Renaissance Society of America,
Annual Meeting 2010, April 8-10

Session: The Visibility of the Architect across Cultures

In all epochs and cultures patrons and rulers have built cities and
buildings. They did want to be considered mainly as builders, architects
or creators. Following the lead of the pioneering study by Ernst Kris
and Otto Kurz "Myth, Legend and Magic in the image of the artist" (1934) the session aims at a revision of commonly held ideas about the figure of the architect. The literary forms (biography, legendary tales, administrative bookkeeping, novels, etc.) and the visual means
(portrait, inscription, bust, sculpture, etc.) that gave visibility to
the persona of the architect in the early modern period will be of
central interest. How can biography, epigraphic inscription and
portrait, just to name only this few instances, be compared across
cultures? How did the visibility of architect relate to the image of the
ruler? A particularly fascinating topic seems to be the interpretation
of the epigraphic roman inscriptions that were available to many
different cultures in the Mediterranean basin. Their interpretation
varies a great deal from culture to culture. In Italy, for example, they
were sometimes (mis-)interpreted as "signatures" of architects. In
Ottoman architecture we find a great deal of epigraphic inscriptions
that commemorate the architect. Contributions on colonial and missionary architecture, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, Asia as well as Europe (but also other geographic regions) are especially welcome.

Chair: Alina Payne, Harvard University

Please submit your abstract (no more than 150 words) and a short CV no
later than April 30, 2009 to:

Matteo Burioni, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München,
matteo.burioni@lrz.uni-muenchen.de