Images of Mary as Agents of Encounter and Conflict in Europe and Beyond

Ein Vortrag von Chiara Franceschini im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung: Entangled Art Histories. Objekte – Narrative – Diskurse

12. Jänner 2023 | 17:15 Uhr | Raum E.002 (HS Agnes Muthspiel) | Unipark Nonntal

This lecture starts from a small story unfolding in two times: 1549, when in a small village in the diocese of Fermo (Marche) two altarpieces were painted with the Dispute around the Immaculate Conception, one of which included a figure of Mohammed, while the other presented a figure that was read as Mohammed, and 1771, when the two paintings were removed by the local Inquisition, with the indication to erase or to repaint the controversial figures. Starting from this apparently peripheral story from the Adriatic region facing the Dalmatian coast, and presenting a selection of other possible examples from Sicily and Malta to China and Japan, as well as from Florence to Peru, this paper will unfold the geographies and the entanglements of images of the Virgin Mary as agents of transcultural encounter and conflict in the Mediterranean and beyond.

Die Vortragende

Professor for Early Modern Art History at the LMU Munich, Chiara Franceschini works on Italian and European art in their Mediterranean connections, the conflicts and the encounters generated by artworks in premodern contexts as well as their transformations and movements in time and space, art semantics, historiographies and theories. Among her recent publications: Chapels in Roman Churches of the Cinquecento and Seicento (2020) and Sacred Images and Normativity: Contested Forms in Early Modern Art (2021).