Foundational studies such as Erwin Panofsky’s Perspective as Symbolic Form and John White’s Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space have initiated a decades long discussion of how artists approached the representation of three-dimensional space in the early Renaissance. More recent studies, such as Massimo Scolari’s Oblique Drawing have shown that the teleological narrative that gives primacy to one-point perspective tends to overlook the dynamism and narrative potential of spatial representation in the art of the fourteenth century. This panel will ask how these overlooked kinds of pictorial space - from the illusionistic niches of the Scrovegni Chapel annunciation scenes to the miniature landscapes on altarpiece predellas - shaped the function, experience, and role of art in the Trecento.

We invite submission of proposals for twenty-minute presentations that examine depictions of spatial depth beyond the confines of perspectival systems. While the panel’s focus is the fourteenth and early fifteenth century, representations of space that intentionally eschew perspective in later time periods will also be considered.

Potential topics may include, but will not be limited to:

• Oblique perspective
• Depictions of architecture and architectural space in painting or other media
• Representations of spatial depth as a means to guide a viewer’s experience
• Trompe-l’oeil or anamorphosis
• Artistic techniques that articulate spatial hierarchies (for example lay vs. sacred space)
• Framing devices and microarchitectures that shape or respond to the physical spaces they adorn 
• Late-medieval and early Renaissance theories of vision
• Cosmography and theories of space and place
• Consideration of how different types of places or settings influence the representation of space within them (for example, a chapel interior vs. a frescoed cloister)

Please submit abstracts of no more that 250 words alone with a curriculum vitae to John Witty ([email protected]) and Danny Smith ([email protected]) by 1 August 2018.