L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Jeanne de Penthièvre (c.1326–1384), duchess of Brittany, was an active and determined ruler who maintained her claim to the duchy throughout a war of succession and even after her eventual defeat. This in-depth study examines Jeanne’s administrative and legal records to explore her co-rule with her husband, the social implications of ducal authority, and her strategies of legitimization in the face of conflict. While studies of medieval political authority often privilege royal, male, and exclusive models of power, Erika Graham-Goering reveals how there were multiple coexisting standards of princely action, and it was the navigation of these expectations that was more important to the successful exercise of power than adhering to any single approach. Cutting across categories of hierarchy, gender, and collaborative rule, this perspective sheds light on women’s rulership as a crucial component in the power structures of the early Hundred Years’ War, and demonstrates that lordship retained salience as a political category even in a period of growing monarchical authority.

Erika Graham-Goering is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History at Ghent University where her research focuses on issues of lordship, reputation, and political and social ideologies in late medieval France. With extensive experience working in the national and departmental archives of France, she is the author of Aux origines de la guerre de succession de Bretagne (2019), a critical edition of documents from the 1341 Breton succession crisis.

Table des matières :

Lists of illustrations
Acknowledgements
A note on names
Abbreviations

Introduction. Approaches to princely power
1. The career of Jeanne de Penthièvre
2. Concepts of power in Jeanne de Penthièvre’s acta
3. Managing property: Inheritance and seigneurial partnerships
4. Managing people: Followers and service
5. Managing order: Conflict, negotiation, and women as lords
6. Debating the social context of princely power in 1341
7. Legitimate rule and the balance of power
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Informations pratiques :

Erika Graham-Goering, Princely Power in Late Medieval France. Jeanne de Penthièvre and the War for Brittany, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series). 228 x 152 mm. ISBN : 9781108489096. Prix : 74,99 £.

Source : Cambridge University Press

Click on the link ‘Online content‘ for a preview of the book (21 pages) and a free copy of Volume 15 The Ghent Altarpiece. A Bibliography (98 pages).

The outer panels of the Ghent Altarpiece had been overpainted to a considerable extent. The virtuosity of the Eyckian technique and aesthetics remained hardly visible. And yet, this had never been observed before the start of the conservation treatment.

By removing the overpaint, the tonal richness and the coherent rendering of light and space once again came to the fore. Especially the suggestion of volumes and the spaciousness of the ensemble gained strength because of the virtuoso play of deep shadows and bright light accents, and not in the least because of the surprising trompe-l’oeil effect of the frames conceived as a stone framework.

Or to put it in the words of the comments of one of the experts, dr. Maryan Ainsworth: The paintings live and breathe again in the time of the Van Eyck brothers. The sharp observation skills, the quick, accurate execution, the knowledge, curiosity and ingenuity about all the things that are depicted, are now unveiled after centuries. The profit for the knowledge of and further research into the essence of Eyckian aesthetics is considerable. And finally there is the discovery that the much-discussed quatrain was applied simultaneously with the polychromy of the frames: a real ‘coup de foudre’ in the discourse of the current art-historical research!

The subtleties of the Eyckian technique could also be mapped out in more detail. How the Van Eycks managed to keep the final result and the desired effect in mind during every phase of the execution, from imprimatura to finishing touch. The artists made a statement about the art of painting, giving ‘technique’ as such a new prominence. The Ghent Altarpiece may be understood at some point as a major showpiece for a highly sophisticated pictorial technique.

We hope that this publication of the results of the research and conservation campaign on the exterior of the altarpiece can help future researchers to ask better questions. Questions, and answers, that may produce a more balanced picture of Van Eyck’s techniques, methods and materials.

Table des matières :

Foreword – Ludo Collin
Preface – Hilde De Clercq, Christina Ceulemans

Introduction – Maximiliaan Martens, Christina Ceulemans, Ron Spronk, Anne van Grevenstein-Kruse
Transformations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries – Hélène Dubois
Frames and Support: Technique and Structural Treatment – Jochen Ketels, Jean-Albert Glatigny, Anne-Sophie Augustyniak
Paint and Polychromy: Chemical Investigation of the Overpaints – Jana Sanyova, Geert Van der Snickt, H Koen Janssens, Peter Vandenabeele

Conservation and Restoration Treatment 

The Painted Surface – Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Fran
The Frames: In Search of Lost Unity – Anne-Sophie Augustyniak, Laure Mortiaux

