Society and Culture in the Baroque Period

LocandineInternational Conference

Rome, 27-29 March 2014

PROGRAMMA DEI LAVORI

 

 

Sapienza Università di Roma – Aula Magna del Rettorato (Palazzo del Rettorato) 27 marzo 2014 h. 9.00-13.00

Presentation of the ENBaCH, Renata Ago (Sapienza Università di Roma)

What is “Baroque”? Defining Baroque in the history of art, literature, music, science, society, etc.

Chairperson: Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Andrea Battistini (Università di Bologna), Dal cerchio all’ellisse: dal Rinascimento al Barocco
Francesco Benigno (Università di Teramo), La visione barocca: alle radici di una sensibilità condivisa

h. 11.00 Coffee break

Marcello Fagiolo (Centro studi per l’immagine di Roma), Barocco: il potere delle immagini e la festa delle arti
Christian Jouhaud (EHESS – Parigi), Autour de la notion de « baroque », enjeux polémiques, enjeux politiques

13.15 Lunch break

 Aula III (Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, piano terra) 27 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

1. Diplomatic networks

Chairperson: Rosario Villari (Accademia dei Lincei)
Diana Carriò Invernizzi (UNED – Madrid), The ambassador Marquis de la Fuente. A new Spanish  diplomacy in Europe after the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659)
Massimo Carlo Giannini (Università di Teramo), Cesare Monti nunzio a Madrid (1628-34) e arcivescovo di Milano
Antonella Viola, (Centro de História de Além-Mar – Lisbon), Granducal agents in Lisbon. Diplomatic  networks and the circulation of information between Portugal and Tuscany (1660-1700)
Paola Volpini (Sapienza Università di Roma), Sfiducia e controllo. Difficili relazioni di reciprocità tra gli agenti medicei a Madrid

Aula del Museo di Storia della medicina (Istituto di Storia della Medicina. piano terra) 27 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

2. Baroque bodies

Chairperson: Sonia Horn (Medizinische Universitaet Wien);
Benedetta Borello (Sapienza Università di Roma), Temperamenti umorali e identità familiare nella Roma barocca
Maria Conforti (Sapienza Università di Roma) – Silvia De Renzi (Open University – UK), Baroque  surgery. Riva’s anatomical tables
Regina Deckers (Bibliotheca Hertziana), Frightening Fragments – The Representation of the Rotten  Corpse in Baroque Sculpture
Fabio Cafagna (Sapienza Università di Roma), Landscapes of Inner Body. The Baroque Myth of  Transparency in the Teaching of Artistic Anatomy
Stefania Macioce (Sapienza Università di Roma), Figure del tempo e della morte: il senso del macabro in  età barocca

Sala degli Organi collegiali (Palazzo del Rettorato) 27 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

3. Epistolary exchanges

Chairperson: Federica Favino (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Clizia Carminati (Università di Bergamo), La lettera come strumento di informazione nelle relazioni letterarie del Cinquecento e del Seicento: il progetto Archilet – Reti epistolari
Caroline Castiglione (Brown University), Women as Witness: From Seeing the World to Changing it in  the Baroque Age
Emilio Russo (Sapienza Università di Roma), Scambi e reti epistolari tra Italia e Francia nel primo Seicento
Carmen Serrano Sanchez (Universidad de Alcalá) «Arriba el telón». Cortesía y representación en la  teoría epistolar del barroco

Aula XV – Ex Officine Ortopedia 27 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

4. Artists on the move I

Chairperson: Joan Lluis Palos (Universitat de Barcelona) Michael North (Universitaet Greifswald), Baroque on the Baltic
Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira (Universidad Nova de Lisboa), A young artist in the Rome of Clement XI:  Vieira Lusitano and the origins of Roman Taste in John’s V Court
Mayte García Julliard (Musée d’art et d’histoire de la Ville de Genève), A different Velázquez? Philipp  IV’s painter far from the Spanish court
Miguel Hermoso Cuesta (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Some considerations on Neapolitan  Painting of the second half of the 17th Century
Peter Mason (Roma), Ribera and the Antique

h. 16.40 Coffee break

Aula III (Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, piano terra) 27 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

5. Diplomatic networks-Rome

Chairperson: Diana Carriò Invernizzi (Universidad telematica)
José María Domínguez (Universidad de La Rioja), Diplomacy as performance in late 17th-century Rome:  A controversy on the Spanish immunity in 1692
Isabella Iannuzzi (Sapienza Università di Roma), L’ambasciata spagnola a Roma e la politica religiosa del Conde-Duque de Olivares
Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralata (Università di Chieti-Pescara, Bibliotheca Hertziana), “La mia posterità […] co n me stesso è dedicata a servire et ubidire eter namente Vo stra Maestà Cesarea.” Il Principe Pao l o   Savelli, ambasciatore imperiale alla corte di Roma, e la sue rete di relazioni europee
James Nelson Novoa (Universidade de Lisboa/CLEPUL), The Changing face of Portugal’s man in  Baroque Rome (1580-1640)

Aula del Museo di Storia della medicina (Istituto di Storia della Medicina, piano terra) 27 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

6. Baroque souls

Chairperson: Lisa Roscioni (Università di Parma)
Tessa Storey (Royal Holloway-University of London), “It is the duty of the diligent doctor to investigate just how deeply it has penetrated his soul”: Managing melancholy in late sixteenth-century Rome
Federica Molin (Venezia), “La parrucca, la cosa più barocca del barocco”. Usi costumi ed eccessi della  società del ‘600
Berthold Over (Universitaet Mainz), E le passioni colla ragione si temperino”. La cantata da camera  come strumento del controllo delle passioni
Aneta Markuszewska (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Between sensuality of music and religious ecstasy – Maria Clementina Sobieska Stuart (1702-1735)

