Robert S Nelson
Yale University, History of Art, Faculty Member
Michael Camille, a brilliant and imaginative art historian, forty-four years old, died of a brain tumor in April 2002. He was the Mary L. Block Professor at the University of Chicago, where he had taught since 1985. The author of six... more
Michael Camille, a brilliant and imaginative art historian, forty-four years old, died of a brain tumor in April 2002. He was the Mary L. Block Professor at the University of Chicago, where he had taught since 1985. The author of six books and dozens of articles, Camille specialized in the history of Gothic art in England and France. Working between the latest critical theory and specialized scholarship on the Middle Ages, he succeeded in making his subjects appeal to diverse audiences, witness the translation of his books into Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean and invitations to be interviewed on radio programs in Britain and the United States, one of which can still be heard ("This American Life," Episode 38, October 11, 1996, at www.thislife.org). As a scholar, Camille was innovative, if controversial, and above all productive. To highlight that productivity, and because much of his tremendous output has appeared in occasional volumes and out-of-the-way places, we append a comprehensive bibliography of his writings, prepared by one of his students, Kerry Boeye. As we review some of the highpoints in the oeuvre, we also offer an appreciation of a valued and much missed colleague for those who did not have the pleasure of his company. Born in Keighley in Yorkshire, Michael attended the local grammar school, where a beloved teacher, Audrey Collingham, inspired his interest in art and encouraged his scholarly aspirations. He was said to have been the first student from his school in fifty years to make it to "Oxbridge." Admitted to Cambridge University, he studied English, then History of Art, working on medieval art with George Henderson and, informally, on critical theory with Norman Bryson, an important influence. His tutor at Peterhouse, Martin Golding, remembers that Camille "was from a working-class home where there were no books: he once told me that the first night he was in College he said to himself, 'I'm in a town full of books, and I want to read them all!'" Awarded a first class degree in 1980, Michael completed his Cambridge Ph.D. in 1985.
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Book Preface Excerpt: In October 1984, the Department of Art of the University of Chicago organized a symposium in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright\u27s Robie house, a landmark building on the... more
Book Preface Excerpt: In October 1984, the Department of Art of the University of Chicago organized a symposium in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright\u27s Robie house, a landmark building on the university\u27s campus. Eight of the papers that were presented on that occasion have been revised and are published here; each of these offers fresh insight into Wright\u27s achievement, particularly the relation of his professional practice and personal philosophy to nature. Taken together, these papers provide a provocative interpretation of Wright\u27s originality and present a reevaluation of his work in relation to that of his predecessors and his contemporaries, architects as well as writers.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nsudigital_flwbooks/1180/thumbnail.jp
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high... more
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
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In their recent m o n o g r a p h o n a g r o u p o f late th i r teenth-century i l luminated manuscr ipts , H. Buchthal and H. Belt ing juxtaposed a headpiece (fig. 1) f r o m the Vat ican Praxaposto los (gr. 1208) , the masterpiece o f... more
In their recent m o n o g r a p h o n a g r o u p o f late th i r teenth-century i l luminated manuscr ipts , H. Buchthal and H. Belt ing juxtaposed a headpiece (fig. 1) f r o m the Vat ican Praxaposto los (gr. 1208) , the masterpiece o f their w o r k s h o p , w i th an astonishingly similar design in a twe l f th -century G o s p e l b o o k in M e l b o u r n e (f ig. 2). F o r the authors , the percept ive compar i son served t o demonst ra te the debt that Palaeologan i l luminated o rnament o w e s to Comnenian models and t o dist inguish a m o n g d i f fe rent ve rs ions o f the pattern by the atelier. A s they explained, n o t all manuscr ipts r eproduce the mode l fa i thful ly . C loser t o the Comnenian design is a headpiece (fig. 3) in V a t . gr. 1 1 5 8 , the deluxe G o s p e l b o o k made f o r a female m e m b e r o f the imperial fami ly , and hence the name somet imes g i ven t o the g r o u p , the Ate l i e r o f the Paleaologina 1 . Here the blue v ines , set o n the whi te parchment g r o u n d , are thick and substantial l ike those in the M e l b o u r n e v o l u m e . Leaves and stems f o r m a dense w e b , w h o s e h o r r o r vacui better imitates the earl ier aesthetic than d o the thin, delicate stems and ample spacing o f the Praxaposto los headpiece (fig. 1). O n e stage f u r t h e r r e m o v e d f r o m the Comnenian source is the initial headpiece (fig. 4) in a Psalter in Paris, Bibl. Nat. gr. 2 1 , w h e r e n e w palmettes, f r amed in a circle and set o n a stark wh i te g r o u n d , h a v e been added to the f o u r corners o f the panel 2 . Here too , the thicket o f large,
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Page 1. l Page 2. Page 3. Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade Thi Page 4. Page 5. Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade EDITED BY Robert S. Nelson and MargaretOlin The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London Page 6. ...
