ICMA at the Association for Art History Annual Conference 2021

The Virgin as Auctoritas: The Authority of the Virgin Mary and female moral–doctrinal authority in the Middle Ages

Thursday 15 April 2021
Morning Session:  09.30 GMT - 12.50 GMT
Afternoon Session:  14.30 GMT - 17.25 GMT

ORGANIZED BY Francesca Dell’Acqua, Università degli studi di Salerno

This session aims at exploring a fundamental issue: female authority through the lens of visual/material culture. It involves prominently the Virgin Mary – as well as figures of female authority in the medieval world – because in the late decades of the 20th century, feminist thinkers pointed at the ‘negative model’ offered by the Virgin Mary since for centuries she had been branded by the Catholic Church as a role model for modesty, submission and virginity. However, between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Virgin Mary emerged as Queen of Heaven through preaching and liturgical texts, visual arts and public assemblies – that is, the ‘mass media’ of that time. Mary was pictured as a very strong, authoritative figure, rather than weak and compliant.

Already during late Antiquity, Mary was commonly perceived as the mighty protector and spiritual stronghold of capital cities in the Mediterranean. Between the 8th and the 11th centuries, the role of royal women came to the fore, especially in Byzantium and in Ottonian Germany. Very striking is also the case of a number of major Italian city-states between the 12th and the 15th centuries where the Virgin Mary came to be identified with political and economic supremacy.

In sum, these sessions can help understand what bearing the figure of the humble Virgin Mary eventually had on female leadership, and also how female leadership evolved or not.

MORNING PROGRAMME 

Chair: Francesca Dell’Acqua

09.30 - 09.45 GMT
Welcome
 


10.00 - 11.15 GMT
Introduction and Papers 1 and 2
Photios and the Image of the Mother of God in Hagia Sophia, Constantinople  Mary B. Cunningham (University of Nottingham)

The Theotokos and the Widow of Zarepta: women’s authority as widows and prophets  Barbara Crostini (University College Stockholm)
 


11.15 - 11.45 GMT
Refreshment Break
 


11.45 - 12.50 GMT
Papers 3 and 4
Elevation of Mary’s Authority in Late Antiquity: Her Depiction on the Jewelled Throne and the Footstool  Ernesto Mainoldi (FiTMU – Università degli Studi di Salerno) and Natalia Teteriatnikov (Independent Scholar)

The Coronation of the Virgin as the Queen of City-States  Kayoko Ichikawa (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science / University of Fribourg)
 

 

AFTERNOON PROGRAMME 

Chair: Mary B. Cunningham
 
14.30 - 15.35 GMT
Papers 5 and 6
Icons of Authority: new light on the competition between images and relics in Trecento Rome; Name of speaker(s): Claudia Bolgia  (Università di Udine)

“All glory is in the King’s Daughter”: depictions of the Virgin as Empress in the late Byzantine world; Name of speaker(s): Andrei Dumitrescu (National University of Arts, Bucharest)
 

 
15.40 - 16.10 GMT
Refreshment Break
 


16.10 - 17.25 GMT
Papers 7 and 8 and closing comments
Sainte Foy and the Medieval Imaginary of Female Sacred Power  Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford University)

Female Authority, Ecclesiology, and Micro-Architecture in Scandinavian Medieval Art  Kristin B. Aavitsland (MF Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion (MF CASR), MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo, Norway)