• 5-6 April 2019 – SYMPOSIUM – Eclecticism at the Edges: Medieval Art and Architecture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Cultural Spheres

    The Symposium “Eclecticism at the Edges: Medieval Art and Architecture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Cultural Spheres” took place on April 5-6, 2019 in McCormick Hall 106 on the Princeton University campus.

    In response to the global turn in art history and medieval studies, “Eclecticism at the Edges” explores the temporal and geographic parameters of the study of medieval art, seeking to challenge the ways in which we think about the artistic production of Eastern and East-Central Europe from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. This event serves as a long-awaited platform to examine, discuss, and focus on the eclectic visual cultures of the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Mountains, the specificities, but also the shared cultural heritage of these regions. It raises issues of cultural contact, transmission, and appropriation of western medieval and Byzantine artistic and cultural traditions in eastern European centers, and considers how this heritage was deployed to shape notions of identity and visual rhetoric in these regions that formed a cultural landscape beyond medieval, Byzantine, and modern borders.

    The symposium is free, but registration is required to guarantee seating. Please register here: https://ima.princeton.edu/register/

    For any queries, please contact the organizers at: eclecticism.symposium@gmail.com.

    This event is generously co-sponsored by the following:

    • The International Center of Medieval Art
    • The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
    • The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture
    • The Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
    • The Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University
    • The Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University
    • The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund

    SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM:

    Friday, April 5, 2019

    McCormick Hall 106

    5:00-5:15   Maria Alessia Rossi, Princeton University
    Alice Isabella Sullivan, University of Michigan
    Welcome
    5:15-6:30 Keynote Lecture
    Jelena Erdeljan, University of Belgrade
    Cross-Cultural Entanglement and Visual Culture in Eastern Europe c. 1300-1550
    6:30-7:30Film Screening and Exhibition
    Introduction by Julia Gearhart, Princeton University
    “No Woman’s Land”: A 1929 Expedition to Mount Athos and Meteora
    7:30-9:00 Reception
    McCormick Hall

    Saturday, April 6, 2019

    McCormick Hall 106

    9:00-10:40 Session 1 – New Constructs of Identity
    Chair: Charlie Barber, Princeton University

    Elena Boeck, DePaul University
    A Timeless Ideal: Constantinople in the Slavonic Imagination of the 14th-16th Centuries

    Gianvito Campobasso, University of Fribourg
    Eclecticism Among Multiple Identities: The Visual Culture of Albania in the Late Middle Ages

    Ida Sinkević, Lafayette College
    Serbian Royal Mausolea: A Reflection of Cultural Identity?
    10:40-11:00 Coffee / Tea Break
    11:00-12:40 Session 2 – Shifting Iconographies
    Chair: Pamela Patton, Princeton University

    Vlad Bedros, National University of Arts, Bucharest
    A Hybrid Iconography: The Lamb of God in Moldavian Wall-Paintings

    Krisztina Ilko, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
    The Dormition of the Virgin: Artistic Exchange and Innovation in Medieval Wall Paintings from Slovakia

    Ovidiu Olar, Austrian Academy of Sciences
    A Murderer among the Seraphim: Prince Lăpușneanu’s Transfiguration Embroideries for Slatina Monastery
    12:40-2:00Lunch Break
    2:00-3:40Session 3 – Patronage and Agents of Exchange
    Chair: Cristina Stancioiu, College of William and Mary

    Dragoş Gh. Năstăsoiu, Centre for Medieval Studies, National Research University “Higher School of Economics,” Moscow
    Appropriation, Adaptation, and Transformation: Painters of Byzantine Tradition Working for Catholic Patrons in 14th- and 15th-century Transylvania

    Christos Stavrakos, University of Ioannina/Greece
    Donors, Patrons, and Benefactors in Medieval Epirus between the Great Empires: A Society in Change or a Continuity?

    Nazar Kozak, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
    Post-Byzantine Art as a Network: Mobility Trajectories of the Akathistos Cycle in the Balkans, the Carpathians, and Beyond
    3:40-4:00 Coffee / Tea Break
    4:00-5:15 Keynote Lecture
    Michalis Olympios, University of Cyprus
    “Eclecticism,” “Hybridity,” and “Transculturality” in Late Medieval Art: A View from the Eastern Mediterranean
    5:15-6:00  Roundtable Discussion, Questions, and Closing
    Moderator and Respondent: Ivan Stevović, University of Belgrade
    6:00-9:00 Final Reception
    Chancellor Green Rotunda