Rushed but Ready: Reconstructing a Tournament Armor for a Radziwill Prince
Jonathan Tavares, Amy and Paul Carbone Curator Applied Arts of Europe, The Art Institute of Chicago
In the late 16th century tournaments remained vital for the celebration of aristocratic marriages, diplomatic missions and royal coronations. Requiring vast resources, equipment, and planning, these events generated creative energy around tight turnarounds and impossible deadlines. The Art Institute of Chicago contains a fragmented tournament armor dated 1573 ascribed to a Radziwill Prince of Poland and Lithuania that was likely the product of such a context. Other pieces of this mysterious armor from Nesvizh Castle (in modern Belarus) are now scattered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museo Nazionale del Palazzo Venezia, Rome, and the Musee de L’ Armee, Paris. These elements all exhibit different levels of preservation and a unique style of etched and gilded decoration drawn from a variety of print sources. Compelling for its varying quality, the vocabulary of this armor’s ornament is both visually rich and yet surprisingly incoherent. This study will analyze this unusual armor garniture, untangle its decoration, construction and function to better understand its context and patron.
Are you there, God? It’s me, Kunst: The Confessions of Lukas Moser’s Tiefenbronn Altar
Tamara Golan, University of Chicago
This paper examines the haunting lament inscribed on Lucas Moser’s 1432 Tiefenbronn altarpiece: “Weep art, weep, and bewail yourself. No one cares for you anymore, oh woe.” I place the inscription in close relation to the penitential function of the altar, arguing that it offers the beholder a therapy of tears modeled by its dedicatee, the Mary Magdalene. Looking at late medieval changes to the sacrament of penance and the restorative power of tears in this process, I also consider whether the inscription's imperative to weep suggests that the artwork might also benefit from the purgative powers of penitential tears. My exploration of the inscription’s explicitly erotic overtones reveals how it provocatively equates painting with sex work and, in so doing, aims its therapeutic imperative at the artwork itself, demanding that it cast off its own tricks of artifice and illusion and transform itself into a new type of art.
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Register and Request PaperAbout the European Art History Seminar Series
The Center for Renaissance Studies European Art Seminar considers work in art history that explores painting, sculpture, graphic art, architecture, caricature, manuscript illumination, book arts, and material culture. The European Art Seminar is sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.