CFP - "Evidence of Power in the Ruler Portrait, 14th - 18th Centuries" (Munich, 1-2 Dec., 2017)

Ellen Kenney Discussion
From: Prof. Dr. Matthias Müller <mattmuel@uni-mainz.de>
Date: Mar 7, 2017
Subject: CFP: Evidence of Power in the Ruler Portrait, 14th - 18th
Cent. (1-2 Dec 17)

Munich / München, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, 01. - 02.12.2017
Deadline: Apr 30, 2017

Head and Body: Evidence of Power in the Ruler Portrait Between the 14th
and 18th Centuries

Kopf und Körper: Evidenzen der Macht im Herrscherporträt des 14.-18
Jahrhunderts

Conference Concept (short version) / Deutsche Fassung siehe unten!

What meanings do head and body convey in the medieval and early modern
ruler portrait? How do its mimetic schemes and visual projections of
power relate to each other? How are conceptually abstract norms and
values of rulership transposed to categories of looking, how do images
of bodies concretize these norms and values, and what modes of
representation do they cultivate? Research on the history of portraits
has relegated these questions to the margins; we presently lack a
systematic analysis. Nevertheless, head and body forged central
attributes and categories for physical manifestations of rulership in
the Middle Ages and early modern period. The specific conditions of
their visual portrayal is therefore of particular interest. Unlike in
republican or democratic political systems, where the presence and
legitimation of ruling power is supported by an elected government or a
constitution, in principalities and monarchies the prince or king
himself guaranteed the legitimacy of his own rule. He did this above
all else through his physical body, whose visually and haptically
experienced presence first lent the necessary evidence for his
sovereignty.
The conference should comprehensively thematize the different
normative, material, medial, functional, and aesthetic aspects of the
corporeal and material presence of rulership in painted and printed
ruler portraits from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

Scientific Management:
Prof. Dr. Matthias Müller (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Pfisterer (Ludwig Maximilians-Universität München),
Dr. Elke Anna Werner (Freie Universität Berlin)

Conference languages: German and English

Applications for a lecture with an abstract of max. 3,000 characters
can be sent until April 30 2017 to the following address

Prof. Dr. Matthias Müller
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft
Abteilung Kunstgeschichte
Georg-Forster-Gebäude
Jakob-Welder-Weg 12
55128 Mainz
Email: mattmuel@uni-mainz.de

Conference Concept (long version)

What meanings do head and body convey in the medieval and early modern
ruler portrait? How do its mimetic schemes and visual projections of
power relate to each other? How are conceptually abstract norms and
values of rulership transposed to categories of looking, how do images
of bodies concretize these norms and values, and what modes of
representation do they cultivate? Research on the history of portraits
has relegated these questions to the margins; we presently lack a
systematic analysis. Nevertheless, head and body forged central
attributes and categories for physical manifestations of rulership in
the Middle Ages and early modern period. The specific conditions of
their visual portrayal is therefore of particular interest. Unlike in
republican or democratic political systems, where the presence and
legitimation of ruling power is supported by an elected government or a
constitution, in principalities and monarchies the prince or king
himself guaranteed the legitimacy of his own rule. He did this above
all else through his physical body, whose visually and haptically
experienced presence first lent the necessary evidence for his
sovereignty.
Then again the body of the prince or king represented only the apex of
a larger familial group, whose dynastic body likewise possessed a
centuries-old genealogical dimension. The fundamentally non-republican
and non-democratic nature of manifestations of rule shaped how the
medium of portraiture represented the ruler’s body. Ruler portraiture
had, on the one hand, to model Plato and Laktanz’s ideal corporeality
of sovreignly virtue, and on the other hand—via reference to the
genealogical-dynastic body—to visualize the concrete corporeality of a
physically strong regent. The two imperatives sometimes intersected,
stirring tension and conflict. Inherited, culturally determined, and
semantically connoted modes of representation clashed with changing
art-theoretical and technical norms. This is particularly visible in
the new paradigms of mimesis that developed in Italy, France and the
Burgundian Netherlands in the late Middle Ages and proliferated across
Europe during the sixteenth century. Exemplary cases include the famous
likeness of Jean le Bon in the Louvre, Piero della Francesca’s
Montefeltre Diptych, Bernhard Strigel’s portraits for Emperor
Maximilian I, Hans Holbein the Younger’s likeness of Henry VIII of
England, or François Clouet’s images of the French King Francis I.
These portraits show a notable discrepancy between head and body, a
disparity that arises from diverging modes of visualization and
representation as well as different concepts of mimesis.
Mimetic divergence and heterogeneity only increase when the presence of
the princely body is underscored through emphasis on the materiality of
clothing and accessories, while the head remains subordinated to
abstract typologizing. Such perspicuous hybridizations grow
particularly pronounced when the ruler portrait is produced by a
European artist but commissioned by a non-European regent. An
informative example of this phenomenon is Gentile Bellini’s portrait of
the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, painted in 1480 (London, National
Gallery). Such likenesses, which also include early modern portraits of
Chinese emperors inspired by European models, allow us to discuss the
manifold facets of reciprocal processes of artistic and cultural
transfer and transformation between European and non-European ruler
portraits. Representations of female rulers, princes, and lower
nobility boast an even greater variety of idiosyncratic concepts of
power, mimesis, and evidence, as in the exceptional, non-genealogical
case of the head and body of the Pope or Bishop.
Herein lies the challenge of the conference: it should comprehensively
thematize the different normative, material, medial, functional, and
aesthetic aspects of the corporeal and material presence of rulership
in painted and printed ruler portraits from the fourteenth to the
eighteenth centuries. Crucial to this endeavor is the question of how
the relationship between the natural, political, and often sacral body
of the ruler is handled in different political and social contexts and
relations, in a medium that performs its own specific material presence
and forms of evidentiary persuasion. The period under consideration
ranges from the beginning of mimetically-oriented ruler portraiture as
an autonomous category of representation in the late Middle Ages to the
end of the Ancien Régime in France, where the execution of Louis XVI
also marked a caesura in the treatment of the kingly body as a
pictorial subject. Although portraiture in European countries and
territories stands at the center of this investigation, it is
nevertheless an object of the conference to compare European with
non-European concepts of portraiture, and thereby reveal commonalities
and differences as well as mechanisms of cultural transfer between
European and non-European ruler portraiture.


Prof. Dr. Matthias Müller
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft
Abteilung Kunstgeschichte
Georg-Forster-Gebäude
Jakob-Welder-Weg 12
55128 Mainz
Email: mattmuel@uni-mainz.de


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Evidence of Power in the Ruler Portrait, 14th - 18th Cent. (1-2
Dec 17). In: H-ArtHist, Mar 7, 2017.
<https://arthist.net/archive/14910>.