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Applying a rational design approach to produce a high-quality, low-sooting hydrocarbon diesel blendstock from lignocellulosic biomass-derived short-chain carboxylic acids.
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A fifteenth-century Cretan icon, stolen and taken to Rome by 1499, long languished in semi-obscurity until given to the Redemptorist Order in the mid nineteenth century with a papal injunction to make her known. This missionary order... more
A fifteenth-century Cretan icon, stolen and taken to Rome by 1499, long languished in semi-obscurity until given to the Redemptorist Order in the mid nineteenth century with a papal injunction to make her known. This missionary order made thousands of hand-painted copies of Our Mother of Perpetual Help for its many churches around the world, but it was only when a special devotion, the Perpetual Novena, was first created in St. Louis that the veneration of the icon grew enormously. After tracing the icon from its creation in Crete through its early modern history in Rome, this essay concludes with its fervent veneration in Southeast Asia.
Research Interests: Singapore, Philippine Studies, Philippine History, Roman Catholicism, Byzantine Art and Archaeolgy, and 8 moreByzantine and Post Byzantine Art, Religion and Politics in Singapore, Byzantine and post-byzantine icons and frescoes, Catholic Church History and Devotions, St. Louis, Catholicism In the Philippines, Catholic Devotion, and Roman churches
A review essay about an important book by Ivan Foletti and Adrien Palladino that examines the careers of Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov and André Grabar.
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... From Byzantium to Italy: Greek studies in the Italian Renaissance. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Wilson, NG. PUBLISHER: ... SPONSOR(S): ABSTRACT: Sequel to: Scholars of Byzantium. Includes bibliographical references (p.... more
... From Byzantium to Italy: Greek studies in the Italian Renaissance. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Wilson, NG. PUBLISHER: ... SPONSOR(S): ABSTRACT: Sequel to: Scholars of Byzantium. Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-189) and indexes. STATISTICS. ...
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... Equipped with well-known portraits of Constantine IX Monomachos, the empress Zoe, and her sister Theodora, the manuscript was ... E. Laiou-Thomadakis, "The Byzantine Economy in the Mediterranean Trade... more
... Equipped with well-known portraits of Constantine IX Monomachos, the empress Zoe, and her sister Theodora, the manuscript was ... E. Laiou-Thomadakis, "The Byzantine Economy in the Mediterranean Trade System: Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries," DOP 34-35 (1980-81), 177 ...
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The relationship of the art of Byzantium with Western Europe has been a topic of scholarly inquiry since the mid-nineteenth century. The early scholarship, written by Western Europeans looking East, has several features in common.... more
The relationship of the art of Byzantium with Western Europe has been a topic of scholarly inquiry since the mid-nineteenth century. The early scholarship, written by Western Europeans looking East, has several features in common. Byzantine art is understood to be early in date, different or foreign, and thus primitive. Because Byzantine art is assumed to be unchanging, it could provide important evidence, it was thought, about the origins of Christian art. As the Romantic antiquarian Adolphe..