Sala degli Organi collegiali (Palazzo del Rettorato) 27 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

7. Arts and sciences in translation I

Chairperson: Marco Ruffini (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Laura Facchin (Università dell’Insubria), Ludovico Settala: un intellettuale barocco fra scienza e arte
Federica Favino (Sapienza Università di Roma), Un re sole, un sole re: ‘nuova’ scienza e teoria dello Stato nella Roma barocca
Itay Sapir (Université du Québec à Montréal), Baroque Science, Experimental Art? Reflections on Early  Seventeenth-Century Epistemological Culture
Andrea Spiriti (Università dell’Insubria), La ‘Galeria’ di Giovanni Battista Marino fra arte e poesia:  sogno, utopia, gioco nel primo Seicento

Aula XV- Ex Officine Ortopedia 27 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

8. Artists on the move II

Chairperson: Paola Besutti (Università di Teramo)
Francesco Cotticelli – Paologiovanni Maione (Seconda Università di Napoli -Fondazione Pietà dei Turchini, Napoli), Tra le carte della diplomazia napoletana: la musica e il teatro “viaggianti” nell’Europa  del Settecento
Maria Alexandra Trindade Gago da Câmara (Universidade de Aberta), Models and representations of  the portuguese world of baroque: The Tile (Azulejo) and the staging of everyday
Maria do Rosario Salema de Carvalho (History of Art Institute, University of Lisbon), How prints were  used by azulejos’s painters. The example of Gabriel del Barco
Anna Tedesco (Università di Palermo), Due networks per la circolazione del teatro spagnolo nell’opera  italiana: corti spagnole e teatro impresariale

 

Auditorium della Cappella Universitaria h. 20.15

Concerto dell’Ensemble “Diletto Barocco”: in programma musiche di Lully, Lotti, Telemann, Haendel

Aula del Museo di Storia della medicina (Istituto di Storia della Medicina, piano terra) 28 marzo 2014 h. 9.00

9. Baroque architecture and urbanism

Chairperson: Mario Bevilacqua (Università di Firenze)
Fabio Colonnese (Sapienza Università di Roma), Galileo, Bernini and Gaspari. Notes on the controversial  association between Ellipse and Baroque
Denis De Lucca (University of Malta), Jesuits and Military Architecture
Mehtap Serim (MAU), Ottoman Architecture in the Age of Encounters
Marisa Tabarrini (Sapienza Università di Roma), Riforma religiosa del clero regolare e politica urbana  sotto Innocenzo X Pamphilj
Federico Vizzaccaro (Sapienza Università di Roma), La musica sacra a Roma, un'”immagine sonora” dell’età del Barocco?

Sala Odeion (Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, piano seminterrato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 9.00

10. Art for power / The power of art I

Chairperson: Claudia Cieri Via (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Ida Mauro (Universitat de Barcelona), Emblemi vicereali. Le serie a stampa dei ritratti di viceré e  governatori
Giacomo Montanari (Università degli Studi di Genova), La Parola e l’Immagine. Cultura del libro e  collezionismo artistico nella Genova del XVII secolo
Milena Viceconte (Universitat de Barcelona), Il duca di Medina de las Torres e alcune note sulla sua  collezione di ritratti
Stefano
Pierguidi (Sapienza Università di Roma), Tanto che basti: arti figurative e notomia in età  barocca

Sala degli Organi collegiali (Palazzo del Rettorato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 9.00

11. Arts and sciences in translation II

Chairperson: Amedeo Quondam (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Meike Beyer – Anja Schwitzgebel (Technische Universitaet Dresden), Books – Drafts – Spaces.  Circulation and Materialisation of Knowledge in the Baroque Era. The case of M.D. Pöppelmann
Gabriele Quaranta (Sapienza Università di Roma – Université Paris 1), Traduzione, riscrittura,  raffigurazione. La fortuna figurativa delle opere letterarie come fenomeno “barocco”
Donato Verardi (Université Paris Est – Creteil CRHEC), La demonologia barocca e le sue radici  medievali. Della Porta, Vanini, Campanella
Piotr Salwa (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Old ideas-new concepts. Ortensio Lando and pre-baroque subversive thinking

Aula XV- Ex Officine di Ortopedia 28 marzo 2014 h. 9.00

12. Baroque law

Chairperson: Irene Fosi (Università di Chieti-Pescara)
Francesco Di Chiara (Università di Messina), Le decisiones dei Supremi Tribunali del Regnum Siciliae.  Fonti di un diritto “siciliano barocco”
Serena Falletta (Università di Trapani), L’editoria giuridica barocca siciliana. Un percorso tra immagini,  testi e censure
Simona Feci (Università di Palermo). Cartari e Zacchia: due famiglie di giuristi nella Roma barocca
Maria Fusaro (University of Exeter), La cultura giuridica del marinaio nel Mediterraneo Seicentesco

h. 10.40 Coffee break

Sala degli Organi Collegiali (Palazzo del Rettorato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 11.00

13. Baroque Poetry

Chairperson: Piotr Salwa (Uniwersytet Warszawski)
Dvora Bregman (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), Hebrew Baroque Poetry in its European Context
Aminadav Dykman (Hebrew University, Tel Aviv), Representing Baroque poetry through translation
Yehoshua Granat (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), The Baroque spirit in European Hebrew poetry  of the 17th Century: Some new considerations
Dinah Ribard (EHESS – Paris), Poésie ouvrière, poésie baroque ?
Piotr Wilczek (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Baroque Visual Poetry in Poland

Sala Odeion (Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, piano seminterrato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 11.00

