Objects of Memory: The Medieval Art Historical Imagination

FAIN: FEL-262948-19

Erik Inglis
Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH 44074-1057)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book about medieval art and attitudes of medieval people toward art, from 600 to 1500.

Art history is a modern discipline that did not exist in the Middle Ages. Despite the discipline’s absence, medieval people were passionate about old objects and buildings, asking questions we recognize as art historical: Who made that? How? What does it mean? I demonstrate that they asked these questions for varied reasons, including pride (institutional, civic or national), nostalgia, and aesthetic fascination, and answered them by examining technique, style and iconography. My synthetic account covers the period from 600 to 1500 in Europe and the Mediterranean, comparing aristocrats, commoners and monks, Christians and Jews. My book will offer a new perspective to medieval art historians, who typically concentrate their interpretive energies on our objects’ origin while neglecting their reception. This new perspective is both necessary and useful, since medieval people encountered more old objects and buildings than new ones.

Associated Products

History in the Making: Categories, Techniques and Chronology in European Church Collections, c. 800-1300 (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: History in the Making: Categories, Techniques and Chronology in European Church Collections, c. 800-1300
Author: Erik Inglis
Abstract: I assessed how medieval people's understanding of the history of techniques enabled them to date ancient sarcophagi, metalwork, and manuscripts, and then explained how this historical knowledge affected the reception and use of old objects.
Date: 9/13/2019
Primary URL: https://medievalarchive2019.wordpress.com/
Primary URL Description: webpage for conference: “Collecting, Curating, Assembling: New Approaches to the Archive in the Middle Ages,” University of St Andrews, September 13 - 14, 2019
Conference Name: Collecting, Curating, Assembling: New Approaches to the Archive in the Middle Ages

The Later Medieval Reception of Earlier Medieval Manuscripts (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Later Medieval Reception of Earlier Medieval Manuscripts
Author: Erik Inglis
Abstract: Analyzed the reception of old books in the Middle Ages, showing how art historical knowledge about them enabled them to serve as powerful ties to institutional and religious history.
Date: 1/22/2020
Primary URL: https://arthistory.yale.edu/event/medieval-renaissance-forum-erik-inglis-oberlin
Primary URL Description: link to online poster for talk
Conference Name: Yale Medieval Renaissance Forum

’It Began with a Picture,’ or, Inventing Stories to Make Sense of Images in the European Middle Ages (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: ’It Began with a Picture,’ or, Inventing Stories to Make Sense of Images in the European Middle Ages
Author: Erik Inglis
Abstract: This paper examines medieval discussions of iconography, what an image represents. It concentrates on what Dale Kinney has called narrative etiologies, that is cases where medieval viewers, provoked by an image they did not understand, invent a story that explains it. My examples include the contested reception of ruler portraits, inquiries into images in churches, and narrative elaborations on hagiographical images. These cases demonstrate that medieval viewers were quite happy to accept Pope Gregory the Great's invitation to read images as the literate read texts. For the art historian, they offer gratifying proof that images may provoke verbal narratives instead of merely depending on them.
Date: 9/30/2019
Primary URL: https://lsa.umich.edu/histartvrc/news-events/all-events.detail.html/65742-16651985.html
Primary URL Description: website poster for talk
Conference Name: Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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