Naked Bones, Empty Caskets, and a Faceless Bust: Christian Relics and Reliquaries between Europe and Asia during Early Modern Globalisation, in: The Nomadic Object. The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, ed.by Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Intersections, vol. 53), 369-405, 2018
21 Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, 2021
When he was still very young, Diego Velázquez painted “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus” (N... more When he was still very young, Diego Velázquez painted “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus” (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). From its first appearance in scholarly literature, the topic of the picture and the identity of the protagonist have been disputed and the painting has engendered a wide variety of interpretations. This article takes the shifting terms used to define, name, and categorize the painting’s protagonist as its starting point. It re-examines the painting’s multiple ambiguities and argues that the painter might have deliberately veiled the protagonist’s identity, refusing semantic transparency – just as he has left the condition of the central figure’s very seeing unclear. This interpretation gains some plausibility when we observe the work against the background of the expulsion of Spain’s Morisco population between 1609 and 1614. The topic of absence, which the different empty pots and vessels emphasize, and the instabilities upon which Velázquez seems to emphatically insist allow an attempt to interrogate this painting through the lens of the complex identity politics surrounding the literary as well as real-life figure of the Morisco.
Parlare dell'arte nel Trecento. Kunstgeschichte und Kunstgespräch im 14. Jahrhundert in Italien, hg. v. Annette Hoffmann, Lisa Jordan und Gerhard Wolf, München/Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag 2020
Alessandro Bartolomei Romagnoli/Emore Paoli/Pierantonio Piatti (eds.), Angeliche Visioni. Veronica da Binasco nella Milano del Rinascimento, Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo , 2016
Annalena Döring/Ulrich Pfisterer (eds.): Platz da im Pantheon. Künstler in gedruckten Porträtserien, 1502-1884, exh. cat. Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München, Passau: Klinger, 2018
Annalena Döring/Ulrich Pfisterer (eds.): Platz da im Pantheon. Künstler in gedruckten Porträtserien, 1502-1884, exhib. cat. Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München, Passau: Klinger, 2018
Annalena Döring/Ulrich Pfisterer (ed.): Platz da im Pantheon. Künstler in gedruckten Porträtserien, 1502-1884, exhibition catalogue Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Passau: Klinger , 2018
Naked Bones, Empty Caskets, and a Faceless Bust: Christian Relics and Reliquaries between Europe and Asia during Early Modern Globalisation, in: The Nomadic Object. The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, ed.by Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Intersections, vol. 53), 369-405, 2018
21 Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, 2021
When he was still very young, Diego Velázquez painted “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus” (N... more When he was still very young, Diego Velázquez painted “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus” (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). From its first appearance in scholarly literature, the topic of the picture and the identity of the protagonist have been disputed and the painting has engendered a wide variety of interpretations. This article takes the shifting terms used to define, name, and categorize the painting’s protagonist as its starting point. It re-examines the painting’s multiple ambiguities and argues that the painter might have deliberately veiled the protagonist’s identity, refusing semantic transparency – just as he has left the condition of the central figure’s very seeing unclear. This interpretation gains some plausibility when we observe the work against the background of the expulsion of Spain’s Morisco population between 1609 and 1614. The topic of absence, which the different empty pots and vessels emphasize, and the instabilities upon which Velázquez seems to emphatically insist allow an attempt to interrogate this painting through the lens of the complex identity politics surrounding the literary as well as real-life figure of the Morisco.