14. Art for power / The power of art II

Chairperson: Francesca Gallo (Università di Teramo)
Aleksandra Koutny-Jones (University of Exeter), Depicting the spiritual body: Royal precedents for  funerary practice in baroque Poland-Lithuania
Tomaso Montanari (Università Federico II – Napoli), Caravaggio barocco
Milena Ulčar (University of Belgrade), Immobility in motion: Saint Triphon’s reliquaries and their  performativity
Daniel M. Unger (Ben Gurion University), Between Fact and Fiction: Constructing the Iconography of a  Counter-Reformation Saint in the Baroque: The Case of Carlo Borromeo in Bologna
Maddalena Spagnolo (Università Federico II, Napoli), Le metamorfosi di Pasquino: effimero, infamia e  artificio nella fortuna seicentesca del gruppo di Parione

Aula del Museo di Storia della medicina (Istituto di Storia della Medicina, piano terra) 28 marzo 2014 h. 11.00

15. The circulation of culture I

Chairperson: Elisabetta Corsi (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Giulia Calvi (Università di Siena), Corpi nello spazio. Libri di costumi, cartografia, abiti fra l’Italia,  l’Europa e il Giappone (XVI-XVIII)
Máximo
García (Universidad de Valladolid), Siempre entre objetos: pobres o simbólicos. Cultura material  y civilización populares en la Castilla Barroca
Pedro Luengo (Universidad de Sevilla), China in the European Baroque Culture: The Andalusian role in  its diffusion

Aula XV- Ex Officine Ortopedia 28 marzo 2014 h. 11.00

16. Baroque libraries

Chairperson: Elisabeth Tiller (Universitaet Dresden)
Giovanna Benadusi (University of South Florida), Reading as Political Practice: The Eclectic Library of a  Grand Duchess in the Baroque Age”
Lorenzo Geri (Sapienza Università di Roma), L’epistola eroica nell’Europa barocca (1590-1717)
Ana Celeste Gloria (Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Lisboa), A private library in the Mateus  Palace (Vila Real). The D. Luís António de Sousa Botelho Mourão (1722-1798) books’ collection
Sara Elisa Stangalino (Università di Bologna), “Caprices héroïques” di François de Grenaille e la  diffusione dell’opera di Giovan Francesco Loredano in Francia
Elena Valeri (Sapienza Università di Roma), La biblioteca di Cassiano dal Pozzo

h. 13.15 Lunch break

Aula del Museo di Storia della medicina (Istituto di Storia della medicina, piano terra) 28 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

17. Baroque performances:

Chairperson: Federico Vizzaccaro (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Giulia Giovani (Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom), Un agente veneziano a Roma per conto dei  Grimani: Polo Michiel e il viaggio del 1674-75
Antonio Castillo Gómez (Universidad de Alcalá), Entre la voz y el texto. La comunicacion politica y  religiosa en la Espana barroca
Consuelo Gómez (UNED – Madrid), Journeys and spectacles: the cross-cultural relationship for the  internationalization of visual language in the courts of the baroque era
Stefano Tomassini (Università di Venezia), «L’infinito in cartellone». Il paradigma dello spettacolo nel  Seicento italiano
Nicola Badolato (Università di Bologna), Matteo Noris «L’animo eroe» (1689) e alcuni drammi per  musica del secondo Seicento

Sala Odeion (Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, piano seminterrato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

18. Informal diplomats, noble ladies, spies

Chairperson: Paola Volpini (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Angela Ballone (Scuola Normale – Pisa), The Risky business of unrequested informal diplomacy in  baroque times: The case of the Mexican Gazettes by Bernardino de Urrutia
Anne-Madeleine Goulet (Centro Musica Barocca – Versailles), La principessa Orsini a Roma (1675-  1701): Gli usi dello spettacolo, o la diplomazia «francese» al femminile
Giuseppe Mrozek (Università di Teramo), The Faults of a Spy. The Espía Mayor Andrés de Velázquez and  the trial against the Duke of Osun
Cloe Cavero de Carondelet (European University Institute), An Ecclesiastical Court in Seventeenth-  Century Spain: Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, Príncipe de la Iglesia

Sala degli Organi collegiali (Palazzo del Rettorato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

19. Academies and their networks

Chairperson: Maria Pia Donato (Università di Cagliari)
Iordan Avramov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia), The country correspondent as source of  knowledge at the early Royal Society of London: The evidence of the correspondence of Henry Oldenburg,  1660-1677
Miriam Di Penta (Independent Art Historian – Roma), Il signore di Locko Park. Un curioso ritratto di  Fabio Colonna, Linceo napoletano (1567-1640)
Joanna Kostylo (British School at Rome), Bodies of Knowledge: Early Modern Physicians as Cultural  Mediators

Aula XV- Ex Officine Ortopedia 28 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

20. Devotional practices

Chairperson: Laura Ronchi (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Sara Caredda – Ramon Dilla Martí (Universitat de Barcelona), Devozione e santità. Salvatore da Horta  nelle arti del barocco
Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Il senso della morte nella cultura sarmatica del barocco polacco
Henar Pizarro Llorente (Pontificia Universidad Comillas, Madrid), Un trozo de Roma en Madrid. La  beatificación del IV duque de Gandía Francisco de Borja (1624)
Lisa Roscioni (Università di Parma), “Maledette canzoni profane”. Spiritualità barocca e contrafacta a Brescia nel XVII secolo
Antonio Vannugli (Roma), Sigismondo Laire e la diffusione dell’iconografia devozionale romana  nell’Europa cattolica agli albori del Barocco

Aula di Paleografia (Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, secondo piano) 28 marzo 2014 h. 15.00

