Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections
January 14, 2022 · Zoom
Cosponsor(s): The Index of Medieval Art, Department of Art & Archaeology, the Center for Culture, Society and Religion, the Program in Medieval Studies, the German Department, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), Humanities Council, Delaware Valley Medieval Association and The Morgan Library and Museum
From October 15, 2021–January 23, 2022, the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum in New York hosts an exhibition ten years in the making: Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, 800–1500. The exhibition presents material that has never before been gathered together, treating topics including visual rhetorics of power in book media, the production and patronage of manuscripts, the relationship between vernacular and Classical languages, and the position of imperial cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Princeton conference, Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections expands the purview of the exhibition. The papers encompass material written in Czech, German, Hebrew, and Latin, made for both religious and non-religious contexts in the ninth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries. Most of the focal material is very little published; some papers present new looks at superstar examples based on cutting-edge findings. Themes include the networked relationships among centers of production, the representation of male and female patrons, early print culture, and the role of books in key developments for liturgy, private devotion, chronicle writing, and the law.
