Treasures on Display. On the Forms of Exhibition of Medieval Church Treasures (original) (raw)
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Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim ed. by Peter Barnet, Michael Brandt, and Gerhard Lutz
Parergon, 2015
As the title of this art book indicates, we are given a comprehensive overview of the diverse treasures created as early as the ninth century and as late as the early fifteenth century in Hildesheim, Germany. During this expansive medie val period, the city of Hildesheim became a leading ecclesiastical and cultural center that would produce a rich cache of both decorative and functional art objects that would come to be safeguarded over the centuries at St. Mary's Cathedral and St. Michael's Church, now World Heritage Sites, and today housed in the Dom-Museum Hildesheim. These superlative objects of religious devotion and spiritual illumination all demonstrate the unique aesthetic pro duced as medieval art. The photographic documentation is superlative. The two-part structure of the text remains straightforward and informative. The first part covers perfunctory forewords and acknowledgements, which offer intriguing perspectives on how this extraordinary art collection found its path to being an important exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thereafter Professor Marina Giese, Curator Gerhard Lutz, and Professor Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck present a complete historical and chronological account of Hildesheim the city and its cultural heritage. It begins with the eighth-and ninth-century references to the early promoters of Christian ideals, namely Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious, who established the first bishopric of Hildesheim to Gunthar in 815. Then it tells us how and when the cathedral was consecrated and built using a "plan ... characteristic of major cathedrals and abbey churches of the later Carolingian period" (4). It carefully details the contributions of its most prolific donor, Bemward (960-1022), a Saxon noble and thirteenth bishop of Hildesheim, who had the greatest influ ence during his nearly thirty-year episcopate. The rich legacy of artifacts and documents, including a valuable biography entitled Vita Bernwardi, underscore the importance of Hildesheim in the context of the medieval material world. Late eleventh-century documents offer initial written evidence to the details from site designations and chronicling the ecclesiastical leaders and influential noble families. Through this historical heritage we learn how and why these art objects were obtained or produced by the many ecclesiastical leaders, the Ot toman monarchy, and wealthy family clans over the centuries. Compelling reading comes when we are given an overview of the survival of the Hildesheim treasures through the centuries, especially through the
Medieval art on display, 1750-2010
PhD Thesis, 2013
This thesis asks how the curatorial framing of medieval objects - the processes of selection, classification, display and interpretation - affect how medieval objects are made legible within the museum. It investigates how different collectors and curators have deployed medieval objects over a period of two hundred and fifty years of museological practice. Throughout this history, medieval objects have been appropriated within a range of museological narratives that have positioned them variously as objects of curiosity, utility, scientific analysis, nationalistic interest and as sites of scholarly and popular attention. My purpose is to inquire how the epistemological re-positioning of objects is articulated through their presentation within the framework of the collection, museum or temporary exhibition and to question how the mechanics of display facilitate particular readings of medieval objects. I then consider how certain curatorial approaches may produce unintended effects that render the medieval object illegible or problematic in unexpected ways. I also acknowledge that unforeseen exhibitionary outcomes may not be solely due to the effects of curatorial intervention but may be wrought by the agency of objects themselves. This thesis therefore examines medieval objects as active participants that play a crucial role in influencing the communication of curatorial objectives and in affecting how they may be apprehended through exhibitionary practice. The thesis examines sixteen chronologically presented case studies, beginning in the mid eighteenth century and concluding in the early twenty-first century, that represent important or influential episodes in the history of the display of medieval art. It traces a selective history of the various ways medieval objects have been culturally positioned at particular points in time to reveal how curatorial techniques have worked to reinforce or undermine the perception of medieval objects as carriers of specific meanings. Through the examination of historical approaches to the display of medieval objects I reveal how familiar tropes of display, such as the use of specific lighting techniques and stained glass have characterized the museological staging of medieval objects and how these have endured into the twenty-first century. Drawing on performance theory, material culture theory and sensory theory I identify how the biographical histories, material characteristics and sensory properties of medieval objects have been re-activated or suppressed by curators to encourage audiences to engage with them in specific ways. This theoretical approach reveals a previously unacknowledged sensory cultural history of engagement with the medieval object and highlights how historical approaches that have privileged embodied engagement with objects continue to inform contemporary museological practice. I also draw on Actor-Network theory to illuminate how medieval objects may be understood as active agents within the chain of correspondences that links people, objects and exhibitions at particular points throughout this history. In this way I delineate an exhibitionary landscape through which we can understand medieval objects as multi-authored and polysemic entities but principally as the products of exhibitionary practice.