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Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital/The City's Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century/The Emergence of Modern Istanbul: Transformation and Modernisation of a City/Imparatorluk Baskentinden Cumhuriyet'in Modern Kentine:...more
Michael Camille, a brilliant and imaginative art historian, forty-four years old, died of a brain tumor in April 2002. He was the Mary L. Block Professor at the University of Chicago, where he had taught since 1985. The author of six... more
Michael Camille, a brilliant and imaginative art historian, forty-four years old, died of a brain tumor in April 2002. He was the Mary L. Block Professor at the University of Chicago, where he had taught since 1985. The author of six books and dozens of articles, Camille specialized in the history of Gothic art in England and France. Working between the latest critical theory and specialized scholarship on the Middle Ages, he succeeded in making his subjects appeal to diverse audiences, witness the translation of his books into Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean and invitations to be interviewed on radio programs in Britain and the United States, one of which can still be heard ("This American Life," Episode 38, October 11, 1996, at www.thislife.org). As a scholar, Camille was innovative, if controversial, and above all productive. To highlight that productivity, and because much of his tremendous output has appeared in occasional volumes and out-of-the-way places, we append a comprehensive bibliography of his writings, prepared by one of his students, Kerry Boeye. As we review some of the highpoints in the oeuvre, we also offer an appreciation of a valued and much missed colleague for those who did not have the pleasure of his company. Born in Keighley in Yorkshire, Michael attended the local grammar school, where a beloved teacher, Audrey Collingham, inspired his interest in art and encouraged his scholarly aspirations. He was said to have been the first student from his school in fifty years to make it to "Oxbridge." Admitted to Cambridge University, he studied English, then History of Art, working on medieval art with George Henderson and, informally, on critical theory with Norman Bryson, an important influence. His tutor at Peterhouse, Martin Golding, remembers that Camille "was from a working-class home where there were no books: he once told me that the first night he was in College he said to himself, 'I'm in a town full of books, and I want to read them all!'" Awarded a first class degree in 1980, Michael completed his Cambridge Ph.D. in 1985.
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... 4-5, where each manuscript is given a symbol derived from its pres-ent location. To avoid possible confusion, new attributions have not been given sigla. 4 Ibid., 7, 57, pl. 4c. an aristocratic intellectual, who (re)founded the... more
... 4-5, where each manuscript is given a symbol derived from its pres-ent location. To avoid possible confusion, new attributions have not been given sigla. 4 Ibid., 7, 57, pl. 4c. an aristocratic intellectual, who (re)founded the Constantinopolitan monastery of St. Andrew in Krisei. ...
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... vii Page 14. This is the second volume in the series Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia. The first, published in 2009, was Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot and Arietta... more
... vii Page 14. This is the second volume in the series Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia. The first, published in 2009, was Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot and Arietta Papa-constantinou. ...
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Details of the garments of the saints in the vaults of the outer narthex of the fourteenth-century church of the Chora in Constantinople resemble contemporary aristocratic fashion and associate the heavenly and earthly courts. SS. George... more
Details of the garments of the saints in the vaults of the outer narthex of the fourteenth-century church of the Chora in Constantinople resemble contemporary aristocratic fashion and associate the heavenly and earthly courts. SS. George and Demetrios flanking the entrance to the nave, though among the most popular in Byzantium, were also important to the reigning Palaiologan dynasty and to the current emperor, Andronikos II, and his prime minister, Theodore Metochites, the patron of the church. St. Andronikos, third in the saintly hierarchy, never enjoyed such prominence in any other church and may be interpreted as a reference to the emperor himself. Located next to a scene of the Holy Family's Enrollment for Taxation, St. Andronikos lends heavenly approval to the necessary, but controversial, fiscal policies of the patron and is an integral part of a decorative program that is simultaneously religious and political.
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... essay, 'Tales of Two Cities: The Patronage of Early Palaeologan Art and Architecture in Constantinople and Thessaloniki', Manuel Panselinos ... less than what it had been during the reign of the previous emperor,... more
... essay, 'Tales of Two Cities: The Patronage of Early Palaeologan Art and Architecture in Constantinople and Thessaloniki', Manuel Panselinos ... less than what it had been during the reign of the previous emperor, much less those of the Middle or Early Byzantine periods, and ...