The Van Eycks’ Creative Process

The Paintings: from (Under)drawing to the Final Touch in Paint – Marie Postec, Griet Steyaert
The Frames: an Exceptional Polychromy – Anne-Sophie Augustyniak, Laure Mortiaux, Jana Sanyova
The Authenticity of the Quatrain and the other Frame Inscriptions – Susan Frances Jones, Anne-Sophie Augustyniak, Hélène Dubois
Imagining the Original Display – Bart Fransen, Jean-Albert Glatigny
Restoring in the Public Eye – Bart Devolder

Epilogue: Implications and Perspectives – Cyriel Stroo, Maximiliaan Martens

Documentation

Photography before and after Treatment – Stéphane Bazzo, Jean-Luc Elias, Katrien Van Acker
Inscriptions on the Exterior – Susan Frances Jones, Marc H. Smith
The Quatrain: a New Reconstruction – Marc H. Smith, Susan Frances Jones, Anne-Sophie Augustyniak
Dimensions of Frames and Supports – Jochen Ketels, Jean-Albert Glatigny, Anne-Sophie Augustyniak
The Ghent Altarpiece: a Bibliography – Dominique Deneffe, Jeroen Reyniers

Bibliography
Project Participants
Photographic Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Index of Names
Index of Works of Art

Informations pratiques :

The Ghent Altarpiece Research and Conservation of the Exterior, dir. Bart Fransen et Cyriel Stroo, Turnhout, Brpeols, 2020 (Contributions to the Study of the Flemish Primitives, 14). X+430 p., 220 x 280 mm. ISBN: 978-2-930054-38-4. Prix : 66,40 euros.

Source : Brepols

This volume enhances our understanding of the various strategies used by early Norman rulers of Sicily and Southern Italy – but above all Roger II of Sicily – to establish authority and cultivate identity in the Mediterranean world.

Roger II (c. 1095-1154), Sicily’s first king, was an anomaly for his time. An ambitious new ruler who lacked the distinguished lineage so prized by the nobility, and a leader of an extraordinarily diverse population on the fringes of Europe, he occupied a unique space in the continent’s charged political landscape. This interdisciplinary study examines the strategies that Roger used to legitimize his authority, including his relationships with contemporary rulers, the familial connections that he established through no less than three marriages, and his devotion to the Church and Saint Nicholas of Myra/Bari. Yet while Roger and his family made the most of their geographic and cultural contexts, it is convincingly argued here that they nonetheless retained a strong western focus, and that behind the diverse mélange of Norman Sicily were very occidental interests.

Drawing together sources of political, social, and religious history from locations as disparate as Spain and the Byzantine Empire, as well as evidence from the magnificent churches and elaborate mosaics constructed during his reign, this volume offers a fascinating portrait of a figure whose rule was characterized both by great potential and devastating tragedy. Indeed, had Roger been able to accomplish his ambitious agenda, the history of the medieval Mediterranean world would have unfolded very differently.

Table des matières :

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part I. Social Strategies: The Marriage Ties of Roger II

Chapter 1. The Appeal of Alfonso VI of León-Castile’s Legacy
Chapter 2. Opportunities in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and in the Principality of Antioch

Part II. Spiritual Strategies: St Nicholas of Myra

Chapter 3. The Saint’s Cult in Norman Bari, c.1071 – c.1111
Chapter 4. The Devotion of Roger II

Part III. Cultural Strategies: The Royal Mosaic in Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio

Chapter 5. French Connections: The Significance of the Fleurs-de-Lis
Chapter 6. The Message of the Antiquated Loros

Conclusion

Brief Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Informations pratiques :

Dawn Marie Hayes, Roger II of Sicily. Family, Faith, and Empire in the Medieval Mediterranean World, Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, 7). 221 p., 18 b/w ill., 4 b/w tables, 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-58140-8

Source : Brepols

En trois parties, les dix-huit chapitres de ces actes passent en revue cet objet complexe, du Moyen Âge à la Révolution, sous les angles divers des institutions autant que de la philosophie, du droit, de la religion ou de la société, pour en révéler le caractère de creuset d’une modernité politique.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Au cœur de l’État. Parlement(s) et cours souveraines sous l’Ancien Régime, dir. Isabelle Brancourt, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2020 (Constitution de la modernité, n° 20). 431 pages. ISBN : 978-2-406-09785-3.

Source : Classiques Garnier