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Posts from the ‘Medieval exhibition’ Category

Mar 21

lindisfarne_gospels

Lindisfarne Gospels

The Lindisfarne Gospels book is one of the greatest landmarks of human cultural achievement. Created by the community of St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne it is one of the best examples of creativity and craftsmanship from Medieval times.

The Lindisfarne Gospels Durham exhibition takes visitors on a journey of exploration, learning how and why this masterpiece was created, its influence on Medieval Europe and how artistic traditions from Britain and the Mediterranean mainland came together in North East England.

On show in Durham University’s Palace Green Library, completely redesigned and refurbished for this event, will be fabulous artefacts wrought from precious metals and minerals including gold, amber and silver and stone sculpture alongside medieval manuscripts including the St Cuthbert Gospel and the Durham Gospels.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is the gospel book itself, written in honour of St Cuthbert and displayed alongside his treasures. However, the gospel book will for the first time since the 16th century be shown alongside the jewelled cross, the travelling altar and the sapphire ring, all found in St Cuthbert’s coffin. The exhibition, launched to coincide with St Cuthbert’s Day, will also display Europe’s oldest surviving bound book, the St Cuthbert Gospel, Anglo-Saxon artefacts and medieval manuscripts.

There are plenty of hands-on opportunities for visitors, especially families, to discover how Medieval manuscripts were created and to use technology to virtually turn the pages of the book to explore the beauty and detail of the book’s illuminated pages.

No visit to the exhibition will be complete without a visit to Durham Cathedral to see St Cuthbert’s Shrine and throughout the three-month exhibition a wealth of performances, activities and events will complete a memorable visit to Durham.

Lindisfarne Gospels Durham will be open to the public from 1 July to 30 September 2013. Tickets for the exhibition are sold online at www.lindisfarnegospels.com

Read more at www.lindisfarnegospels.com

Read about St. Cuthbert Gospel

Nov 15

Crystal with Cruxifiction 900 AD, The Augustinermuseum

End of Blockbusters?

With less than a 100.000 expected visitors some might view the impressive exhibition on Otto the Great in Magdeburg a failure

Magdeburg put up an exhibition in 2001 about the life and times of Otto the Great. 300.000 visitors came to see this. 2006 Magdeburg together with Berlin hosted another exhibition on The Holy Roman Empire. This attracted 250.000 visitors. This year the city has hosted yet another “Otto the Great exhibition” on the concept of the Roman Empire in its different disguises from Augustus to Otto the Great. The organisers definitely hoped for more than 100.000 visitors. However, only three weeks to go, they acknowledged that they will probably not reach more than 90.000.

The organisers are obviously a bit puzzled by this. It has to be analysed first, they have said to the media. One thing, however, is obvious: it is the locals who have missed out.

The curator, Dr. Gabriele Köster, however, warns in an interview with the local radio-station, MDR, the doomsayers off: the success of the exhibition cannot be solely measured in the number of visitors. From a scientific point of view it has generated a huge catalogue, a scientific publication plus a valuable profit amongst hotels and restaurants in Magdeburg.

Nevertheless, the question remains to what extent such large events are worthwhile. Maybe the time has come to rethink the format.

Museum Wien Kameo mit Augustus Otto2012 225x300 End of Blockbusters?The exhibition has cost €3 mil to mount. With the expected number of visitors this amounts to €30 pr. person. With a ticket at € 9 -12 plus (maybe an audio-guide at €2-4) this means that only half of the budget will be recovered by the organisers, though income from books, merchandise, events etc. might end up contributing at least to some extent.

READ MORE:

Otto the Great

Imperial Designs?

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:

Otto the Great and the Roman Empire. Emperorship from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

Nov 12

Illumination from Roman de la Rose © BnF

Roman de la Rose

A hundred manuscripts of the medieval bestseller – le Roman de la Rose – are on show in Paris at the Biblioteque nationale Francaise.

Le Roman de la Rose was a me-dieval allegorical bestseller. Like aversified play it invited readers to ponder the drama of courtly love, while at the same time diverting them with pure unadulterated pornography.

More than 320 manuscripts exist of the Roman de la Rose, many of them luxuriously illuminated. Of these Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris houses more than 120. This winter a grand exhibition at the library has placed a hundred manuscripts on show together with pertinent objects from the Louvre, Musée de Cluny and other collections.

Visitors are first invited into a long gallery emanating a sense of spring time. Here they are introduced to the different personified characters in the allegory. The object is to give a feeling for the poem and its main plot.

Next – in the large hall of exhibition – the visitor is invited to feel as a guest in the enclosed garden. Here 30 of the most magnificent manuscripts are on show, presenting the development of the reception of the poem. At the same time, however, the visitor is guided to an understanding of the intricacies of the medieval art of love with its ideas of chaste friendships, vile women, hateful marriages and lustful affairs.

Finally in the small salon – organised as a medieval office or scriptorium – the story is told about the aftermath of the poem: how it was read aloud, how it was reproduced, illustrated and commented upon, and finally how it became the centre of a very famous literary quarrel.

Read about this quarrel and the rest of the story in

Medieval Histories 2012: 11:2

Sep 25

san-mauro-cividale

Cividale Longobarda

Next week from the 29-30 September more than 20 mill. are expected to visit some of the gems of our common European heritage. The program of this year’s European Heritage Days is vast and most of the events are naturally of mostly local interest.

A few, however, deserve to be mentioned. One of them is the opening of a new exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum and the launch of a new book in Cividale di Friuli in the North East of Italy.

poster Cividale Longobarda ed il suo Ducato Cividale Longobarda

Cividale di Friuli is in itself just another small Italian town with the usual mixture of a renaissance palace and a church redecorated in Baroque. However, it does possess a few extraordinary gems, which last year catapulted the town to the World Heritage List together with a couple of other Northern Italian sites, Cividale del Froiuli, Brescia, Castel-Seprio Torba, Spoleto, Campello sul Clitunno, Benevento and Monte Sant’ Angelo. The common denominator of these sites are their Lombardic heritage; or as it is called in the tourist brochures “Italia Langobardorum”.

Apart from the architectural remains (see below), Cividale de Friuli is the natural centre of this itinerary as it is home to the National Archaeological Museum with a very large exhibition of treasures and archaeological finds from 568 -774 AD.

Recently it became possible to systematically excavate a part of a large Lombardic cemetery in the city of Cividale at San Mauro, which has resulted in some very interesting archaeological finds (some of which were only found late 2011/early 2012).

tempietto cividale 199x300 Cividale Longobarda

Tempietto Longobardo

These finds are being presented in a new exhibition in the archaeological museum (as usual located in the renaissance palace, which by the way is by Palladio and in itself worth a visit). Here a sector of the necropolis is recreated in order to convey a sense of the rites of the funerals with a new fresque, which shows the funeral of a warrior on the hill of St. Mauro. Other exhibits reconstruct the clothings and use of jewelry made from silver, gold, and semi-precious stones.

At the same time several new books are launched, amongst these a new catalogue which presents the preliminary results of the excavation of the necropolis. As yet the catalogue is unfortunately not for sale on the internet.Parallel to this it is possible to go on a guided tour of the museum of Christian Art at the Cathedral and the nearby Tempietto, where focus will be on the vivid colours, which it is generally believed to have embellished the quite distinct Lombardic sculptures. Central is a discussion of the polychrome remnants of the altar of the Duke of Ratchis.

It is believed that artists fled from the Byzantine Empire during the period of Iconoclasm (680-850) and ended up in Western Europe, where they – amongst other things – introduced their artistic traditions and colour schemes to the Lombardic court. Remnants of these colour schemes may be seen in the nearby Tempietto Langobardo, also known as the church of Santa Maria in Valle. Here it is also possible to dive into new discoveries about the architecture and layout of this ancient capella palatina from around 750 AD.

Necropoli, scavi e colori della Cividale Longobarda

You tube film about the excavations of the Necropolis

Read about the colour schemes in the Tempietto Longbardo at Cividale

 

 

Aug 29

Grab-Ottos-des-Großen- Jurgen-Jerratsch

Otto the Great

In 962 the pope, Johannes XII placed the crown on Otto the Great (912 – 973) and his consort Adelaide in a grand ceremony in St. Peter’s in Rome

Not long thereafter Otto had a new seal created which showed him en face and with a crown, sceptre and orb. It is probably correct to consider the new seal the nearest thing we can get to a direct presentation of the ideas, which lay behind the coronation, which Otto apparently had sought after for more than a decade. As such the seal may be explored through a direct comparison with the old one, which Otto up until then had used. This showed him in profile and carrying a spear. So to speak fit for fight.

Thus, there is no doubt that Otto the Great wished to explore another type of lordship than what pertained to be a king. While kings in the beginning of the 10th century were elected or at least had to fight for their supremacy as warlords, emperors were made out of quite another silk (preferably purple).They were first of all masters of the universe and defenders of the church and faith.

Magdeburg LHA Kaisersiegel Otto I 0 300x300 Otto the Great

To develop and elaborate this idea, Otto the Great drew heavily upon the history of emperors from Augustus and forward. Not indiscriminately and never as a one-to-one copy. But to be emperor was to follow in the footsteps of long series of predecessors. It is definitely correct to talk about this creational stance as a reinvention of a very old tradition.

This story is the overall theme of a grand exhibition in the best of the German tradition and in Magdeburg, famous for being home to two other exhibitions of the same ilk (Otto der Grosse und Magdeburg 2001  and Das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation 2006.)

016 ottosiegel 1 300x300 Otto the GreatWhile both of these exhibitions took as their point of departure the life and times of Otto the Great and the aftermath of his reign, the current showcases the history behind the happenings in Rome 962. Thus the exhibition consists of five parts:

  • Augustus and the origins of Emperorship in Roman Antiquity
  • Constantine the great and Christian Emperorship
  • Byzantium: the Continuity of Roman Emperorship in the East
  • Charlemagne and the Appropriation of Roman Emperorship
  • Otto the Great and the Renewal of the Roman Empire.

True to tradition a massive catalogue with fabulous illustrations accompanies the exhibition (741 pages/4.3 kilos and in German) plus there is a scientific report from a symposium, which led up to the exhibition and where specialists might delve into the ideology behind emperorship more generally. Here it is possible to read long and carefully crafted explanations about the more than 300 artifacts, some of which are quite spectacular.

What not to miss?

  •  The imperial insignia from Palatin found in 2005 with the blue orb on top of a sceptre (306 -312)
  • The crystal orb from the grave of Childerich (481/82)
  • The Holy Lance, the sword from Essen and the Imperial crown
  • The purple certificate of the marriage between Otto II and the (somewhat) purple princess, Theophanu.

All are they artefacts, which symbolise the powerful aura of imperial culture. And which we normally have to travel extensively in order to see.

This exhibition is definitely a must see for anyone with an interest in medieval history – as well as our common European Future.

Otto der Grosse und das Römische Reich. Keisertum von der Antike zum Mittelalter.
Kulturhistorisches Museum Magdeburg
27.08.2012 -09.12.2012

Ausstellungskatalog:
Otto der Große und das Römische Reich. Kaisertum von der Antike zum Mittelalter
Herausgeber: Matthias Puhle, Gabriele Köster eds
Schnell & Steiner 2012

Kaisertum im ersten Jarhtausend.
Hartmut Leppin, Bernd Schneidmüller, Stefan Weinfurter eds.
Schnell & Steiner 2012

A small travel programme points to places in Sachsen-Anhalt where it is possible to get a sense of the life and times of Otto the Great accompanies the exhibition. The program can be found here. 

Feb 22

Ekta 1678

Rieti

The Rieti valley, east of Rome, is well known to any Franciscan Friend. It holds a number of sanctuaries full of memories and relics from the life and times of the tiny brother: Greccio, were St. Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas Mass with live animals and the tiny baby came alive; the sanctuary at Poggio Bustone, where he started the mission; Fonte Colombo, where he dictated one of his rules and where he painted his signature, the Tau next to the altar; and finally the sanctuary of Santa Maria della Foresta, where his host complained of all the visitors, who trampled his grapes in order to get near to the holy man.

Foremost, however, the beauty and quiet nature should is worth enjoying. In the Rieti Valley one understands intuitively the many fables about St. Francis and his nature loving attitude towards every living creature – the birds, the tiny “brother” rabbit or the wolf.

Tired of the bustle of El Camino is an excellent idea to plan an alternative pilgrimage along the narrow paths from Rieti to Rome. In Rieti it is possible to get packaged tours as well as good general information including pre-booked hotels and dinners along the path.

Further, this summer Rieti hosts an interesting exhibition with art depicting St. Francis covering some of the earliest artworks up till now. The exhibition is housed at three venues inside the city of Rieti: In the Palazzo Communale from the 13th century and the Palazzo Vescoville with the diocesan gallery. Finally at the Complesso San Giorgio, a recently restored Benedictine cloister, a number of manuscripts and documents from the 13th century will be exhibited.

Information:
Francesco il Santo, Rieti:
16.06 – 04.11.2012
Walking in the Valle de Rieti

Feb 21

San Francesko Cimabue Asissi

Paderborn

Already in 1217 Francesco and his friends discussed expansion to other countries and during the following years friars left for France, Germany, The Holy Land, Portugal, Spain and a bit later England, Scotland, Hungary and Scandinavia. It has always been held as one of the astonishing feats, how quickly the “new” Franciscan gospel spread through the rest of Europe and beyond. Germany is a very good example. In the late summer of 1221 friars passed through Trent. By the Middle of October they had convened chapters at Augsburg. From here they went to preach at Würzburg, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Strassbourg, Köln, Regensburg and Salzburg. And on, and on and on..

Before 1250 there were at least 73 friaries in central Germany. From there they moved on to Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Denmark and Norway. As is well known, during this period of expansion, the friars slit gradually from the original ideas of their founder. At the same time they were formally recruited into the papal missionary effort. Accordingly the friars little by little learned how to “borrow” their riches from their benefactors, thus

circumventing the original taboo of ownership of land, cattle and not least people. What was originally a radical and hence peaceful way of life devoid of feuds, litigation and micro-management, gradually turned into a more “normal” priestly business. Although there continued to exist pockets of rebellious zealots – especially amongst the poor Clares, most friars ended up with rather cosy lives. One result of this development was the accumulation of art, books and treasures celebrating the richness of their spiritual inheritance. Right now, in Paderborn, a huge exhibition showcases these riches and the traditions stemming from the many German monasteries, which were the result of the missionary effort of the Franciscans.

Although the exhibition is more than proud to be able to showcase a few spectacular loans from the central institutions in and around Assisi, this is the real merit.

As usual in Germany the catalogue is an overwhelming bonanza of beautiful illustrations and explanations of the exhibited treasures.

Information:
Franziskus. Licht aus Assisi.
09. 12. 2011 – 06. 05. 2012
Diözesanmuseum und Franziskanerkloster, Westernstraße 19, Paderborn, Deutschland
Katalog zur Ausstellung. Hirmer Verlag 2012