Immortal Egypt. The Afterlife of Egypt in Early Modern Visual Arts

These study days will question the complex interaction between continuity, discontinuity, survival and rebirth by employing the epistemological tools of art history, visual anthropology and the history of ideas in order to reflect on the heritage, as well as on the creative processes that have ensured the posterity of a strange, complex, changing, close and distant Antiquity.

The workshop proposes a novel approach that lies at the crossroads between Egyptology and Egyptomania, a term intended in the global sense of interest in Egypt. Thus, archaeologists and art historians will work on interdependent themes in order to identify the metamorphoses and anamorphoses of the aegyptiaca by considering the different media and modalities of artistic expression, from the small to the large scale.

Our study days are conceived as a triptych and take place in three prestigious institutions: the Warburg Institute (3-4 March), the Bibliotheca Hertziana (13-14 April), the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/INHA (1-2 June).

SPEAKERS:
Elisa Boeri (Politecnico di Milano), Laurent Bricault (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès), Giuseppina Capriotti (Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà Italiche e del Mediterraneo Antico, Roma), Thomas Galoppin (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès), Anne Rolet (Université de Rennes 2), Stéphane Rolet (Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis), Francesco Tiradritti (Università Kore, Enna), Jean Winand (Université de Liège)

Keynote : François de Callataÿ (Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Bruxelles)
Chair: Sergio Botta (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Chair: Tristan Weddigen (Bibliotheca Hertziana)

For participation online on our Vimeo Channel please follow the links below:
April 13, 3.00 pm: https://vimeo.com/event/3225930
April 14, 9.30 am: https://vimeo.com/event/3226048

 

Program

April 13, 2023

15.00 / Welcome Tristan Weddigen, Bibliotheca Hertziana
15.15 / Introduction Luisa Capodieci and Laurent Bricault

Chair: Tristan Weddigen, Bibliotheca Hertziana
Hidden Gods

15.30 / Giuseppina Capriotti Vittozzi, Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Roma
Inventio Aegypti: Transmission, Knowledge and Interpretation
16.00 / Anne Rolet, Université de Rennes 2
The Veil of Symbol or the Hieroglyphic Illusion: Egyptian Gods and Writing and their Uses in Sixteenth-Century Emblematic Collections

16.30 / Discussion and coffee break

Isis of a thousand names
17.00 / Laurent Bricault, Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès
Isis myriomorphos
17.30 / Stéphane Rolet, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis
Was Pierio Valeriano an Egyptologist? Considerations on the 39th Book about Isis in the Hieroglyphica (1556)

18.00 / Discussion

18.30 / Keynote François de Callataÿ, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Bruxelles
Egypt in medals before Champollion. Obelisks, sphinxes and pyramids: between antiquarianism and freemasonry

April 14, 2023

Chair: Sergio Botta, Sapienza Università di Roma
Petrified Sunbeams

9.30 / Francesco Tiradritti, Università G. D’Annunzio, Chieti
Life and Survival of Egyptian Obelisks through Centuries and Countries (to be confirmed)
10.00 / Jean Winand, Université de Liège
Roman Obelisks ad maiorem Dei gloriam: Athanasius Kircher and Egyptian Monuments as the membra disjecta of the prisca theologia

10.30 / Discussion and coffee break

Divine Animality
11.00 / Thomas Galoppin, Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès
A Reflection of Divine Light: Bestiaries on Graeco-Egyptian Amulets
11.30 / Elisa Boeri, Politecnico di Milano
Another Rome: The Enchanted Bestiary of Giovanni Battista Piranesi

12.00 / Discussion and concluding remarks

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Luisa Capodieci is Associated Professor in Early Modern Art History at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She has written many essays on symbolic images in France and Italy during the 16th century and the book Medicæa Medæa. Art, astres et pouvoir à la cour de Catherine de Médicis (2011). Her book L’œil d’Horus. Visions de l’Égypte dans l’art profane de la Renaissance entre France et Italie (in press), is the result of the researches she carried thanks to the Warburg Institute’s Frances Yates Long Term Fellowship.

Laurent Bricault, Ph.D. (Paris-Sorbonne 1994), is Professor of Roman History at Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès and senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Well known in the domain of Isis and Mithraic studies, he is the author of numerous books and articles and has recently published Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas (Leiden, 2020) and Les cultes de Mithra dans l’empire romain (Toulouse 2021).

Image:Giovan Battista Piranesi, Egyptian mural decoration for the Caffè degli Inglesi, Piazza di Spagna, from Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini, Rome, 1769.
image: free access The Metropolitan Museum of Art.