Parlare dell'arte nel Trecento. Kunstgeschichte und Kunstgespräch im 14. Jahrhundert in Italien, hg. v. Annette Hoffmann, Lisa Jordan und Gerhard Wolf, München/Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag 2020
Alessandro Bartolomei Romagnoli/Emore Paoli/Pierantonio Piatti (eds.), Angeliche Visioni. Veronica da Binasco nella Milano del Rinascimento, Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo , 2016
Annalena Döring/Ulrich Pfisterer (eds.): Platz da im Pantheon. Künstler in gedruckten Porträtserien, 1502-1884, exh. cat. Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München, Passau: Klinger, 2018
Annalena Döring/Ulrich Pfisterer (eds.): Platz da im Pantheon. Künstler in gedruckten Porträtserien, 1502-1884, exhib. cat. Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München, Passau: Klinger, 2018
Annalena Döring/Ulrich Pfisterer (ed.): Platz da im Pantheon. Künstler in gedruckten Porträtserien, 1502-1884, exhibition catalogue Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Passau: Klinger , 2018
The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 and Its Global Visualization. Political Iconography and Transcultural Negotiation, 2023
The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 ended the dynastic union of Portugal and Spain. This book pion... more The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 ended the dynastic union of Portugal and Spain. This book pioneers in reconstructing the global image discourse related to the event by bringing together visualizations from three decades and four continents. These include paintings, engravings, a statue, coins, emblems, miniatures, a miraculous crosier and other regalia, buildings, textiles, a castrum doloris, drawings, and ivory statues. Situated within the academic field of visual studies, the book interrogates the role of images and depictions before, during, and after the overthrow and how they functioned within the intercontinental communication processes in the Portuguese Empire. The results challenge the conventional notion of center and periphery and reveal unforeseen entanglements as well as an unexpected agency of imagery from the remotest regions under Portuguese control. The book breaks new ground in linking the field of early modern political iconography with transcultural art history and visual studies.
Arma Virosque... The Coat of Arms in Extra-European Contexts, 2020
From the very beginning of the Iberian expansion, artifacts, images and objects played key roles ... more From the very beginning of the Iberian expansion, artifacts, images and objects played key roles in the first contacts between people who were not yet well acquainted with one another. One of the most important images in these first encounters was the coat of arms: As a marker of occupation, it was engraved into the padrões, the stone pillars that the Portuguese took with them on their voyages of discovery and planted in the newly conquered coastal areas. Some decades later, the same coat of arms appeared on ivory oliphants made in Sierra Leone by indigenous artists for Portuguese clients. And after the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope, coats of arms including those of individual fidalgos multiplied even further, appearing on caskets manufactured by Ceylonese artists, on the silversmith’s locks of boxes made in the Gujarat, on colchas woven in Bengal, etc.
The roles and functions of armorial bearings in European medieval and early modern contexts have been well researched. In recent decades, the coat of arms has revealed itself as a fruitful topic for visual studies and the anthropology of art. The proposed conference aims to build upon this work and also put pressure on it by expanding investigations of the coat of arms into the field of global art history. It wants to focus on the specific visual format of the coat of arms, as well as its material qualities in tandem with the functions it performed overseas. Questions of media transfer will be addressed as well as the issue of transcultural permeability of coats of arms within the contexts of negotiation processes that took place in extra-European contact zones. The conference proposes to connect questions from the well-established field of early modern political iconography and heraldry with more recent approaches of transcultural art history and visual culture studies.
This international conference is the first to address relics from a transatlantic perspective. It... more This international conference is the first to address relics from a transatlantic perspective. It aims to explore art historical issues regarding relics and reliquaries in the early modern period in the Iberian world. By bringing together papers that deal both with the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, we also wish to provide a forum for wider discussion and debate regarding the presumed 'shared histories' of these territories as far as concerns relics and reliquaries, objects which are as peculiar as they are inextricably tied to the Catholic societies of this age.
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Papers by Urte Krass
The roles and functions of armorial bearings in European medieval and early modern contexts have been well researched. In recent decades, the coat of arms has revealed itself as a fruitful topic for visual studies and the anthropology of art. The proposed conference aims to build upon this work and also put pressure on it by expanding investigations of the coat of arms into the field of global art history. It wants to focus on the specific visual format of the coat of arms, as well as its material qualities in tandem with the functions it performed overseas. Questions of media transfer will be addressed as well as the issue of transcultural permeability of coats of arms within the contexts of negotiation processes that took place in extra-European contact zones. The conference proposes to connect questions from the well-established field of early modern political iconography and heraldry with more recent approaches of transcultural art history and visual culture studies.