folklore suggested that the houses themselves were originally given spiritual personalities and were treated as members of the family. As more modern thinking took hold, this spirituality was transferred to the more mobile and skittish household sprites.
These are the proceedings of the symposium Medieval Murals in the Church Attics of Östergötland, held in September 2015, at Norrköping Art Museum, organised by ICOMOS Sweden’s Scientific Working Group for Mural Paintings. (ISBN: 978-91-7739-087-9). The purpose of the symposium was to bring different disciplines together to shed light on diverse aspects of an ensemble of medieval wall paintings, located in the attics of eight churches in the county of Östergötland in south-east Sweden.This ensemble of medieval art, hidden in the attics of the churches, offers a rare opportunity for gaining new insights into sacred art. The absence of a complex conservation history makes this medieval wall painting ensemble unique. The paintings are thus an extraordinary historical source of information about medieval art and the messages embedded in the materials. An art-technological approach was applied in recent investigations of these mural paintings. Interesting results were obtained by exploring the material composition and its effects on the visual appearance. Through a collaborative effort, the messages and significance of the paintings, which present-day viewers cannot perceive, may again become accessible.The contributors to the proceedings share their experience, insights, and opportunities related to art-technology, value and the reception history of this type of sacred art in historic churches.
Symposium program ICOMOS Medieval murals in the church attics of Östergötland 2015.pdf
Above the church vaults in eight churches in the region Östergötland in Sweden, medieval mural paintings, dated to the period 1180-1350, are preserved. . During the 15th century the medieval wooden ceilings in these churches were replaced with brick vaults decorated with gothic murals. The murals above the vaults are significant artifacts from the early medieval period in Northern Europe. Some of these paintings have never been conserved and the material is thus completely unaffected, which is rare in Sweden. This makes them valuable sources for research and understanding of early medieval painting technology as well as interpretation of its visual message. ICOMOS Sweden invites you to a symposium where paintings technology, technical art history, iconography, reception and value will be the topic. The purpose is to bring together different perspectives related to these murals. Speakers representing different disciplines in art history and cultural heritage are invited. The symposium is organized by ICOMOS Sweden with support from the Berit Wallenberg Foundation. Co-organisers are Norrköping Art Museum and the pro bono project DoCValue.
A vida quotidiana da cidade na Europa Medieval, ed. by A. AGUIAR ANDRADE, G. MELO DA SILVA, IEM – Instituto de Estudos Medievais, Lisboa, 2022
Not only did great artists work in the construction of churches, but also many other men who were real protagonists in everyday life in Medieval urban Europe. This paper, after an extensive introduction about the characters active in the building sites of the churches (clients, architects, and workers) citing sources from the 11th to the 15th century (epigraphs, sculptures, manuscripts, frescoes, etc.), examines the dynamics of clients and workers in the city of Verona and in its territory (northern Italy, Veneto region) during the Romanesque era (12th century); a period, indeed, when the city and its territory experienced a great construction season. At that time, many workers began to sign their works with great pride. First of all the sculptor Pelegrinus who, in the third-fourth decade of the 12th century, signed the arch of a single lancet window, thus demonstrating a great awareness of its value; after him Anno, Wariento, and Chebizo built the Bastia church in Isola della Scala in 1126; Anno and his brother Wariento in 1130 built the bell tower of the abbey of Santo Stefano in Isola della Scala; Anno is mentioned in an inscription dated 1143 on the facade of the basilica of San Fermo in Verona. In the same period, on the eastern shore of Lake Garda Petrus, Berardus and Bernardus signed an archivolt of a window on the facade of the parish church of Santa Maria in Cisano; another epigraph from 1143 mentions the erection of the church of San Michele in Belfiore: the inscription cites the magisters Borgo and Malfato. This extraordinary epigraphic fortune in Veronese Romanesque architecture is essential when establishing the dating of the construction of churches and shows the desire of simple workers not to be anonymous, but to leave their legacy to future generations.
The Meaning of Media: Texts and Materiality in Medieval Scandinavia
2021
The present book is the first in a new series intended to provide the foundation for a new history of texts in transmission in the Scandinavian Middle Ages. It is therefore relevant to stress what is central to and new about this approach to medieval manuscript culture. The traditional synthesis in the form of literary history is generally presented as a chronological narrative formed around the production of works, primarily works at the centre of an accepted canon. Our contention is that it is more relevant to establish a dynamic model based on the dissemination, distribution, and reception of texts in motion rather than static works, while to some degree, however, retaining relevant aspects of the production of the original form. One central aim is to provide the theoretical and methodological framework for such a narrative of the history of texts. Our use of the concepts of genre and type of text will, for example, as a consequence also be determined by the actual reception of texts over time rather than by fixed and static categories. At the outset, it is also important to stress that the material taken into account will to a large extent involve texts that are traditionally placed outside of the canon. This enables us to form a more comprehensive view of the emerging literate culture in Latin and the vernacular. The literate culture of the Middle Ages, in manuscripts and epigraphic writing, has with good reason been characterized as constituted by variance on all levels, from palaeography and orthography to the transmission of motifs and larger textual units (see e.g. Zumthor 1987). It is obvious, however, that there has been a tendency in earlier scholarship to divide the investigation of this culture into various fields of study, with the result that interrelations and conflicting tendencies leading to changes in a longer-term perspective may have been overlooked. Good examples of this would be the lack of studies on the relation between epigraphy and manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, or on the interaction between manuscript traditions and the emerging print culture of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It has been common to focus on runic material as representative of regional literacy, while inscriptions in Latin have very often been neglected. And yet, from the introduction of Roman script and Latin texts, probably as early as the tenth century, but attested more clearly only in later centuries, our material demonstrates the interaction between the traditional use of runes and the novelty of Latin texts in various media. Runes are primarily found in epigraphic contexts, sometimes in direct connection with Latin inscriptions. In the manuscript material, Roman script dominates, but we do find examples of written runic messages, both
Go Figure!: Creating Intertwined Worlds in the Scandinavian Late Iron Age (AD 550–1050)
2010
This paper discusses Scandinavian gold foil figures from the early part of the Late Iron Age (AD 550–1050). The author presents two major points of interest that have been neglected in previous research. The first highlights how the manipulations the figures have undergone must be taken into consideration, which is accomplished with the help of theatre theory, semiotics and anthropology. The second places an emphasis on how the context from which the figures have been retrieved must be analysed. Consequently, from the example of a ceremonial building at Uppåkra, Sweden, it is contended that the figures were made by artisans/smiths that, apart from expertly making the figures, also acted as ritual specialists when the structure was built or inaugurated. As such, they were responsible for depositing specific figures in particular, designated and pivotal places that needed protection or other ritual treatment. The gold foil figures further highlight the intertwinement between subject and object, human and nonhuman, as well as between the divine and the mundane. Therefore they contributesignificantly to discussions on materiality.