Index#: 19427
Will Count Towards Art History MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards Art History MINOR
In this seminar we will examine the power of medieval art to bridge the earthly and visible world with its heavenly and invisible counterpart. We'll be looking at a wide range of objects such as illuminated manuscripts, preciously crafted reliquaries in gold and silver, painted icons from across the Christian Middle Ages, and focus on the church building as a sacred space which through its colorful frescoes, dazzling mosaics and sumptuous liturgy worked to unite man with God. This journey into the religious function of medieval art and its interaction with its viewers will take us to the major artistic centers of the medieval world (e.g. Rome, Paris, Constantinople) and spans the early Christian period to the Late Middle Ages. We will read and discuss a combination of historical and modern scholarly sources and include worship practices in medieval Judaism and Islam as points of comparison. Students are expected to prepare oral presentations on assigned readings and a research paper on a self-chosen subject.
About Professor Thunø
My area of interest is western medieval art from the early Christian period to the late Middle Ages. Although Italy is a main geographical focus of my research, my goal is not to work on Italy per se, but to engage conceptually with medieval visual representation in ways that combine object-based and historical research with current approaches and theoretical frameworks. In past publications, I have worked on reliquaries in Rome and medieval image theory, icons and semiotics, interactions between images and altars, the miracle-working image between the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the ‘iconicity’ of script.My next book, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2015, is the first large-scale study on the apse mosaics produced in Rome between the sixth and ninth centuries. Here, I situate the mosaics within their viewer-oriented and ritual contexts and rethink issues related to time, repetition, materiality, vision, and the cult of martyrs.