Murray Seminars
The Murray Seminars on Medieval and Renaissance Art present current research by emerging and established scholars. Seminars are held three times a term and take place at 5pm in the School of Historical Studies (43, Gordon Sq., London WC1H 0PD) in The Keynes Library (Room 114), unless stated otherwise.
Talks finish by 5.50pm to allow those with other commitments to leave, and are then followed by discussion and refreshments. These talks are supported by the Murray Bequest in memory of the department's founder Peter Murray, and are open to all. Please follow booking links to register online if you wish to attend. If you wish to join our mailing list, please contact Laura Jacobus.
2022
2021
- Medieval Fabergé: African Ostrich Eggs, Global Currency - Krisztina Ilko
- Colour in Cusanus - Jeffrey Hamburger
- Promoting Conformity, Justifying Persecution: The Revival of Figurative Sculpture at the First Millennium - Deborah Kahn
- Representing Dante's Steps in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy - Lucy Donkin
- The Tacuina Sanitatis of Giangaleazzo Visconti: Encounters Between Visual Experience, Courtly Culture and Medicine - Dominic Olariu
- The Ship in the Shop: A Brief Art History of Late Medieval Ships in Miniature - Achim Timmerman
- Pictorial Invention in the Early Trecento: The Case of the Vele in Assisi - John Renner
- Capturing Expertise: Romanesque Sculpture Between Spain and France - Rose Walker
- On The Trail of the Lonesome Nun: Giusto de' Menabuoi's London Triptych - Laura Jacobus
2020
- Prescriptions and Proscriptions for Grieving in Trecento Representations of the Lamentation - Judith Steinhoff
- Provenance Matters: The Acquisition of Venetian Renaissance Art in Northern Europe Between the Wars - Sarah Ferrari
- Power-Friendship-Faith. French Art in the Times of Religious Controversy in the Mid Sixteenth Century - Christopher Brachmann
- Bohemond's Enigma: Crusader Architecture in Norman Italy - Clare Vernon
- A Gift for Giuliando di Lorenzo de' Medici? The Aritmetica by Filippo Calandri - Federico Botana
- Embattled Exclusivity: The Aesthetics and Politics of Michelangelo's Attack on Flemish Painting - James Hall
2019
- Michael Carter on Relics and Monastic Identity in Late-Medieval England - This paper analyses the importance of relics in the construction of monastic identities in late medieval England.
- Petr Uličný on The Origins of Renaissance Architecture in Bohemia - This seminar considers the leisure architecture of Central Europe in the Renaissance by exploring how two kings of Bohemia, Mathias Corvinus and Vladislaus Jagiello, hired foreign architects to bring the fashion for Renaissance architecture to central Europe.
- Dorigen Caldwell on Prayers, Purgatory and Politics in Post-Tridentine Rome - This seminar will examine the imagery employed in the chapel as an expression not only of the fashionable artistic tastes of early modern Rome, but also of the particular preoccupations of these 'cardinali tedeschi'.
- Luca Palozzi on The Holy-Water Basin of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas - This paper explores this object’s surprising materiality, considering Nicola and Giovanni Pisano's daring technical and artistic experimentations with stones and minerals scarcely used in monumental sculpture from the period.
- Reading an Ancient Monument in Renaissance Rome - This paper will examine these and other aspects of the Septizodium’s rich and diverse architectural fortuna, and explore how interpretations of the monument determined the reuse of elements of its design in Renaissance building projects.
- Jerusalem and Rome on the Rhone? Alexandra Gajewski considers one of the most enigimatic paintings made in fifteenth-century Europe. Please note this seminar will take place in the Council Room at Birkbeck's main building in Torrington Place (London, WC1E 7HX).
- Sandy Heslop and the Tiberius Psalter - Sandy Heslop discussed the significance of The Tiberius Psalter, notable for its collection of drawings and two painted pages.
- Peter Fane-Saunders on Reading an ancient monument in Renaissance Rome - Peter Fane-Saunders examined aspects of the Septizodium’s rich and diverse architectural fortuna and how interpretations of the monument determined the reuse of elements of its design in Renaissance building projects.
2018
- Marie-Louise Lillywhite on Blood is thicker than water - Lillywhite explored how relationships impacted artistic production in Venice for better or worse.
- Jana Gajdosova on Sculpted Genealogies - This seminar explored the fascination Charles IV had with re-imagining and visualizing his role and the effigies of Přemyslids rulers he commissioned for Prague Cathedral.
- Lisa Monnas on Vestments and Textiles - Monnas re-examined the vestments and textiles in the newly conserved panels, assessing their ‘realism’ and their contribution to the heavenly scene.
