Materiality and Mediality
Profile
Materiality and Mediality takes as its focus the reciprocal relationship between the facture of objects and the making of meaning. The questions addressed in this Research Priority build upon the Director’s research on textililty. Material observations of textiles, from Semper onward, have a special role in the historiography of our field, and the study of textiles demands both new economic, social, and material approaches to the history of art, from canvas painting to tapestry, while also emphasizing global movements of materials, techniques, and makers. More broadly, the study of materials encompasses both the complex negotiation of human makers with material resistances, and the way materials change physically and in terms of their reception over time. From the extraction and procurement of raw materials to the sensual qualities of finished products, the study of an object’s materiality has the ability to bring forth histories of labor, trade, technology, and the environment that have been traditionally considered beyond the remit of Art History. Concomitantly, media theory is a useful tool to examine how medium shapes the behavior of works of art, which becomes especially pronounced when new media emerge and spread. Both materiality and mediality impact the aesthetic, social, and ritual understanding of works of art. The study of materials invites approaches to the history of art that span geographies and chronologies in new and challenging ways. Materiality and mediality serve as broad frameworks to look anew at visual culture by offering sets of methodological tools that can shed new light on canonical works of art while simultaneously integrating overlooked objects into larger art historical narratives.
Report 2022–2024
This Research Priority aims at studying early modern architecture, painting, and sculpture in their materiality and mediality as to reveal artistic theories in practice. In doing so, the projects undertaken expose a medial discourse that has been overlooked in canonical studies of early modern art and architecture, and which expands also to other sensory dimensions beyond vision.
Mediality
Advancing a material history of architecture, Vitale Zanchettin (Vatican Museums) joined the Department as the 2023/24 Wittkower Fellow to write a monograph on Michelangelo’s notion of architectural craft. During this time, Zanchettin organized Field Seminars to the Archivio della Fabbrica of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Villa Madama to study the facture of architecture. In 2023, two volumes of The Architectural Drawings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and His Circle – Antiquity and Theory, edited by Christoph Luitpold Frommel and Georg Schelbert, sponsored by the Department, were published. Additionally, the transcultural mobility of architecture has been the subject of one Fellow’s research.
As for sculpture, two Workshops were held, one by members of the Wölfflin team on Media Histories of Sculpture, another on the technical study of Bernini’s bronzes. Fellows have studied the representation of the male body in public space, the haptic dimension of pietre dure tables, the hylomorphic aspects of sculptural material, the Renaissance culture of the fake, and the role of portable sculpture during the Enlightenment.
Concerning the expanded field of figuration, scholars explored the intermediality of early Cinquecento printmaking, unconventional painting supports in the Seicento, the olfactory dimension of varnish in the nineteenth century, and the modern imagery of female textile work. Weddigen presented the research he conducted in Paris in his 2024 Fall Semester Opening Lecture dedicated to the mediality of Charles Le Brun’s Histoire du roi.
In Research Seminars, a range of media have been scrutinized from points of view that included race, postcolonial materiality, female craft, clinical representation, queerness, chromatic materiality, synesthesia, the history of scent, and tactility, including a Disability Studies Workshop on the non-visual access to art.
The Department supported Silvia Ginzburg’s (Roma Tre) study of the procedural, socio-historical, and aesthetic conditions of the making and organization of large art and architectural worksites in the three-part series of Workshops I cantieri in Europa nel Cinquecento: architettura e decorazione. The proceedings of the first Workshop, dedicated to Rome, were published in print and open-access in 2024, and the second Workshop, focused on Fontainebleau, was held in 2023.
Locality
The Department gives special attention to the material heritage of the Institute. The Hertziana App, a project initiated during the pandemic and launched in 2023, funded by the Department, coordinated by Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, assisted by Oliver Lenz, implemented by a large group of interns, and developed by a start-up spin-off of the ETH Zurich, offers enhanced-reality access via hand-held devices to the rich architectural and art historical heritage of the Bibliotheca Hertziana.
Under the banner Unearthing Ancient Rome’s Garden Culture, the Department has also taken the initiative to develop public access to the archeological site of Lucullus’ nymphaeum located under the edifices of the Bibliotheca Hertziana.With the help of the President, the Department is seeking a sponsor to fund the archaeological research, the interactive mediation, and the architectural infrastructure, for which Enrico Da Gai has developed a project.
This year, the Department initiated regular, open-participation Rome Field Seminars for the Institute’s Staff and Fellows that explore the city’s multilayered history and multi-media texture, following the itinerary of the guida rossa of the Touring Club Italiano (TCI), starting with Stazione Termini, and including extra visits to exhibitions, archives, galleries, and studios, amounting to about fifty events.
The Census Fellowship
To support research on the reception of antiquity, the Census Fellowship was established in 2022, co-funded with the Humboldt University Berlin and extended in 2023 to include the Warburg Institute, London. Driven by the wish to diversify the reception beyond the classic notions of the Renaissance, the Census Fellow’s projects are itemized under different Research Priorities of the Department. The first four Census Fellows have been:
- Juan Mantilla, Predoc, 2022/23: The Early Modern Invention of the Ancient Andes
- Hugh Cullimore, Predoc, 2023/24: From Weasels to Ostriches: The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Iconography on the Creation and Development of the Emblematic Genre
- Barbara Furlotti, Postdoc, 2023/24: True Lies: Restorations, Reproductions, and Fake Antiquities
- Karl-Magnus Brose, Predoc, 2024/25: Forms of the Antique: Edme Bouchardon and the Sculptural Imaginary, 1723–1762
Outlook
In 2025, the Rome Field Seminars will resume at Piazza del Popolo, and the third Workshop on the cantieri del Cinquecento, exploring El Escorial, will take place in Spain.
