Talks by karen mccluskey
Dante Alighieri Society, Sydney , 2021
An exploration of the life of this enigmatic painter, through the works she created.
Venice in Question Seminar Series, 2021
Interview for New Saints in Late-Mediaeval Venice, 1200-1500, Routledge: 2020.
"Venice in Question" is an international research seminar about the history of Venice and its dom... more "Venice in Question" is an international research seminar about the history of Venice and its dominions. It aims to discuss Italian and international projects, to present new publications, and to enable the sharing of ideas between Venetian studies scholars worldwide. The official languages are Italian and English.
Scientific coordinator: Daniele Dibello (Universiteit Gent)
Contact: daniele.dibello@ugent.be
Books by karen mccluskey
This book focuses on the comparatively unknown cults of new saints in late-mediaeval Venice. The... more This book focuses on the comparatively unknown cults of new saints in late-mediaeval Venice. These new saints were near-contemporary citizens who were venerated by their compatriots without official sanction from the papacy. In doing so, the book uncovers a sub-culture of religious expression that has been overlooked in previous scholarship.
The study highlights a myriad of hagiographical materials, both visual and textual, created to honour these new saints by members of four different Venetian communities: the Republican government; the monastic orders, mostly Benedictine; the mendicant orders; and local parishes. By scrutinising the hagiographic portraits described in painted vita panels, written vitae, passiones, votive images, sermons and sepulchre monuments, as well as archival and historical resources, the book identifies a specifically Venetian typology of sanctity tied to the idiosyncrasies of the city’s site and history.
By focusing explicitly on local typological traits, the book produces an intimate and complex portrait of Venetian society and offers a framework for exploring the lived religious experience of late-mediaeval societies beyond the lagoon. As a result, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Venice, lived religion, hagiography, mediaeval history and visual culture.
Book Chapters by karen mccluskey
Death, Disease and Mystical Experience in Early Modern Art, 2022
El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz was painted in 1586-88 for the church of Santo Tomé, in T... more El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz was painted in 1586-88 for the church of Santo Tomé, in Toledo, Spain. Situated directly above the count’s grave, the painting anachronistically re-imagines his 14th-century mystical funeral. This chapter examines the whole site (image, epitaph, and tomb) and argues that a key purpose for the commission was to craft a new Counter-Reformation saint for the parish and Toledo. It argues that El Greco’s visionary image successfully positions the count’s life and death within imitable and verifiable typologies of sanctity demanded by the Council of Trent. Further following Trent, El Greco’s stylistic bravado forces a direct emotive response in the viewer. Collectively, these features not only address Trent’s decrees but promote a compelling and up-to-date new saint.
Routledge Companion to Art and Disability, 2022
Art of the mediaeval and Renaissance West often focused on the idealised body; impaired bodies ha... more Art of the mediaeval and Renaissance West often focused on the idealised body; impaired bodies have received far less attention. Where impaired bodies appear in art, they hold powerful social, political or religious significance. This is particularly true in the painted Lives (Vitae) of saints where episodes of healing impairments are regularly included. Rarely has this body of evidence been explored through a critical disability studies perspective. Applying this lens to pictorial Vitae highlights the complexity of mediaeval attitudes to the impaired body and mind. Both abled and disabled, perfect and flawed, impaired bodies – vividly depicted with exaggerated physical, sensory or mental infirmities – articulate a tense relationship between the ideal spiritual body and the ‘problematic’ social body.
People with disability are primarily depicted in the narratives as seeking cure. This represents impairment as something to be healed, reflecting the contemporary medical model of disability. Yet, successful healings, implicit in the depictions, suggest that impaired bodies were privileged beneficiaries of God’s grace. In the pictorial Lives, those with impairments are also instrumentalised, through dramatic portrayals of both disability and cure, to encourage devotion and aid in others, consistent with the charity model of disability. Although at times impairment was understood as a punishment from God, it was also considered a mark of proximity to Christ. Contemporary ideals of sanctity dictated that to experience Christ’s burden through acts of “impairing” the able body brought an individual into closer communion with him. ‘Naturally’ sharing in Christ’s suffering through their impairments, the disabled were understood to experience ‘purgatory on earth’ which accelerated their salvation. Examining the mediaeval painted lives of saints thereby brings the dichotomy between the impaired body and its opposite, the healed body, into high relief as both were considered marks of divine favour. As late-mediaeval images of healing are complex, both affirming and subverting notions of the normative body, approaching them through a critical disability studies perspective will expand our understanding of mediaeval attitudes to impairment and enable us to trace continuity and change in how disability is visualised today.
