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World, Knowledge, Power. Encyclopaedic pictorial programmes from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century
Summer School

 Concept and organization: Manuela De Giorgi, Susanne Pollack, Gerhard Wolf
Academic guest: Dieter Blume


The thirteenth century was a 'century of encyclopaedias'. Learned compilations of knowledge were then produced, and iconographic programmes formulated, with the claim to present all fields of available knowledge in a comprehensive and systematic way.
To be able to present knowledge as 'Summa', and represent it in encyclopaedic pictorial programmes, thematic groups were defined and used in a strikingly constant way; they comprised, for example, such recurrent elements as the planets, the months of the year and the work associated with each, the virtues or the liberal arts. Within this vocabulary uniqueness was created through additions, variations, new combinations, choice of medium and of site, in such a way that the particular expressive force of the individual works would make clear 'what' world, 'what' knowledge and 'what' truth was to be shown.

Over a hundred years after Julius von Schlosser's ground-breaking study "Giustos Fresken in Padua und die Vorläufer der Stanza della Segnatura" (1896), in which important Italian encyclopaedic pictorial programmes were brought together and analyzed, and which still forms the starting point for most studies on this question, the aim of this year's Summer School at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence is to tackle the problem of encyclopaedic pictorial programmes through an intensive on-site study based on new research approaches to monuments from Padua to Rome.

The discussion will be guided by such questions as: To what extent do visualizations from encyclopaedic works influence monumental pictorial programmes with their allegorical or symbolic representations, and, vice versa, how far do these have a reflex action on their linguistic and pictorial production? What visual strategies come into play to produce classifications and make visible the relations between them? With what dynamics of appropriation do ecclesiastical, communal or courtly groups claim a kind of participation in global knowledge that transcends their actual spheres of power? How is the cooperation of a theological worldview with natural sciences and cultural techniques to be evaluated? And how are encyclopaedic pictorial programmes to be evaluated in the context of the history of knowledge?


 

Date
September 3rd, 2010 to September 11th, 2010

Contact
Dr. Manuela De Giorgi
Tel.: +39 055 24911-52
E-mail: degiorgi@khi.fi.it

Susanne Pollack M.A.
E-mail: pollack@khi.fi.it
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