Online Symposium in July: Fragmented Illuminations at the V&A

Readers of this blog may like to know about an online symposium that is being planned for July; details below.

You may also be interested to see that the website for the exhibition at the V&A has been expanded considerably over the course of the last couple of months to include new photographs of the installation and an ASMR video of the pages of a large 15th-century choirbook being turned; the latter has already been viewed about 130,000 times and generated lots of enthusiastic comments. (If the V&A website asks you to change your cookie settings and you prefer not to, you can experience the video at YouTube here). 

For those who have not yet seen it, the exhibition has now been extended until 5 June.

FRAGMENTED ILLUMINATIONS SYMPOSIUM - CALL FOR PAPERS

With over 2,000 manuscript cuttings, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds one of the largest collections of this kind in the world. Cut out of Italian, Germanic, Netherlandish, French, Spanish, and English manuscripts, they range from the 12th to the 18th century, with a wealth of 15th- and 16th-century examples. They vary in size, from small border snippets and initials to full leaves and, though they have come largely from choirbooks, other types of books are also represented.

The V&A will be organising an online symposium in early July as a follow-up to the display Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the Victoria and Albert Museum (extended until 5 June 2022). It will be held over one afternoon to allow for as large an audience as possible to join and participate, from different time zones.

We welcome papers focusing on any of the following themes and aspects, preferably in relation to pieces in the V&A collection:

• Study of groups of cuttings from the same manuscript source
• Provenance research and history of collections
• Questions of attribution and iconography
• Identification of parent manuscripts when extant; reconstructions of broken manuscripts
• Materiality and digital display of manuscript cuttings: opportunities and challenges
• Comparison with other types of intentionally cut-out medieval and Renaissance fragments, such as textile cuttings, cuttings from printed material, etc.
• Relationship between manuscript cuttings and copies
• 19th-cent reception of, and responses to, medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts 

This list is indicative rather than exhaustive.

A preference will be given to contributions focusing on lesser-known examples in the collection and adopting innovative approaches.

Please send an abstract (max. 300 words), a paper title, and a short biography (max. 150 words) to c.yvard@vam.ac.uk.

Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in length, to allow time for questions and discussion.

The deadline for submissions is March 6, 2022. Selected speakers will be notified by mid-March.