Lived Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Hagiographic Material. Eds Jenni Kuuliala et al. Palgrave, 2019
Taking the lead from the ecological perspective of Venetian historian Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan, th... more Taking the lead from the ecological perspective of Venetian historian Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan, this chapter asks a novel question: to what extent did water shape the way Venetians fashioned and engaged with their holy helpers? Bringing together the history of devotion, art history and lived religion, the chapter aims to uncover something of the attitude of late-mediaeval Venetians toward their watery environment and indeed comprehend how they coped with such an exceptional ecological space. Despite an apparent confidence on the seas, the hagiographic materials analysed in this chapter show that Venetians harboured fears and anxieties in relation to water – fears and anxieties which were met head on by devotion to their local new saints.
Promoting the cults of local holy men and women was a very popular form of civic aggrandisement i... more Promoting the cults of local holy men and women was a very popular form of civic aggrandisement in Italy between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. Quite simply, home grown holy figures reflected the purity and piety of the cities which produced them, especially if they were descended from noble bloodlines. Civic registers and lists of domestic saints and their uncanonised counterparts, beati, all around the peninsula, and indeed in Europe more broadly, are full of references to illustrious ‘blue-blood’ families. This paper examines the case of Venice where sixteenth to eighteenth-century hagiographers exaggerated and indeed often fabricated the noble bloodlines in their saintly repertoire in order to amplify the city’s self-professed identity as God’s favoured city and the role of the elite patrician class in achieving this rank.
History for the Curious: Why Study History? (A Decision-Making Guide to College Majors, Research & Scholarships, and Career Counseling for Students, Educators, and Parents) Curious Publishing Company, 2016.
At university open days, where Australian universities promote themselves to prospective students... more At university open days, where Australian universities promote themselves to prospective students, the most persistent question asked of history faculty is ‘why study history?’ The following essay responds to the question exploring both the ‘measurable skills’ that enhance graduate employability and the ‘non-measurable skills’ which focus more deliberately on how the study of history enhances the human person. My responses are drawn from my own experience as a mediaevalist and thus the essay is shaped by the question: Why study dark age history? The essay examines ways in which the study of mediaeval history can both promote students effectively in the job market and help them to critically engage with contemporary issues. The specific examples explored concern discourses of gender, difference and the so-called ‘War on Terror’.
Papers by karen mccluskey
New Saints in Late-Mediaeval Venice, 1200–1500
Conserveries mémorielles [En ligne], http://cm.revues.org/1718, 2013
Throughout late-medieval and Renaissance Italy, pious men and women were recognized as saints dur... more Throughout late-medieval and Renaissance Italy, pious men and women were recognized as saints during their own lifetime and accorded at least local veneration at the site of their tomb after death. Despite the absence of formal canonisation, such cults were often promoted by local governments keen to enlist the beati as potent new intercessors and protectors for their native towns. The situation in late-mediaeval Venice appears to be quite different. Despite the existence of an abundance of religious cults in Venice, in the 13th and 14th centuries only three local beati attained official recognition by the Republic: the bishop and martyr Gerardo da Venezia (d. 1046); the doge Pietro Orseolo (d. 976), and the Domincan friar Giacomo Salomani (d. 1314). This essay examines their state-sponsored imagery, in San Marco and elsewhere, to shed light on the reasons why these three Venetian holy men were singled out as worthy of attention by their government. This analysis goes some way to understanding the unique devotional tradition rehearsed in the city of Venice, specifically in relation to the city’s contingent of local holy men and women.
IKON, Journal of Iconographic Studies, 2013
The legend of Mark’s apparitio had a profound effect on Venetian hagiographic standards. The foll... more The legend of Mark’s apparitio had a profound effect on Venetian hagiographic standards. The following paper seeks firstly to uncover the extent to which the trope dominated Venetian hagiography. It further explores how the Vitae of Venice’s local contingent of saints and beati alluded to Mark’s well-known and sanctioned prototype in order to validate new, dubious or unfamiliar cults. The unusual prominence of the motif in Venice more generally, particularly after Mark’s famous apparitio of 1094, suggests that apparitiones were used as part of a broader strategy to validate Venice’s self-perceived identity as God’s favoured locus sanctus.
The commission and display of a new Winged Victory statue in Marrickville NSW in April 2015 to ma... more The commission and display of a new Winged Victory statue in Marrickville NSW in April 2015 to mark the centenary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli seemed at once predictable and extraordinary. In this suburb, which remains a major hub for Sydney’s Greek community, the legacy of the classical world persists. The public presentation of the statue however raises new questions about the relevance of classical Greek iconography in the twenty first century. This paper will examine the form and function of the sculpture in its historical (ancient Greek and post-war Australian) and present (Marrickville) contexts with a view to comprehending the significance of this seemingly foreign artistic vocabulary to contemporary Australian identity.
Conference Presentations by karen mccluskey
RSA Dublin April 2022
Sometime shortly after 1350, a group of nuns entered the dim sanctuary of their convent-church. T... more Sometime shortly after 1350, a group of nuns entered the dim sanctuary of their convent-church. They clutched a small bundle of miniver brushes and a range of pigments, mostly black, the colour of their habits. In silent partnership, they reached a painted Vita panel. One nun, nominated as the most competent in the art of painting, set to substituting three noblemen depicted on the panel with a trio of female Benedictines. Mission accomplished, the nuns stealthily retreated. This is how I like to imagine the moment an overpainting was executed on Paolo Veneziano’s Vita panel of Leone Bembo (c.1350). The suspect nuns were the custodians of Bembo’s relics. They were wealthy and powerful yet forced to live under patriarchal control. Taking this incident as a point of departure, and drawing on the History of Experience methodology, this paper puts the lived experience of these women into sharp focus by interrogating their motivation to “rewrite” their history.
RSA Virtual Conference, 2021
Art and Lived Religious Experience in Renaissance Venice: the case of St Christopher This paper w... more Art and Lived Religious Experience in Renaissance Venice: the case of St Christopher This paper will examine visual representations of St Christopher in Renaissance Venice to understand the extent to which one can measure lived religious experience through works of art. In legend, Christopher is best known as the unwitting giant who carried the Christ child across a swollen and dangerous river. For this reason, in the Christian tradition, he developed a talismanic function aimed at protecting travelers, broadly conceived. In a city like Venice, built on water, connected by bridges, and crammed with fishermen, merchants and pilgrims, such protection was indispensable. It is not surprising therefore that the city abounds with images of Christopher. Interestingly, Christopher's images were often placed in liminal places (doorways, entry points, exits and other threshold spaces). This paper seeks to understand what these images can tell us about how Christopher's cult functioned in the everyday lives of Venetians, and how Venetians experienced Christopher's presence sensorily through the formal elements and physical placement of the artworks.
Society for the History of Emotions, Ottawa 2019
El Greco’s The Burial of Count Orgaz was painted in 1586-88 for the church of Santo Tomé in Toled... more El Greco’s The Burial of Count Orgaz was painted in 1586-88 for the church of Santo Tomé in Toledo, Spain. Located directly above the count’s grave in a chapel in the church’s narthex, the painting portrays the mystical intervention of saints Augustine and Stephen at the funeral of Don Gonzalo Ruíz, señor of Toledo and Count of Orgaz, in 1323. The painting was commissioned by Andrés Núñez, the parish priest of Santo Tomé, during a period of considerable conflict hundreds of years after the count’s death. Traditionally, the painting is understood to celebrate the local parish’s legal victory over the small town of Orgaz after the latter attempted to abandon its annual bequest to Santo Tomé, promised in perpetuity in Don Gonzalo’s will. The subject, size, composition and materials all serve to amplify the significance of the fourteenth-century señor and to re-establish his presence in the local community – no doubt a bid to reassert the parish’s prerogative. However, by re-evaluating the whole site (including the painting, epitaph and tomb) within the broader counter-reformation context, the paper argues for a possible further motivation for the commission. In post-Tridentine Spain, where a visionary spirituality dominated, the Catholic Church strategically aimed to counter Protestant attacks on its integrity by reasserting itself through tangible links to the holy and by promoting new saints that embodied imitable models of sanctity. El Greco’s painting did both. In this volatile atmosphere, I suggest Núñez specifically chose the heightened style of El Greco to stimulate an affective bond between the magnanimous local and the parishioners not simply to justify the annual fiscal obligation but, more significantly, to garner support in raising a local hero to sainthood.
