On the occasion of the exhibition, which, after the Villa Medici in Rome, will be shown at the Petit Palais from 24 February to 24 May 2014, the Association des historiens de l’art italien is organizing, in association with the Fondation Custodia and the Centre Georges Chevrier (CNRS/Université de Bourgogne) a syposium on the depiction of low-life scenes between the begginning of the 17th century and 1648, when several popular movements took place in Paris and Naples.

Project: The aim of the symposium is to understand how it beccame possible to represent different depictions of humble people, from their activities to their state, while the “vulgus” was separating from the rusticus and becoming urban, between plebs and populus and before it became an “encompassing political concept” (Jacques Julliard) in its political discourse or an economic proletariat of the 19th century. Although from the second half of the 17th century, absolutist monarchs confiscated the political figure of the populace, although dictionaries only defined the populace in the negative, multiple figurations of the common people were created in images or words, from paintings by Velazquez to the popular images of the rue Montorgueil, via the execution by the masses of the De Witt brothers: the populace became a participant, even a protagonist on the stage of the urban landscape.

What are processes for this representability? How can these depictions go beyond categories (the comic, genre scenes, the poor, trades…) to become independent? 
What are the interactions between images, literary texts and discourses? How has the painting of ordinary reality disrupted or reinforced the mental imagery of a socially stratified population? These are just some of the issues that this symposium will address, expand upon and discuss.

The symposium is mainly directed towards the visual arts (printmaking, painting, etc.) but it is also intended to study interactions between the various registers of real or imaginary images, not only visual but also literary or political in order to understand the emergence of depictions of the “popular”, between the real and imaginary.

Organization: The symposium is conceived as a meeting with three foci. A first half-day will be devoted to some general issues (Depictions): faces of the populace, the populace in politics, the Christian populace, caricatures of the populace (2 papers for each theme lasting 20 minutes, then 20 minutes of discussion). This will be followed by a visit to the exhibition with its curators, enabling discussions of the images of Roman “bassafondi” (Showing). The next day will be fully devoted to the examination of various centres where depictions of the ordinary people were especially common and varied in the visual or literary imagination, as well as social and political depictions (Places): Rome, Paris, Seville, the Netherlands (with 3 papers each of 20 minutes followed by 30 minutes of discussions for each).

It is planned that papers will be published, probaby online. 
Other visits in connection with the theme of the symposium are being organized.

Call for papers: The call relates to the first (Depictions) and the third (Places) sessions.

Proposals for papers including the title, a 300 maximum word abstract and a short cv should be sent to reprpeuplebaroque[at]gmail.com