21. Baroque Rome

Chairperson: Marina d’Amelia (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Sabina Carbonara Pompei (Università di Ferrara), Fra arte e architettura: il ruolo di alcune  congregazioni religiose femminili nella Roma barocca
Natalia Gozzano (Accademia Nazionale di Danza), «La luce dell a Co rte, & de’ Co rtegiani …». Il maestro di  casa alter ego del principe nella Roma del Seicento
Annick Lemoine (Accademia di Francia, Roma), Bassifondi del Barocco. Roma dei vizi, della miseria e degli eccessi
Manuela Militi (Sapienza Università di Roma), Cultura materiale barocca nel ghetto di Roma  Antonella Pampalone (Archivio di Stato di Roma), Le botteghe dei barbieri nella Roma del Seicento Raffaele Pittella (Archivio di Stato di Roma), Custodire la memoria. Notai e archivi nella Roma barocca
Luca Topi (Sapienza Università di Roma), Forme di controllo in una città “appestata”: Roma 1656-1657

h. 16.40 Coffee break

Aula XV-Ex Officine di Ortopedia 28 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

22. Making politics through writings

Chairperson: Giulia Calvi (Università di Siena)
Carlos González Reyes, (Universitat de Barcelona), Il manoscritto inedito di Gaspare di Reggio (1599),  Manuale per un viceré o semplice radiografia politica di una capitale?
Roberto López Vela (Universidad de Cantabria), La biografía de Carranza y la propuesta de otra política  confesional a principios del siglo XVII
Blythe Alice Raviola (Instituto Universitario “La corte en Europa” – IULCE, Madrid), Le Relazioni  universali di Giovanni Botero
Nicolas Schapira (Université Paris-Est Marne-la Vallée), Secrétaires français de l’âge baroque
Svorad Zavarsky (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Ján Stanislav Institute of Slavonic Studies), Stephanus  Tarnoczy’s Elogia on Sts Stephen, Emeric and Ladislaus of Hungary (1680-1681) considered in the  contexts of Jesuit political thought and polemical theology

Sala Odeion (Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, piano seminterrato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

23. Civic and religious pageantries

Chairperson: Nicoletta Bazzano (Università di Teramo) Martine Boiteux, Funerali romani: papi e sovrani stranieri
Claudio Rosso (Università del Piemonte orientale), Il Barocco come categoria periodizzante: il caso del  Piemonte nel Sei-Settecento
Silvia Mantini (Università dell’Aquila), “Non contenta l’Aquila di havere applaudito al suo Giove con  l’Armi, volle anco ossequiarlo con le Lettere”: onore e feste per la pubertà del giovane Carlo II di Spagna
Esther Jimenez Pablo (Università di Teramo), The use of the Royal Chapel during the Spanish Baroque: piety or political justification?

Sala degli Organi collegiali (Palazzo del Rettorato) 28 marzo 2014 h. 17.00

24. The circulation of musical culture

Chairperson: Franco Piperno (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Paola Besutti (Università di Teramo), La vita musicale nelle corti dei cardinali non romani
Cristina Fernandes (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Lázaro Leitão Aranha and the circulation of cultural  and musical models between Rome and Lisbon
Elodie Oriol (Université de Aix-Marseille – Sapienza Università di Roma), Plurality of careers and  diversity of itineraries of musicians in 18th century Rome
Giulia Anna Romana Veneziano (Conservatorio “San Pietro a Majella”, Napoli), Le multiformi carriere  dei musicisti nella Napoli spagnola: il caso Gaetano Veneziano (1656-1716)
Alina Zorawska-Witkowska (Uniwersytet Warszawski), I cantanti italiani alla corte reale polacca nella prima metà del Settecento

 

29 marzo h. 9.30 – 13.30

Visita al Museo del barocco di Ariccia

Sapienza Università di Roma Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
00185 Roma

Segreteria della Conferenza  info@enbach.eu www.enbach.eu

International Conference on the Baroque Period

In March 2014, Rome will host the final conference of ENBaCH (European Network for Baroque Cultural Heritage), a project which kicked off in June 2009 and will end in May 2014.

The aim of this conference will be not only to discuss the research results produced by the eight project partners, but also to serve as an opportunity for a multidisciplinary meeting of groups and individual researchers studying the Baroque Period from every possible perspective: from politics to literature, from society to art and from music to science.

The key word envisioned in our approach is multiplicity: not only a multiplicity of issues and approaches, but also that of the very notion of Baroque society and culture. We do not believe it is fruitful to limit the notion of “Baroque Period” with a precise and univocal definition.

In view of the fact that the very notion of the Renaissance has recently been reinterpreted, “leaving behind the old interpretative traditions centring on the principles of equilibrium and harmony” and shifting our attention to its “nocturnal, dark and obscure side,”[1] it seems completely misleading to attribute an incontrovertible definition to Baroque.

J.A. Maravall’s attempt to resolve this issue by grounding the Baroque in a temporal-spatial matrix and emphasising the culture of an epoch characterized by “individual and social instability”[2] produces more issues than it resolves. In fact, financial-economic crises, wars, social inequality and economic, political and social turbulence are characteristic of the entire modern era, not just the seventeenth century.

