CALL FOR PAPERS: Gesti amorosi: the Body Language of Love in Renaissance Art, Renaissance Society of America (RSA), New York, 27-29 March 2014.
Love and eroticism in Renaissance art have been thoroughly studied in recent years, however many areas deserve further analysis, especially concerning the way the body works as a revelator or an iconic sign of feelings of love. Gestures and attitudes obviously constitute a privileged means of expressing love, in all its dimensions. Various texts from the Renaissance, and Italian love treatises in particular, describe the behavior, the gestures and other physiological demonstrations of someone in a loving state. The stylistic, syntactical and lexical motives at the disposal of the Renaissance men of letters for their description of the outer signs of love are already quite well known. Paintings are silent and address the viewer yet in another way: through the figures’ movements, postures and expressions.
This panel will not be dealing with iconographic themes related to love, but will rather consider the various representations or figures of the loving body, in order to throw light upon the creation of a complex visual repertory of love gestures. The examination of this specific artistic language will be at the core of the discussion. In this perspective we encourage contributions offering new insights into the identification of visual topoi in Renaissance love imagery, in different media, and from various artistic centers (Italy, France and the North). We would welcome proposals dealing with quotations, transfers or inventions of love gestures in Renaissance art. Processes of gesture codification (leading to 17th-century love emblem books) or de-codification associated with the loving body could also be analyzed, in order to reflect upon the metaphorical functioning of the body in Renaissance art.
Please submit a 200-words proposal with title and abstract to Elinor Myara and Elisa de Halleux. Please include a one page CV with name, email adress and institutional affiliation.
Deadline: 9 June 2013.