Riemenschneider in situ (ed. Katherine Boivin and Gregory Bryda), 2021
The Chapel of Our Lord (Herrgottskapelle) in Creglingen offers a rare chance to study an altarpiece by Riemenschneider in its medieval space and in conjunction with other contemporary furnishings. With its well-preserved architecture and array of integral artworks, the chapel in fact belongs to the richest pre-Reformation ensembles of its type. If it has rarely been investigated as such, then this reflects a discursive focus on Riemenschneider and his workshop's regional production: the "Creglingen Altarpiece" has been treated as an isolated masterpiece and biographical artefact; a single object has become almost synonymous with a multifaceted site. 2 Viewed from the perspective of the impressive altarpiece, with its unusual free-standing position in the middle of the nave, the space has appeared incongruous to many observers (Figs. 1, 2). Initial surprise at the degree of artistic sophistication in a remote setting has often given way to disquietthe chapel has been perceived as an inadequate framework: too modest in size, poorly lit, and lacking other furnishings of comparable quality. Doubts have also emerged on the ensemble's liturgical compatibility, since the retable's Marian focus seems to stray from the eucharistic raison d'être of the altar and its site. For these reasons, some have argued that the work was not made for Creglingen at all-that it was only transferred there after the Reformation. 3 My purpose here is to reconsider the issue by taking a reverse approach: I want to look at Riemen schneider's famous altarpiece from the perspective of its less famous environment. Thus, I will examine the space and its furnishings on their own terms as a late medieval ensemble, the components of which-while not the products of a single patron or workshop-potentially show interrelations on other levels, particularly in terms of their topographical and devotional functions.
Ancient Gems in the Middle Ages: Riches and Ready-mades, 2011
K rÿ o Just an inch high, the intensely bhte head of lapis lazuli overpowers the shiny gilded body of a small bronze crucifix ( ).1 The body was made hi the eleventh cenO.lry; the head is at least a millemxium older and is, moreover, female. The combination is unsettling, or as Hans Wenÿzel once wrote, "off-putting" (befremdlich).2 To his contemporary Richard Hamann-MacLean, however, the dramatic setting of an antique gem in a contemporary Christian artifact was a deÿing example of the effective medieval cult object: "Strangeness and inviolable clarity of form work together to give the whole an incomparable radiance and mystery."3
Panel on The Context of Church Decoration in the Middle Ages
Physically bound to the written word, Ottonian liturgical manuscript covers had a significantly different relationship to the biblical text than contemporary manuscript illustration. This paper proposes that the iconography of the treasury bindings, in contrast to the illuminations, shared a greater affinity to the spoken words of the mass, while nevertheless speaking to the nature of the contained text. I use the early eleventh-century Easter liturgy of Bamberg Cathedral as a lens through which to view the ways treasury bindings mediated between worshippers and the written word during the performance of the mass. Bamberg serves as an ideal site, as it preserves not only a remarkable nine treasury bindings from the Ottonian period but also a number of sacramentaries, pontificals, and graduals. Taken together, these resources enable a reconstruction of the services during the Easter Triduum. The archaeological and written sources provide evidence of both the performative space of Bamberg cathedral and the actors and audiences who participated in these rituals. KALAMAZOO 2012 PAGE 3 A close analysis of the covers, viewed in tandem with the prayers and lections of the services, reveals that these treasury bindings did not merely illustrate either the spoken or written words, but rather reflected and amplified the aural experience of the Liturgy of the Word for viewers from across the empire.
Late antique church inventories
This article discusses the objects found within churches, using the testimony of inventories. These describe items such as church plate, lighting apparatus, textiles and censers often not often found in archaeological excavations of churches. Comparison of inventories reveals churches of different status, and also something of their atmosphere. The differing style of these texts includes terms that are far from easy to interpret. It can also be difficult to correlate the items in inventories with real objects in museums, as it is shown in a case study of censers.