Moreover, we know that different disciplines ascribe vastly different stylistic elements and time ranges to the Baroque. Indeed, in a recent article published on the Piccola Storia dell’Arte (Einaudi), T. Montanari posits that Baroque may only be used to define the “figurative art that began to develop in Rome about 1600.” Elsewhere, the Baroque is found not on account of a generic esprit du temps, but “following the journeys of artists, the circulation of works and sketches and other ascertainable historical phenomena [… ] without forgetting the degree to which the intelligentsia of Europe expanded its communication channels in the seventeenth century.”[3]

In the history of Literature, or at least of Italian Literature, the precocious identification of the Baroque with Marinism led to a similarly precocious condemnation; so much so, that the phenomenon may be limited to the first half of the century. Only Emanuele Tesauro’s Aristotelian Telescope (1670) or Meninni’s Ritratto del sonetto e della canzone (1677) would allow us to extend it to the second half of the seventeenth century[4], when the figurative arts were still fully dominated by the “heroic” figures of the founding fathers[5]. With regard to the literary historiography of other European countries, the idea of the Baroque attracted the interest of W. Benjamin in the 1920s, but his book on the origins of German Baroque drama[6] was not well received by academia[7]; in France, researchers ignored the notion of Baroque until well after the Second World War[8].

The use of the term Baroque is even controversial in musical historiography. Since the mid nineteenth century, there have been countless discussions on its meaning, although no universally accepted definition has ever been reached to define “Baroque Music” – or better – “the music of the Baroque Period.” (Indeed, some musicologists have serious doubts about the concrete meaning of such a term and tend to avoid it.) Nonetheless, by convention, the connotation of the term that overflows its original meaning (extravagant, ephemeral) is widely applied. While, on the one hand, there is the notion that it is illogical to use a single label to encompass a century and a half of musical production and evolution characterized by great variety and differences; on the other, it appears inevitable to recognize the wider meaning that the term has come to acquire.

So, what do we intend by “Baroque”? Why, notwithstanding all of this, have we decided not only to use the term, but also to insert it in the title of our research project?

The main reason to use the term “Baroque” is grounded in its force and rhetorical valence, as well as its immediate instinctive contraposition to the term “Renaissance” as the stereotypical founding moment of the “modern individual” and the “modern age”. Emphasising a concept that is traditionally juxtaposed to that of order and harmony, underlines how modern Europe is the result of a complicated and contradictory process that was not governed by a red thread or a teleological process. Europe was not born from a linear process, but from a curving, elliptical and spiralling one. Its history, just like the Baroque Period, has been “intensely dramatic due to its intrinsic and deeply rooted contradictions, building on antinomies that have not yet been reconciled – as has been possible with Romanticism – by a skilful use of dialectics.”[9]

At the same time, we felt that the notion of Baroque was capable of evoking the great movement of men and objects alluded to by Montanari. This mobility conquered intellectuals and workers and provided them with new communication instruments ranging from the exchange of letters, typical of the Republic of Letters, to the relatively easier circulation of handiwork, books and paintings that could divulge news.

ENBaCH has concentrated significantly on these different forms of mobility. A number of units (Barcelona, Greifswald, Paris, Rome, Teramo) have worked on the movements of artists and literati, as well as viceroys, diplomats, doctors, informers and more or less official spies. Other units (Dresden, Greifswald, Vienna) have concentrated on the circulation of handiwork and representations of the crafts that could be used as models for workers far removed from the site of origin. Some privileged the circulation of ideas fuelled by books and at times by human beings (Paris, Rome, Teramo, Warsaw, Vienna), while others turned to the performance and circulation of ceremonial and scenic designs from religious rituals to theatrical stage designs and other ephemeral uses (Dresden, Rome, Teramo).

All of these perspectives will be addressed through the organisation of issue-specific panels. A preliminary version of the draft agenda is attached. However, as we have already mentioned, we also intend to convene all those who are interested in these issues and ask them to present their research work and discuss it together with our work and us.


[1] M. Ciliberto, Rinascimento e Controrinascimento, in Figure in chiaroscuro. Filosofia e storiografia nel Novecento, Roma, Storia e Letteratura, 2001, pp.185-205, p.189.

[2] J.A. Maravall, La cultura del Barocco, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1985, p.17.

[3] T. Montanari, Il Barocco, Torino, Einaudi, 2012, p. 12.

[4] E. Russo, Sul barocco letterario in Italia. Giudizi, revisioni, distinzioni, http://www.enbach.eu/en/from-the-universities/history-of-the-literary-.aspx

[5] T. Montanari, Il Barocco, cit., p.13.

[6]Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Berlin, Rowohlt, 1928 (tr. it. Torino, Einaudi, 1971).

[8]G.Catusse,Aux origines du « baroque littéraire » en France : 1935-1950. Aperçus historiographiques, http://www.enbach.eu/en/from-the-universities/history-of-the-literary-.aspx

[9] A. Battistini, Il Barocco, Roma, Salerno, 2000, p.8.

“European Networks in the Baroque Era” – International Conference hosted at the “Josephinum”, Vienna, 26-29 September 2012

The first general conference of the ENBaCH Project is intended to bring together research on Baroque forms of exchange and networking, as a basis for a modern network of researchers working on themes related to the cultural heritage of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The European Network for Baroque Cultural Heritage (ENBaCH) – is a research project supported and funded by the European Commission.

“Baroque” of course has various connotations depending on regions and cultural contexts but also on various approaches in different research fields. As ENBaCH is defined as an interdisciplinary project it is intended to confront these aspects and discuss their impact on what might be defined as “European Cultural Heritage”

A well-known historiograpical conundrum is the question of periodization. One useful, practicable approach is the collection of characteristics of an epoch from the cultural point of view: works of art, intellectual activities and developments, societal structures and contemporary ways of coping with diverse challenges in a specific society. Baroque culture was influenced by war, famine and epidemic diseases, and the resulting urgency of finding collaborative solutions for survival. New environments and infrastructures, increased mobility of craftsmen, artists and workers as well as the trade of artefacts and goods, and a vivid exchange of knowledge mark the period as much as its art, which represents a reaction to these threats to life in various ways.

