The South Central Renaissance Conference held it's
annual meeting in New Orleans this year from March 8 to March 11. The Society
numbers over 170 members and includes three subgroups: the society for
Renaissance Art History, The Queen Elizabeth I society, and The Andrew Marvell
society.
Altogether there were 47 panels usually consisting
of three papers of no more than 20 minutes in length. This year quite a few
papers were dedicated to Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama. Seven panels were
dedicated to Art history. (To the left are some of the participants with me tieless in the back row)
I read my paper on Titian’s “Sacred and Profane
Love” on Friday morning as part of a panel entitled “Reading the Meanings of
Renaissance Art in the Veneto.” I thought my paper was well received by the
fifteen or so attendees. Afterwards some told me that they found the Mary
Magdalen interpretation convincing. During the question time a couple raised
objections or thought further work was necessary, but I believe that all could
now at least consider the Magdalen as a possibility for the identity of the two women in Titian's painting.
My paper had been preceded by two others. One by Jill Carrington (Stephen F.
Austin State University in Texas) on “The Paired Altar Tombs of Barolomeo
Sanvito and Bartolomeo Urbino in San Francesco Grande in Padua and the Effigy in
Tombs of the Veneto.” The other was by Jasmin Cyril (Benedict College, South Carolina) on “Carlo Crivelli’s
Madonna of the Cucumber: Sacred Image and Morphology.” This latter paper was
especially interesting to me because I have largely overlooked Crivelli in my
work on Giorgione and Titian. Dr. Cyril’s presentation included some beautiful
images of Crivelli’s work. She noted that the cucumber or gourd so prominent in
Crivelli’s many versions of the Madonna and Child was a sign of Resurrection.
Carlo Crivelli |
My wife and I did attend some of the other sessions
on Friday and Saturday including papers on such diverse subjects as “The Flea
Hunt Reconsidered” by Yael Even of the University of Missouri—St. Louis, and
“Francesco Colonna and Edward Burne-Jones: Love among the Ruins” by Liana De
Girolamo Cheney of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The former was a
discussion of a genre of paintings that dealt with attractive young women
searching in their bodices for the
elusive flea. The latter discussed the interest of the nineteenth century
Burne-Jones in Colonna’s “Hypnerotomachia Polphilo,” a work revered by
Renaissance art historians but practically unreadable by anyone else. Actually,
if it weren’t for the woodcuts in Colonna’s work, I don’t think anyone would be
interested.
The conference also featured an optional tour of the New Orleans Art Museum on Friday evening. A docent gave my wife and I
a private tour of their excellent collection which seems strong in Asian and
African art. They also have a good French section that includes a magnificent
portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun done in 1788. The Italian Renaissance section was small but
included some good things.
I must confess that we skipped some sessions to tour
New Orleans, a beautiful city that seems on the surface to have come back from
the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. We took the St. Charles Street Car past
some beautiful old homes as well as the lovely campus of Tulane University.
New Orleans is the craziest city I have ever
visited. Our excellent Hotel Monteleone was in the midst of the riotous French
Quarter. Compounding the usual crush of tourists was a major college basketball
tournament going on in the Superdome. The narrow streets were crowded with
revelers from morning through the wee hours. New Orleans is one of the few
cities that allow people to walk the streets with open drinks in hand.
It all came to a head on Saturday evening with a
parade in honor of St. Joseph whose celebration had been moved up from March 19
to make way for the even larger St. Patrick’s parade. The combined noise of
marching bands, revving engines from the many exotic vehicles, and the crowd was
deafening. It was a fitting end to a Renaissance conference for it brought to
mind Venetian processions of old. On the one hand, there were statues of St.
Joseph on gaily-colored floats, and on the other beautiful streetwalkers plying
their trade.
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Cheers for the report of the conferebce Frank - It's nice to be able to present your work to others in the field.
ReplyDeleteI wouldnt be too hard on Colonna's cryptic work - I really hope someone takes the time to do an historiographic analysis of it, tracing its tremedous influence on art and literature - not to mention its value as narrative source of emblems.
Kind Regards
H
H:
ReplyDeleteI'll try to see if such a study of Colonna has been done. It would be good to separate the myth from the reality.
Frank