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My essay explores the ways that art historians use images and words to inform their publics, based mainly on evidence from the United States. The performative aspects of lectures with photographic slides are studied from versions... more
My essay explores the ways that art historians use images and words to inform their publics, based mainly on evidence from the United States. The performative aspects of lectures with photographic slides are studied from versions available on the internet. With the profession's change to digital images and Powerpoint, the larger aspects of oral presentations remained the same, but the possibility of multiple images and texts on Powerpoint slide greatly increased the amount of information imparted, but image quality declined. No longer tied to physical slides, the art historian could prepare anywhere and with Zoom lecture from anywhere, but the result was a decline in the shared community of the slide collection and physical interaction with audiences. Moreover, digital lectures imitated cinema in ways different from early slide lectures. As a teaching took, virtual reality can function without a lecturer, or if used in class, the teacher can not longer control what the class sees in when. It also changes the relation of audiences to images, for now spectators inhabit the image with results that once more recall cinema.
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Research Interests: Art and De Gruyter
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... 3).14 Moreover, a throne with a panel of arabesque is also foreign to Byzantium, where, for the most part, painters represent richly adorned thrones with square or turned legs, in imitation of Early Christian designs and ultimately of... more
... 3).14 Moreover, a throne with a panel of arabesque is also foreign to Byzantium, where, for the most part, painters represent richly adorned thrones with square or turned legs, in imitation of Early Christian designs and ultimately of Roman furniture.'1 Occasionally in East and ...
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... Bellini and other Venetian painters (including marked reflections in his work of the later 1480's of the presence of An-tonello da Messina ... Al-most equally influential were the Monument toFederico Corner of unknown authorship... more
... Bellini and other Venetian painters (including marked reflections in his work of the later 1480's of the presence of An-tonello da Messina ... Al-most equally influential were the Monument toFederico Corner of unknown authorship in the Frari (probably of the late 1460's), and ...
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... here or in the contemporary work of the artists employed by the Serbian king Milutin.30 Rather, the S. Lorenzo fresco follows the style of Constantinople, as represented by the Kariye Camii, the somewhat earlier Fethiye Camii, and... more
... here or in the contemporary work of the artists employed by the Serbian king Milutin.30 Rather, the S. Lorenzo fresco follows the style of Constantinople, as represented by the Kariye Camii, the somewhat earlier Fethiye Camii, and probably the Annunciation icon at Ochrid (Fig. ...
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A Byzantine miniature mosaic in Sassoferrato, Italy, has long been studied more for its frame than the mosaic. This paper first examines the mosaic of c. 1300, especially the rampant lion on St. Demetrios’s shield, and suggests that... more
A Byzantine miniature mosaic in Sassoferrato, Italy, has long been studied more for its frame than the mosaic. This paper first examines the mosaic of c. 1300, especially the rampant lion on St. Demetrios’s shield, and suggests that Michael Glabas Tarchaneiotes was the patron of the icon. A century and half later, it was reframed and enclosed it in a painted wooden box. This double re-framing associates the ensemble with Pope Paul II (1464–71), the principal European collector of miniature mosaic icons. The frame’s Greek letter forms are shown to be ancient not Byzantine and simulate the stoichedon style of Greek epigraphy during the fifth-fourth centuries BCE. It is argued that Thomas Palaiologos had the icon reframed to be a gift to Paul II.
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For a bit more than a century, teaching and lecturing about art has relied on photographic slides, but what is commonplace today is about to be digitalized into oblivion. New computer technologies will make class- rooms "smart"... more
For a bit more than a century, teaching and lecturing about art has relied on photographic slides, but what is commonplace today is about to be digitalized into oblivion. New computer technologies will make class- rooms "smart" and more efficient and will greatly extend ...