We welcome papers on the following aspects of Baroque culture and exchange in particular:

•    formal and informal networks of politics (e.g. the role of courts, diplomacy, agents) in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
•    the Baroque circulation of ideas and knowledge (e.g. the Republic of Letters)
•    the development of arts and cultural practices (“artists and artefacts on the move”,
baroque festivals and piety, fashion, cooking, etc.)
•    (with particular relevance to the venue of the conference): the Baroque perception of the
human body in various works of art, death and dying in relation to confessional
    frameworks, coping with disease and disaster from a medical point of view (e.g. health
care provisions, facing famine and epidemic disease) and collaboration in medicine
    and health care

Conference language: English. The papers should be given in English and should take max. 20 minutes. Discussions and commentaries by attending delegates may include also other languages.

Abstracts of one page max., in English, accompanied by a very short CV, should be sent to baroquebodies@meduniwien.ac.at  by the end of April 2012

We will be able to cover moderate travelling costs and accommodation for invited speakers other than those involved in the ENBaCH project. Please enquire for details.

Programme details:

26.9.2012: 6.30pm: reception and Baroque concert by the “Camerata Medica”, an orchestra of Viennese physicians performing in aid of charitable projects.
27.9.2012: conference panels
28.9.2012: conference panels,
   afternoon: excursion to the Abbey of Melk coffee in the historical garden pavillon, followed by a guided tour; evening: dinner at a “Heurigen” in the World Heritage Cultural Landscape Wachau.
28.9.2012: conference panels

We have reserved rooms at two hotels at a convenient location; speakers and conference delegates will benefit from a reduced room rate. Rooms are limited and available on first come, first served basis only.

For any further questions about the conference practicalities please contact
Paul Zogmann (paul.zogmann@meduniwien.ac.at)

Practical Information Conference Vienna

The Project

The aim of the present project is to create a European Network for Baroque Cultural Heritage that should grow over the long term and, after a period of experimentation, achieve permanent status and financial independence.

Its main tasks will be a) the elaboration of a multiple-approach pattern for promoting the knowledge of the European baroque cultural heritage and b) the elaboration of innovative strategies for disseminating historical consciousness not only among scholars and academics, but among school teachers, primary and secondary schools students, life-long education structures, policy makers, civil servants and a wider public in general. The ENBaCH is designed since the proponents are persuaded that, more than the Renaissance, the 17th century, after the terrible experience of the wars of religion, is the age during which – thanks to a huge increasing mobility – a common awareness of the European plural identities is construed and developed, together with a raising consciousness of a common background.

At the core of the project there is a network of European historians of different disciplinary specializations. One of its first purposes will thus be to elaborate an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the study of past events, that will cut across traditional disciplinary partitions, such as those dividing social history from art history or literary history and so on. The proponents are in fact centres, groups and individual scholars actually working within the boundaries of different disciplinary and methodological fields that can be synthesized as follows:

  • Art
  • Literature
  • Natural philosophy
  • Theology and religious practices
  • Political theory and political institutions
  • Economic and social interactions

These researchers are nonetheless unified by the fact of working on a same historical period, usually defined as “baroque age”, approximately coinciding with a “long 17th century”. Each of the just mentioned disciplinary fields is indeed characterised by its own “epistemological canon”, fashioned through a continuous process of sedimentation that organizes the fundamental questionings, the hierarchies of the scientific issues and the methodological approaches. The point is thus to use these plural disciplinary approaches to better understand the ways in which European cultures and identities were formed in a crucial period for the history of Europe. However the objective of the ENBaCH is not to construct an artificial unity among these different issues and approaches and their results, intending to reach a unified and coherent image of the Baroque, similar to what has long been the image of Renaissance. The aim is not to utilize the empirical data collected though decades of research to construct a typical-ideal pattern of baroque society and culture, and to scrutinize its genesis in a specific context, as well as its dissemination in different geographical and political areas of Europe along with their multiple variants. Rather, the objective of the ENBaCH is to let the above mentioned different disciplinary approaches and scientific results interact, in the double aim of:

1. stressing the correlations among the different scientific fields in order to recompose a reality arbitrarily split by the dissimilar disciplinary canons;

2. exploiting the coherences and the contradictions emerging from the different classes of phenomena to reach a deeper knowledge of the society and culture under scrutiny.

A great deal of work has already been done, for example on the correlations between art and literature, rhetoric and political discourse, law, morals and economic practices, literature and the material history of the book, aristocratic ethics and the organization of sciences and so on. The objective of the ENBaCH is to widen this interdisciplinary cooperation and adopt an approach that rejects arbitrary compartments of necessarily interconnected social and cultural phenomena.

Moreover the ENBaCH intends to analyse the circulation at European level of ideas, aesthetics, institutions, cultural artefacts, social practices, etc. and to investigate the different media of this circulation, from human beings to things. To reach these ambitious goals the proponents intend to elaborate an original and innovative research method, capable to cope with the complexity of the approach and the multiplicity of the interconnections among the phenomena under scrutiny, as well as with the simultaneous use of heterogeneous series of data. The idea is not only to improve the analysis of any coherent series of data with the suggestions coming from a contiguous research field but, more ambitiously, to generate – through the systematic dialogue/confrontation between phenomena traditionally dealt with within different frameworks – new interpretive instruments.

The objective is to reach the possibility of reconstructing baroque society and culture without relying on the usual grand narratives, but letting room for contradictions and integrating them into the analysis, so that cultural heritage may really succeed in showing how peoples and societies with different political, religious, and cultural histories were the outcomes of contacts, exchanges and mutual influences, as well as of rivalries, challenges and fighting.

