CFP: The Resonances of Renaissance Objects – Session at RSA (Philadelphia, 2-4 Apr 20)

Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Philadelphia, April 2 – 04, 2020

Deadline: August 1, 2019

This session prioritizes an object-based approach for examining the mutable definition of the Renaissance in artistic production, collecting, and (art) historiography from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. How do objects themselves reveal insights about the Renaissance’s cultural, political, economic, and historical resonance for later viewers? How can objects and their subsequent material transformations be used to understand the place of Renaissance culture in the historical imagination? By centering inquiry on objects themselves, this session intends to draw attention to how the works we study are rarely untainted evidence pointing to the initial moment of making, but instead contain the traces of past interpretations of the Renaissance, which continue to influence how we are able to consider the period today.

We invite scholars to submit papers on subjects including the following:

-Repair, restoration, pastiche, replication, and forgery of “authentic” Renaissance objects
-Technical revivals of Renaissance media, such as ceramics, tapestry, fresco, etc.
-Neo-Renaissance objects as meaningful hybrids
-Renaissance and neo-Renaissance objects and architecture outside of Europe
-Display and exhibition strategies among private and institutional collectors
-The materiality of connoisseurship, attribution and re-attribution, and taxonomic organization