In response to the global turn in art history, this two-day symposium explores the temporal and geographic parameters of the study of medieval art, seeking to challenge the ways we think about the artistic production of Eastern Europe. Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Romanian principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, among other centers, took on prominent roles in the transmission and appropriation of western medieval, byzantine, and Slavic artistic traditions, as well as the continuation of the cultural legacy of Byzantium in the later centuries of the empire, and especially in the decades after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

This symposium will be the first such initiative to explore, discuss, and focus on the art, architecture, and visual culture of regions of the Balkans and the Carpathians (c.1300-c.1550). We aim to raise issues of cultural contact, transmission, and appropriation of western medieval, byzantine, and Slavic artistic and cultural traditions in eastern European centers, and consider how this heritage was deployed to shape notions of identity and visual rhetoric in these regions from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. This event will offer a comparative and multi-disciplinary framework, ranging from art history to archeology and from material culture to architectural history. We aim to create a platform where scholars at various stages of their careers can discuss their research and engage in dialogue regarding the specificities but also the shared cultural heritage of these regions of Eastern Europe that developed eclectic visual vocabularies and formed a cultural landscape beyond medieval, byzantine, and modern borders.

Friday, April 5, 2019
5:00-5:15 M. Alessia Rossi, The Index of Medieval Art Alice Isabella Sullivan, University of Michigan Welcome
5:15-6:30 Keynote Lecture Jelena Erdeljan, University of Belgrade Cross-Cultural Entanglement and Visual Culture in Eastern Europe c. 1300-1550
6:30-7:30 Film Screening and Exhibition Introduction by Julia Gearhart, Princeton University “No Woman’s Land”: A 1929 Expedition to Mount Athos and Meteora
7:30-9:00 Reception
McCormick Hall
Saturday, April 6, 2019 9:00-10:40 Session 1 – New Constructs of Identity
Chair: Charlie Barber, Princeton University
Elena Boeck, DePaul University A Timeless Ideal: Constantinople in the Slavonic Imagination of the 14th-16th Centuries
Gianvito Campobasso, University of Fribourg Eclecticism Among Multiple Identities: The Visual Culture of Albania in the Late Middle Ages
Ida Sinkević, Lafayette College Serbian Royal Mausolea: A Reflection of Cultural Identity? 10:40-11:00 Coffee / Tea Break
11:00-12:40 Session 2 – Shifting Iconographies
Chair: Pamela Patton, The Index of Medieval Art
Vlad Bedros, National University of Arts, Bucharest A Hybrid Iconography: The Lamb of God in Moldavian Wall-Paintings
Krisztina Ilko, The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Dormition of the Virgin: Artistic Exchange and Innovation in Medieval Wall Paintings from Slovakia
Ovidiu Olar, Austrian Academy of Sciences A Murderer among the Seraphim: Prince Lăpușneanu’s Transfiguration Embroideries for Slatina Monastery
12:40-2:00 Lunch Break
2:00-3:40 Session 3 – Patronage and Agents of Exchange
Chair: Cristina Stancioiu, College of William and Mary
Dragoş Gh. Năstăsoiu, Centre for Medieval Studies, National Research University “Higher School of Economics,” Moscow Appropriation, Adaptation, and Transformation: Painters of Byzantine Tradition Working for Catholic Patrons in 14th- and 15th-century Transylvania
Christos Stavrakos, University of Ioannina/Greece Donors, Patrons, and Benefactors in Mediaeval Epirus between the Great Empires: A Society in Change or a Continuity?
Nazar Kozak, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Post-Byzantine Art as a Network: Mobility Trajectories of the Akathistos Cycle in the Balkans, the Carpathians, and Beyond
3:40-4:00 Coffee / Tea Break
4:00-5:15 Keynote Lecture Michalis Olympios, University of Cyprus “Eclecticism,” “Hybridity,” and “Transculturality” in Late Medieval Art: A View from the Eastern Mediterranean
5:15-6:00 Roundtable Discussion, Questions, and Closing
6:00-9:00 Final Reception Chancellor Green Rotunda