Colloque – Royal Nunneries at the Center of Medieval Europe: Art, Architecture, Aesthetics 11th – 14th Centuries

The conference is dedicated to the art, architecture and material culture of female monasteries patronized by the ruling dynasties in medieval Europe between the 11^th and the 14^th centuries. This subset has been studied mostly within national academic schools resulting in separate parallel narratives of phenomena which in most cases were, in fact, related on a trans-regional scale thanks to dynastic and diplomatic connections, and also to female networks based on ties of faith and blood.

The meeting gathers scholars interested in both testing and transcending these historiographic borders and in challenging the interpretative scheme of a top-down oriented power structures in favour of a network perspective. The final aim is to detect and discuss artistic, architectural, and aesthetic discourses acting on a synchronic and diachronic scale across late medieval Europe.