The objectives of the project will be achieved in three stages:

I. The first one will be devoted to research and data collection. The proponents are indeed persuaded that knowledge is a cumulative process and no innovative achievement can be reached without a preliminary recognition of what has been previously done and a thorough research for new data and empirical evidences. It will start with a kick-off workshop to be held in Rome at the very beginning of the project, to publicize the plan in its whole and the different envisaged activities and, at the same time, to coordinate the methodologies and initiatives of the different partners. As a first step in the general dissemination plan, it will be open to scholars, researchers and students, but also to schoolteachers, policy-makers and economic operators

II. The second stage will be devoted to dissemination since the aim of the project is to enhance historical consciousness in the wider public and to achieve a better understanding, fruition and protection of the European cultural heritage through the widest diffusion of knowledge. These goals should be reached through a multiple-approach methodology and a multi-media series of measures: a historical atlas and a dictionary of baroque culture are envisaged, together with a series of exhibitions, of tourist circuits and of documentary movies and radio emissions, as well as an interactive website for the younger audience.

III. The third stage of the project will finally be devoted to the institutionalization of the project, through the creation of a European Institute for Baroque Cultural Heritage. The Institute is intended to become a permanent organization and achieve financial independence through public and private contributions and also through part of its own initiatives. It will thus constitute a European landmark for all the initiatives concerning the baroque age and an agency for coordinating and developing actions of research, dissemination and protection of the cultural heritage.

Step by Step

ENBaCH will be developed in 3 steps:

1.Research and data collection. The different local groups will survey the existing scientific literature in each disciplinary field. This survey will also include the numerous web sites dedicated to texts, images and documents of the early modern age. The different local groups will then process the best scientific results in the various disciplinary fields, that is they will digitally reproduce texts and images that will thus be available for the website and for circulating among the local units. The different groups will exploit their earlier activities, both in terms of expertises and of data collection. Scholars of the various disciplines participating in the different local groups, will also discuss the criteria for collecting unpublished sources. The next step will be to identify significant local and extra-local bodies of unpublished sources that are the most suited to fulfill the project’s requirements. Archival and field surveys will be organized. Within each local group and in supra-local cooperation, scholars with different training (in art, literature, law, science, religion, social and political history) will exchange information and data in view of clarifying the complex relationships existing between these different disciplinary fields and restore their complexity to social phenomena.

2.Development of an integrated system of acquisition, exhibition, fruition and dissemination of a deeper historical consciousness of the European cultural heritage. A mid-term wider-public workshop will be held in Warsaw in Spring 2011.

The envisaged outcomes of phase 1 are:

1. A Historical Atlas of 17th century sites (organizer: University Greifswald) will show the spreading of social phenomena through a sequence of historical maps. This action will rest on a firm theoretical foundation of processes of cultural transfers and hybridisation (Peter Burke, Wolfgang Schmale) that will enable a comparative perspective related to the other European regions scrutinized by ENBaCH. The Atlas will especially focus on the diffusion of Baroque culture (architecture, libraries, art, literature) across the Baltic Sea, considered as an outstanding example for the spreading of Baroque culture from the South and Southwest to the North Europe.

2.    Exhibitions:
a) The Viceroys of Naples – Under the Shadow of Vesuvius (organizer University of Barcelona): divided in 4 sections, the exhibit will gather artefacts coming from Italy and Spain concerning life-style of the Spanish Viceroys, in order to support by evidence the “double-source” (that is Italy and Spain) of the Spanish Baroque presence in 17th Century Europe.
b) Baroque European Fantasies: Creating Exotic Space (organizer: University of Dresden): the exhibit shows the reconstruction of the personal library of Matthäus Daniel PÖPPELMANN (1662-1736), Dresden court architect and designer of the Zwinger, as an example of the ideal building forms of the time and the baroque architectural fantasies of the Saxon kings.
c) Baroque Bodies (organizer University of Wien): The exhibition will focus on the perception of the human body in the 17th C. – deeply influenced by contemporary political events – by gathering texts, artifacts, instruments, paintings, sculptures and evidences of the “silent language” of every day life and “ordinary people” dealing with their body perception.

3. On-line tourist circuits:
a) “Baroque” North Germany and the Southern Baltic Sea (organizer University of Greifswald): will offer the opportunity of highlighting the rich seventeenth-century heritage of the entire region. It will contribute to enhancing trans-national tourism, which is of great importance especially for the less industrialized regions such as Pomerania, Northern Poland and the Baltic States. At first, computer-animated virtual sightseeing-tours will be developed displaying not only former historical sites, but simultaneously offering an insight into the life of former times. In a second step, a real tourist circuit will be created around the Southern Baltic Sea region. A “Route of the Northern European Baroque” will be interlinked with the already existing tourist circuits and other circuits to be created by ENBaCH. A close cooperation with the local economy (hotels, travel-agencies, tourist-associations) will be implemented.
b) The Iberian and Spanish-Italian compound (organizer University of Teramo): will create an on-line tourist circuit of Baroque sites in the Iberian and Spanish-Italian compound, with particular attention to the circulation of cultural patterns and to the mutual influences between the different territories. This on-line circuit (the «Route of Spanish-Italian Baroque») will connect with the already existing tourist circuits  but will focus not only on the capitals cities (Madrid, Milan, Naples, Cagliari and Palermo) and their role as courts, political, administrative, economic and religious but also on the main centres of local development of the baroque culture. Especial attention will be paid to the tourist promotion of the sites where the mutual influence of artistic and cultural patterns from Spain to Spanish-Italian areas  is more relevant and to all the interesting sites that are little or not at all known in the actual tourist circuits.