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This book writes the history of a short-lived attempt to create in Prague a home for Byzantine art historians and historians exiled from Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Named after the distinguished Russian art historian, N. P.... more
This book writes the history of a short-lived attempt to create in Prague a home for Byzantine art historians and historians exiled from Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Named after the distinguished Russian art historian, N. P. Kondakov, the Institutum Kondakovianum had a research library, art collection, a journal, the Seminarium Kondakovianum for Russian, Byzantine, and Migration art, as well as a monograph series that published a book by André Grabar. He was a student of Kondakov in Russia and the future professor at the Collège de France. Byzantium or democracy examines the history of the institute from the 1920s until its demise in the early 1950s and juxtaposes to it Grabar’s career in France during the same period, both little studied.
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On Feb. 2, 1279 according to the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, a metal tray became embroiled in religious politics of the Empire, when it was used to serve kollyba after the feast of the Presentation of the Christ in the Temple.... more
On Feb. 2, 1279 according to the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, a metal tray became embroiled in religious politics of the Empire, when it was used to serve kollyba after the feast of the Presentation of the Christ in the Temple. Suddenly someone claimed to detect on it the word Muhammad in Arabic, and a controversy ensued. The paper analyzes the incident and the different possibilities of writing in Byzantium and Islam as word and ornament.
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Please note the a new lecture series at Yale University but open to the world through Zoom
The various scholarly project of Albert Mathias Friend, Jr., are examined, the chief of which was the reconstruction of the Holy Apostles, a team project of junior members of Dumbarton Oaks. Only portions of that work were published, but... more
The various scholarly project of Albert Mathias Friend, Jr., are examined, the chief of which was the reconstruction of the Holy Apostles, a team project of junior members of Dumbarton Oaks. Only portions of that work were published, but through the interventions of Paul Underwood, it formed the basis for the modern mosaics of the church of St. Sophia in Washington.
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Ornament in Greek manuscript from the thirteenth century has a different character than in earlier periods. Structural analysis of this ornament shows that it depends upon innovations that the Islamic arabesque made long before on... more
Ornament in Greek manuscript from the thirteenth century has a different character than in earlier periods. Structural analysis of this ornament shows that it depends upon innovations that the Islamic arabesque made long before on classical models.
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The architect Alfred Alschuler, a prolific designer of commercial and industrial buildings in the Chicago area, also built several synagogues before his most significant creation, Temple Isaiah, now the home of the Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv... more
The architect Alfred Alschuler, a prolific designer of commercial and industrial buildings in the Chicago area, also built several synagogues before his most significant creation, Temple Isaiah, now the home of the Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv Isaiah Israel congregation. Completed in 1924, it marked a departure from Alschuler’s earlier classical synagogues and was Inspired, he wrote, by a synagogue at Hammat Tiberias in Palestine that Nahum Slouschz excavated under the auspices of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society. Accordingly, Alschuler switched to Byzantine models and copied details of the late antique ornament uncovered by Slouschz. Though such historical references to Palestine, the architect and the Rabbi of Temple Isaiah, Joseph Schultz, sought to connect their synagogue to Eretz Israel.
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ism.yale.edu/ArtLectures
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, 'Reflections on connoisseurship and computer vision' 24/BO1 Elvira Bojilova (Villa I Tatti), 'The "value of drawing" and the "method of vision". How formalism and connoisseurship shaped the aesthetic of the sketch 24/EB1 Thomas Ketelsen... more
, 'Reflections on connoisseurship and computer vision' 24/BO1 Elvira Bojilova (Villa I Tatti), 'The "value of drawing" and the "method of vision". How formalism and connoisseurship shaped the aesthetic of the sketch 24/EB1 Thomas Ketelsen (Klassik Stiftung, Weimar) in cooperation with Uwe Golle (Klassik Stiftung, Weimar) , 'Digital images and art historical knowledge: Connoisseurship today between "top-down design" and "bottom-up' capabilities"' 24/KG1 Valérie Kobi (Universität Hamburg), 'On spectacles and magnifying glasses: the connoisseur in action' 24/KB1 Historic libraries and the historiography of art. Guest-edited by Jeanne-Marie Musto Jeanne-Marie Musto (Independent), Introduction: 'Historic libraries and the historiography of art': articles arising from sessions held at the