ANZAMEMS, Wellington, NZ, 2017
Venetians had an uneasy relationship with their domestic saints and beati. Since the later middle... more Venetians had an uneasy relationship with their domestic saints and beati. Since the later middle ages their veneration remained highly localised and low key, quite in contrast to the spectacular attention given to their contemporaries on the rest of the peninsula. I’ve spent much time thinking and arguing about the legacy of Venetian new saints: how poorly represented they were in their own time, even if much loved and venerated on a local level, and I have a myriad of explanations as to why. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new attitude emerged which saw a number of Venice’s minor holy figures elevated to the rank of civic hero. What is interesting is that they weren’t celebrated as individuals but as collectives. From 1619 to 1771, no less than five visual programmes honouring clusters of holy Venetians were commissioned for the churches of Sta. Maria dell’Orto, Sta. Maria della Salute, San Luca, San Rocco and Sta Maria della Consolazione. Previously ignored or deliberately quashed, their sudden shift in status, from obscure individuals to collective civic heroes, is notable. This paper explores some possible political, social and religious motivations underlying Venice’s upwardly mobile saints and beati.
The commission and display of a new Winged Victory statue in Marrickville NSW in April 2015 to ma... more The commission and display of a new Winged Victory statue in Marrickville NSW in April 2015 to mark the centenary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli seemed at once predictable and extraordinary. In this suburb, which remains a major centre for Sydney’s Greek community, the legacy of the classical world is clearly alive and well. The public presentation of the statue however raised new questions about the relevance of classical Greek iconography in the 21st century. Using Sydney war memorials as a case study, the paper revisits the relevance of classical architecture, iconography and ideals in the immediate post WWI era in Australia. Fast forward one hundred years, the contributors examine the continuing legacy of classical Greek iconography to 21st-century Australians through an analysis of Darien Pullen’s Winged Victory. The paper aims to highlight the continuities and discontinuities of this seemingly foreign artistic vocabulary and offer insight into its on-going and perhaps profound significance to Australians who fought at Gallipoli. The geographical proximity of that most famous Anatolian battle, the Trojan War, commemorated in Homer’s epic, the Iliad, may hold the key to its meaning.
The cults dedicated to Venice’s contingent of home-grown saints and beati, although quite convent... more The cults dedicated to Venice’s contingent of home-grown saints and beati, although quite conventional in the context of late-mediaeval sanctity more generally, take on various local idiosyncrasies as a result of the city's unique character. This paper will explore the cults dedicated to Giuliana of Collato [d. 1262], Leone Bembo [d. 1187], Pietro Acotanto [d. 1187?], Contessa Tagliapietra [d. 1308], the priest Giovanni [d.1348?] and Maria Sturion [d. 1399] in order to shed light on the nature of Venetian sanctity. Although the extant evidence is meagre, the correlation between the cultic personalities that does emerge in the hagiographic record is remarkable. It becomes clear that an official standard of sanctity, which drew upon broader devotional trends on the peninsula yet remained acceptable within the unique Venetian milieu, influenced the unique character of local cults generally in Venice.
The presence of the relics of Mark the Evangelist in Venice, and the myth of his providential lin... more The presence of the relics of Mark the Evangelist in Venice, and the myth of his providential link to the city, gave rise to Venetian assertions of religious and moral superiority throughout the Middle Ages. Considering their city an apostolic foundation and God’s pre-eminent locus sanctus, Venetian mythology perpetuated this view by suggesting the city had a special calling to spread the word of God. Their perceived vocation was articulated at the end of Mark’s gospel, where Christ commands the apostles to “Go to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” [Mark 15: 16] Girded by Augustinian and Thomistic theories of bellum iustum or just war, the passage was often cited in defence of Venetian imperialism in Eastern Europe and the Holy Land. The allegory appears quite early in Venetian hagiography, both written and visual. This paper seeks to explore the political nuances of Venetian hagiography, with regard to the Lives of Gerardo da Venezia and Leone Bembo. It will highlight the role of these saintly biographies in promoting and indeed justifying Venetian hegemonic powers within an incontestable hagiographic tradition.