4. Radio emissions (organizer University of Warsaw):  a series of radio transmissions aimed at a wide public, prepared in collaboration with professional teams experienced in cultural radio programs, highlighting the image of Central Europe as an area tightly linked to Western Europe but in the same time specific and peripheral, a transitional zone between European West and East. These transmissions will consist of talks with experts or teams of experts in different fields and will be illustrated with music, poetry and drama fragments presented by professional artists.

5. A virtual kit for the young historian (organizer University of Rome La Sapienza): an educational tool to provide primary and secondary school students and teachers of materials to learn and teach Baroque history “in laboratory”. Teaching/learning history in laboratory means to acquire skills for «reading» historical past, while discovering the «rules» of the historical game; that is to apprehend the language and the categories that the historian employs in making history, while replying them in laboratory with the teacher’s help. We will offer an on-line repository of different sorts of archives – of visual art artefacts, written documents, images of objects, collections of historical dates and personages, contemporary books, etc. – where the user will be able of surfing, collecting and putting together the items best suited for his/her research.

Step 2 will end with the Conference to be held in Wien (2012).

Step 3: Creating a European Institute for Baroque Cultural Heritage. The Institute is intended to become a permanent organization economically independent, that applies to be a European landmark for all the initiatives concerning the Baroque age and an agency for coordinating and developing actions of research, dissemination and protection of the Baroque cultural heritage.

Step 3 – and ENBaCH project – will end with a conference to be held in Rome (2013)

The Methodology

ENBaCH’s proponents are centers, groups and individual scholars working in different disciplinary and methodological fields: art, literature, natural philosophy, theology and religious practices, political theory and political institutions, economic and social interactions. Each of these fields has its own “epistemological canon” – the result of a long process of sedimentation – that organizes the fundamental questions, the hierarchies of the scientific issues and the methodological approaches of the field. We aim at elaborating an innovative interdisciplinary way of approaching the study of past events, that will cross disciplinary boundaries while keeping each discipline’s peculiarties.

ENBaCH’s goal is to reconstruct baroque society and culture without relying on the usual “grand narratives” but presenting baroque European peoples and societies, with all their different political, religious, and cultural histories, as the outcomes of contacts, exchanges, mutual influences, rivalries, challenges and conflicts. The interaction among different disciplinary approaches and scientific results serves this end by:

1. stressing the correlations among the different scientific fields in order to recompose a reality arbitrarily split by the dissimilar disciplinary canons;

2. exploiting the coherences and the contradictions emerging from the different classes of phenomena to reach a deeper knowledge of the society and culture at stake.

ENBaCH’s end is to widen the existing interdisciplinary cooperation and to adopt an approach that rejects arbitrary compartments of social and cultural phenomena that actually were a whole. Moreover, since ENBaCH aims at analyzing the circulation through Europe of ideas, aesthetics, institutions, cultural artefacts, social practices, etc. we must investigate the different media of this circulation. We thus intend to elaborate an original and innovative research method, able to cope with the complexity of the approaches and the multiplicity of the interconnections among the phenomena under scrutiny, as well as with the simultaneous use of heterogeneous series of data.

The idea is not only to improve the analysis of any coherent series of data with the suggestions coming from a contiguous research field but, more ambitiously, to generate new interpretive instruments through the systematic dialogue/confrontation between phenomena traditionally dealt with within different frameworks.

II ENBACH PARTNERSHIP MEETING – Barcelona, 5-6 November 2010

 AGENDA 

Friday 5  Morning

Arrival 

Friday 5,  h 14,30   

ENBaCH research and data-collection  

Plenary session

–         Initial objectives & state of advancement of the research (data collection, processing of data, design and management of data system, analysis and treatment of data-bases, etc.).

–         Presentation – by each partner – of:

–     main intermediate results

–     executive planning of further activities and corresponding budget allocations

Saturday 6, h 9.30  

ENBaCH intermediate results  

Working groups or Bi/Tri-lateral sessions:

–         Barcelona-Dresden-Wien: Exhibitions

–         Paris-Rome-Warszawa: Digital collections; Radio transmissions

–         Greisfwald-Teramo: Atlas; Tourists circuits 

Plenary session:

–         Web site management (editorial board) and implementation; Dissemination; Didactical activities

 Saturday  6, h 15,00

Enbach administrative and management aspects

–         Additional administrative aspects not yet included in the II Cooperat. agreem.: (communications to Eacea, authorizations to ask for, etc.)

–         Structure of local units,  first interim technical and administrative reports  (for 1st financial accountings)

–         Analysis of analytical templates of EACEA in attachment

–         Evidence of expenses to be sustained

–         Communication flows and future monitoring; 

Conclusions: 

–         Planning of travels and human resources for year 2011; next meetings and dissemination activities (mid-term conferences); 

–         corrective actions 

–         deadlines for official financial accountings with the auditors.

ENBaCH Kick-off Conference

Kick-off_Conference

Rome 22-23 October 2009
ENBaCH Kick-off Conference

22 October 9.30-18.30

Presentation Conference of the ENBaCH

9.30 – 11.15
1. Grant Agreement: discussion and approval
2. Deadlines, EC norms, timesheets

11.15-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-13.30
2. Activities of the local units:
website (Rome, Paris)
exhibitions (Barcelona, Dresden, Wien)
tourist circuits (Greifswald, Teramo)

13.30 – 14.30 Lunch

14.30 – 15.30
2. Activities of the local units:
atlas (Greifswald)
radio emissions (Warszawa)

15.30-17.00
3. Data collection and processing: criteria

17.00- 17.15 Coffee break

17.30-18.30
4. Cooperation with other Institutions
5. Related and/or useful websites

23 October  9.30-14.00

Presentation Conference of the ENBaCH