- Dr Luca Palozzi and Dr Bergkvist present a cross-disciplinary study of lion paw prints in Giovanni Pisano's Pisa Pulpit - This paper presented the initial results of a joint art historical and anatomical study of the Pisa paw prints.
- Emmanuele Lugli on Chasing Absence - A seminar focused on the singular devotion for the 'mensura Christi,' or the act of praying with objects that reproduced the height of Christ.
- Carol Richardson on Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Sixteenth-Century Rome - A seminar focused on the earliest part of the fresco cycle in the English College, which survives as printed images, in light of this deliberate historiographical choice.
2017
- Cecily Hennessy on ‘Mary Magdalene in Byzantium’ - A paper which examined the Early Christian and Byzantine imagery of Mary, exploring some eastern texts that contributed to forming her identity and endeavoured to understand why the two traditions, east and west, were so distinct.
- Zoe Opacic ‘From Sacroscape to Cityscape: Images of Central European Towns in Late Medieval Sources’
- Kim Woods on Speaking Sculptures - Many statues and works of sculpture made in the late Gothic and Renaissance period are represented with mouth open, as if caught in a mid-utterance. These ‘speaking sculptures’ have received remarkably little comment from art historians. What are these speaking statues meant to be saying? And what, as viewers, are we meant to ‘hear’ and respond? The aim of this paper is to begin to unravel this illusion of speech and the agency it implies.
- Robert Maniura on Decoration and Innovation in 15-century Iberian art - Maniura considered the output of Jaume Huguet, the most prominent painter in Barcelona in the later fifteenth century, whose elaborate and heavily gilded works conspicuously depart from these familiar patterns. He argues that his paintings reveal a sensitivity to and creative exploitation of his materials every bit as noteworthy as that of his more famous contemporaries.
- Dorigen Caldwell on Seeking Immortality in Cinquecento Rome - Caldwell examined debates in literary and artistic circles in mid sixteenth-century Rome around portraiture and the encapsulation of the individual. Taking as her point of departure a portrait bust of Pope Paul III, she focused in particular on the highly erudite circles which gathered around the Farnese court, exploring themes of paragone, materiality and the perpetuation of memory.
- Joanna Cannon on redating the Frescoes by the Maestro di San Francesco at Assisi - Cannon revisited her often-quoted article of 1982 to argue against some of her earlier conclusions, and to explore the implications of this change of mind. Were the Franciscans always the artistic innovators in thirteenth-century Italy, or did the Dominicans sometimes lead the way?
2016
- Paul Davies on 'Saving the soul of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici: Function and design in the old sacristy' - This paper asks whether he believed interment in a sacristy might help save his soul and went on to consider whether this notion affected how the sacristy was designed.
- Pippa Salonius on 'Authority, Nature and the Image' - In a society where the word of God reigned supreme, visual reminders of this chain of command were of vital importance. Images, after all, were the lingua franca of medieval Christendom, but given the abstract nature of the message, Salonius explores how its meaning was best conveyed.
- Laura Slater on Art and political opinion in early 14th-century England - Slater explored the role of art and architecture in challenging political ideas and opinions in early fourteenth-century England, focussing on the activities of Queen Isabella of France during the 1320s.
- Clare Vernon on Pseudo-Arabic in medieval southern Italy - Vernon examined the use of pseudo-Arabic motifs in the region of Puglia in southeast Italy over the course of the eleventh century.
- Bernd Nicolai on Modes of artistic expression and representation - Nicolai examined the late-gothic west facade of Bern Minster and its extraordinary sculpted portal, considering the power of change in this and other church-building programmes in imperial cities during the fifteenth century.
- Paula Nuttall on Low life in high society: on dance and low-life subjects in drawings by Verrochio
- Tom Nickson on Light and Gothic architecture - Nickson looked at the significance of light and its subsequent obscuration in Gothic Architecture: 1260, 1860, 1960 and now.
- Zuleika Murat on ‘I have not seen more precious tombs and burials with greater pomp’: Guariento and the Tomb of Doge Giovanni Dolfin in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice - Dr. Murat proposed a new hypothesis and a visual reconstruction of this important monument in one of Venice’s most significant locations.
2015
- Juliana Barone on Leonardo, Poussin and Errard - Barone explored new ideals in the editio princeps of the Treatise on Painting.
- Robert Maniura on Portraiture and Flesh - A talk which discussed Rogier van der Weyden’s famous image of St Luke drawing the Virgin Mary, exploring its implications for the understanding of contemporary portraiture.
- Laura Jacobus on Four Weddings and a Funerary Chapel - Jacobus explored five generations of women who worshipped in the Arena Chapel in Padua, asking what insights we can gain when we place them at the centre of our enquiry.