Department of Art History
Subject: Micro-Architecture in Metalwork Objects: Dynamics of Visual Rhetoric in the Later Middle Ages
Supervisor: Prof. Sarit Shalev-Eyni
Abstract: My research examines the dynamics formed around metalwork objects designed with architectonic forms in medieval Europe. During the later Middle Ages, the application of Gothic architectural shapes in miniature dimensions (i.e., micro-architecture) gained popularity not seen before and grew into a broad phenomenon with manifestations in a variety of objects. In light of the unprecedented “success” of Gothic micro-architecture, many significant questions arise, concerning its popularity, meanings, functions, reception, and mobility between different social and religious groups. My study focuses on micro-architectural objects from diverse contexts of late medieval European society and aims to shed new light on these questions. I address micro-architecture as a material phenomenon that comprised not only the Christian liturgical environment but also aristocratic rituals, several of which were adopted in bourgeois circles, and Jewish ceremonies that took place in the same geo-cultural regions. This conception is vital in order to understand the potential of micro-architecture as a versatile genre that allows not only usage but also migrations among religious groups and social contexts.
Bio: PhD student at the department of Art History. Completed Bachelor and Masters in Art History and School of History in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Interested in European material culture during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern and in the relationships between sacred and secular objects.
Publications:
“The Display of Metalwork in North European Domestic Spaces in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in Displaying Art in the Early Modern Period: Exhibiting Practices and Exhibition Spaces, ed. by Pamela Bianchi (Routledge, forthcoming August 2022).
President's Scholarship 2019/20