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Talks by karen mccluskey
Scientific coordinator: Daniele Dibello (Universiteit Gent)
Contact: daniele.dibello@ugent.be
Books by karen mccluskey
The study highlights a myriad of hagiographical materials, both visual and textual, created to honour these new saints by members of four different Venetian communities: the Republican government; the monastic orders, mostly Benedictine; the mendicant orders; and local parishes. By scrutinising the hagiographic portraits described in painted vita panels, written vitae, passiones, votive images, sermons and sepulchre monuments, as well as archival and historical resources, the book identifies a specifically Venetian typology of sanctity tied to the idiosyncrasies of the city’s site and history.
By focusing explicitly on local typological traits, the book produces an intimate and complex portrait of Venetian society and offers a framework for exploring the lived religious experience of late-mediaeval societies beyond the lagoon. As a result, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Venice, lived religion, hagiography, mediaeval history and visual culture.
Book Chapters by karen mccluskey
People with disability are primarily depicted in the narratives as seeking cure. This represents impairment as something to be healed, reflecting the contemporary medical model of disability. Yet, successful healings, implicit in the depictions, suggest that impaired bodies were privileged beneficiaries of God’s grace. In the pictorial Lives, those with impairments are also instrumentalised, through dramatic portrayals of both disability and cure, to encourage devotion and aid in others, consistent with the charity model of disability. Although at times impairment was understood as a punishment from God, it was also considered a mark of proximity to Christ. Contemporary ideals of sanctity dictated that to experience Christ’s burden through acts of “impairing” the able body brought an individual into closer communion with him. ‘Naturally’ sharing in Christ’s suffering through their impairments, the disabled were understood to experience ‘purgatory on earth’ which accelerated their salvation. Examining the mediaeval painted lives of saints thereby brings the dichotomy between the impaired body and its opposite, the healed body, into high relief as both were considered marks of divine favour. As late-mediaeval images of healing are complex, both affirming and subverting notions of the normative body, approaching them through a critical disability studies perspective will expand our understanding of mediaeval attitudes to impairment and enable us to trace continuity and change in how disability is visualised today.
Papers by karen mccluskey
Conference Presentations by karen mccluskey
Scientific coordinator: Daniele Dibello (Universiteit Gent)
Contact: daniele.dibello@ugent.be
The study highlights a myriad of hagiographical materials, both visual and textual, created to honour these new saints by members of four different Venetian communities: the Republican government; the monastic orders, mostly Benedictine; the mendicant orders; and local parishes. By scrutinising the hagiographic portraits described in painted vita panels, written vitae, passiones, votive images, sermons and sepulchre monuments, as well as archival and historical resources, the book identifies a specifically Venetian typology of sanctity tied to the idiosyncrasies of the city’s site and history.
By focusing explicitly on local typological traits, the book produces an intimate and complex portrait of Venetian society and offers a framework for exploring the lived religious experience of late-mediaeval societies beyond the lagoon. As a result, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Venice, lived religion, hagiography, mediaeval history and visual culture.
People with disability are primarily depicted in the narratives as seeking cure. This represents impairment as something to be healed, reflecting the contemporary medical model of disability. Yet, successful healings, implicit in the depictions, suggest that impaired bodies were privileged beneficiaries of God’s grace. In the pictorial Lives, those with impairments are also instrumentalised, through dramatic portrayals of both disability and cure, to encourage devotion and aid in others, consistent with the charity model of disability. Although at times impairment was understood as a punishment from God, it was also considered a mark of proximity to Christ. Contemporary ideals of sanctity dictated that to experience Christ’s burden through acts of “impairing” the able body brought an individual into closer communion with him. ‘Naturally’ sharing in Christ’s suffering through their impairments, the disabled were understood to experience ‘purgatory on earth’ which accelerated their salvation. Examining the mediaeval painted lives of saints thereby brings the dichotomy between the impaired body and its opposite, the healed body, into high relief as both were considered marks of divine favour. As late-mediaeval images of healing are complex, both affirming and subverting notions of the normative body, approaching them through a critical disability studies perspective will expand our understanding of mediaeval attitudes to impairment and enable us to trace continuity and change in how disability is visualised today.