During the sixteenth and seventeenth century princes and the nobility found tomb sculpture an effective means of refashioning their identity and promoting their interests in a rapidly changing society. Enormous funds were spent on these monuments, either by the occupants themselves or by their heirs, for whom the sepulchers became a generalized marker of family status. Epitaphs were also fashioned of words, penned in ink and published as well as engraved in stone. Poetical tributes and eulogies to rulers gave them another type of public persona. For this conference we wish to focus on the agency of these creations in the social and political arena of Northern Europe and Iberia
Friday, April 26
9:00 – 9:20
Introduction by Ethan Matt Kavaler (University of Toronto)
9:20 – 11:20: Religion & Theatre
- Jeffrey Chipps Smith(University of Texas at Austin):“Gerhard Gröninger, the Theatrics of Faith, and the Renewal of Noble Identity in St. Paulus Cathedral in Münster”
- Ivo Raband (University of Bern/Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max Planck Institute): “Contested Memory? Northern European Princely Funeral Monuments During the Early Confessionalization”
- Elizabeth Rice Mattison (University of Toronto): “Carving a Lineage: The Black Marble Tombs of the Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Liège”
11:40 – 1:00: Confession & Its Discontents
- Ruben Suykerbuyk (University of Ghent): “Preserving Devotional Identity in a Multiconfessional Society: Netherlandish Epitaphs as Markers of Religious Change (1520–1585)”
- Joanna Miles (University of Toronto): “The Puritan Epitaph: The Politics of Religious Polemics”
2:00 – 3:20: Princely Propaganda
- Birgit Ulrike Münch (University of Bonn): “Grasping eternity: the cadaver tomb of René de Chalon (1547)”
- Stephan Hoppe (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich): "Early humanistic identity and sepulchral design in 15th century southern Germany. Microarchitecture in a time of transition"
3:40 – 5:40: Central Europe: Networks and Communities
- Aleksandra Lipińska (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich): “Revising the Sleeping Sarmatians: Rethinking Renaissance Tomb Sculpture of Nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth”
- Franciszek Skibiński (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń): “Politics of Commemoration among Polish Lithuanian Nobility during the Reign of Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632)”
- Cynthia Osiecki (University of Greifswald/Nasjonalmuseet Oslo): “Jacob Binck: Mediating Monumental Monuments for Kings and Dukes”
Saturday, April 27
9:00 – 11:00: Empire & Republic
- Ethan Matt Kavaler (University of Toronto): “Between Monarchy and Republic: The Tomb of William the Silent”
- Marisa Bass (Yale University): “Burgundian Legacy in the Admiral Tombs of the Dutch Golden Age”
- Steven Thiry (University of Antwerp): “Waking the Dead: The Recovery of Princely Tombs as a Dynastic Obligation in the Habsburg Low Countries”
11:20 – 12:40: Media: Stained Glass & Costume
- Catherine Howey Stearn (Eastern Kentucky University): “A-Dressing the Dead: Connections Between Dress, Portraiture, and History in English Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Female Tomb Effigies”
- Isabelle Lecocq (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Brussels): “Stained Glass as a Commemorative Tool”
1:20 – 2:40: Textual Remembrance
- Marc Laureys (University of Bonn): “Real and Imagined Communities in the Parcae of Justus Rycquius”
- Catharine Ingersoll (Virginia Military Institute): “An Incomparable Wife: Text and Image in the Sculpted Epitaph of Anna Lucretia von Leonsberg”
3:00 – 4:20: Programs & Advisors
- Wiebke Windorf (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf): “‘S’è portato bene’: The Innovativeness and Exceptional Position of François Anguier’s Sepulchral Monument in the Célestine Church in Paris”
- Barbara Uppenkamp (Independent Scholar): “The Tomb of Edo Wiemken in Jever as an Image of Frisian Independence”
5:00 – 5:10: Closing Remarks by Birgit Ulrike Münch (University of Bonn)