European Pulpits around 1500 and Their Sonic Dimensions. Towards the Formation of a 'Sound Art History'

• Applicant: Dr. Joanna Olchawa
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 534942254

How did the pulpit, as an intricate sculptural or microarchitectural feature of late medieval and early modern churches, shape speaking and listening practices? What visual strategies were employed to support the preacher’s acts of speaking and performance, and to encourage the concentrated listening of the audience? My research project takes up such questions and focuses on physical-acoustic possibilities, on the one hand, and the ways in which ephemeral processes of speaking and listening were mediated through the pulpit as art object, on the other. Particularly instructive are the examples produced across Europe circa 1500: With their innovative forms (including, for instance, the newly introduced sounding boards), motifs and comprehensive iconographic programs, they respond to drastic changes in the late medieval preaching practice as well as the expansion of this practice into a medium of mass communication. Prior to Luther, they also demonstrate the high status of listening to the preached ‘Word of God’, which was understood as the via regis to salvation. Accordingly, my study centers on the triad of seeing (the visual strategies at work on the pulpit), listening (audience), and speaking (preacher) during the ‘activation’ in the preaching event. Only then – it will be argued – do the pulpits unfold their full spectrum of meaning. To investigate the entanglements among these three facets, I take – within the 255 ensembles I have already cataloged – an interdisciplinary approach to 15 particularly meaningful pulpits from contemporary Germany, England, France, Spain and Italy, but also Austria, Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic. The visual staging as well as the consideration of the acoustic challenges in the church interior predestine the genre of pulpits to test new methodological approaches. Using pulpits as a basis as well as the already existing, widely discussed Sound History, which primarily emphasizes the written sources on the meaning of sound (as a generic term also for tones, voice, resonance), I intend to explore the parameters and potential of a ‘Sound Art History’ that accentuates the sonic dimensions of premodern art. In this, the art forms (both as ‘sources’ and entities with their own premises) as well as media- or perception-centered and reception-aesthetic approaches will be emphasized more strongly. Consequently, the aim of the project is to examine pulpits of the Pre-Reformation period around 1500 in the triad of seeing, listening and speaking, and to contribute to the formation of a ‘Sound Art History’. This will be realized in a monograph on pulpits as well as the organization of an interdisciplinary workshop, in which the method will be opened for discussion, expansion and refinement.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants