Seriality in the Middle Ages: The Thuir-Madonna and her Sisters. Object scans (Heisenberg-Project "Medieval Sculptures of the Virgin in Performative Contexts: Gold, Silver, Lead and Other Metals")

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Katharina Christa Schüppel
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 456490205

As part of the Heisenberg-project „Medieval Sculptures of the Virgin in Performative Contexts: Gold, Silver, Lead and Other Metals” funding for object scans shall be provided.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.Absolutely exceptional because of their materiality are the virgins molded from lead. Ten pieces are conserved, dating to the 13th-century. The project aims to provide a reliable data basis for the whole group, in order to define the relationship between the single pieces in detail for the first time. Analysis tool are three-dimensional surface scans (in cooperation with the KDWT Bamberg). The realization and the analysis of the scans shall be supported by a student assistant (during project phase 2). For this assistant, funding for staff and travel expenses shall be provided. From this participation a scientific thesis at the interface of art history and restoration science shall emerge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants