Convenors:
Robert Maniura, r.maniura@bbk.ac.uk and Laura Jacobus, l.jacobus@bbk.ac.uk  
Birkbeck College, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H OPD.

Abstract:

To what extent were the responses of medieval and renaissance viewers of art determined by the creators of the work, and to what extent did viewers remain determinedly autonomous? Were strategies adopted to ensure the ‘safe’ reception of an intended meaning, or to manipulate the viewers’ experience? And what circumstances and attitudes contributed to viewers’ reception of the work; their evasion, acceptance or reinterpretation of their given role as audience? This session explores both the ways in which medieval and renaissance works of art invite or attempt to enforce a privileged reading, and the ways in which viewers could either invest in these readings or, wilfully or accidentally, create new readings of their own.
Examples of controlling strategies include the selection and composition of a work\'s content; glosses in other media such as text or associated performance; the siting of a work; the placement, selection or segregation of viewers; limitations on viewers’ physical movement and patterns of access; the controlled revelation or concealment of the work of art. Examples of viewers’ autonomous or conditioned responses to works of art might be found in their own accounts of works of art; accounts of their responses; individual cases or larger patterns of appropriation through copying, purchasing, embellishing or re–installing works. We will consider the potential for interaction between a work and its environment leading to viewer experiences which may be unanticipated and beyond determination by any interested party.

Shirley Ann Brown (York University, Toronto) The Bayeux Tapestry and its Audience: Privileged Reading or Subversion?

Mickey Abel (University of Texas at Austin) Subjective Control: Closing the Visual Rhetoric of the Archivolted Portal.

Jill Burke (University of Edinburgh) Meaning and Crisis in High Renaissance Italy.

Dorigen Caldwell (Birkbeck College) Mistaking the Pope for a Pig and Other Tales.

Michael Grillo (University of Maine) The Ineffable Expectations of Trecento Audiences.

Eckart Marchand (University College, London) Sophisticated Gestures and Inscribed Viewers.

Lynn Ransom (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) Conforming to Christ: Viewer Response in the Verger de soulas (Paris, BNF fr. 9220)

Christine Sciacca (Columbia University) The Donor as Viewer in the Gradual and Sacramentary of Hainricus Sacrista (Morgan Library, M. 711)

Jessen Kelly (University of Chicago) The Viewer as King–maker: The Edinburgh Trinity Panels by Hugo van der Goes.

Janet Robson (Birkbeck College) The Pilgrim’s Progress: Strategies for Determining Viewer Experience in the Lower Church of San Francesco, Assisi.

Agnieszka Roznowska–Sadraei (Courtauld Institute of Art) Glorifying Passion: Perception of Martyrdom in the Hagiography and Art of St. Stanislas of Poland.

Elizabeth L’Estrange (University of Leeds) Bleeding Bodies: Gender and Responses to Devotional Imagings.

George Ferzoco (University of Leicester) A newly discovered mural of a phallus tree: intentions and receptions.