Medieval Sculptures of the Virgin in Performative Contexts: Gold, Silver, Lead and Other Metals (Heisenberg-Project). Project-specific Workshops

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Katharina Christa Schüppel
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 456489927

As part of the Heisenberg-project „Medieval Sculptures of the Virgin in Performative Contexts: Gold, Silver, Lead and Other Metals” two project-specific workhops shall be funded.The project analyses medieval sculptures of the virgin with metallic surfaces. The objects date from the 10th to the 13th century. They are made from gold, silver, lead and other metals, often in mixed-media combinations. Key pieces are the Golden Madonna in Essen (ca. 980), the silver Madonna in Walcourt (early 11th century) or the Vierge de Baroilles (Paris, Musée du Louvre).The research design is based on object histories and the histories of substances like gold, silver and lead in the Middle Ages, which are set in relation to performative practices and spaces: among the performative contexts analyzed during the project are the medieval multisensorial church space as well as post-medieval stagings of single objects as part of altars, in museums, in temporary exhibitions or in living-religion-practices.Two interdisciplinary workshops will be part of the project: “Visual and material cultures of female sanctity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages” and “Medieval sculptures of the Virgin: Performative spaces and practices”. For these project-specific workshops funding shall be applied.Both workshops are central to the project’s success, as they offer opportunities to reflect critically on results and progresses in an interdisciplinary and international medievalist environment. New forms of cooperations in the field of „material religion” shall be explored between Restoration Sciences, Cultural Anthropology and Religious Sciences.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants