Members of the Departments of Dutch Language and Culture at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Utrecht University organize a two-days conference “Crosscurrents in Illustrated Religious Texts in the North of Europe, 1500-1800”, on January 12th and 13th, in Utrecht

on the question how various reformatory movements gave a new impetus to the production, diffusion and reception of visual culture in both Catholic and Protestant milieus in the centuries after the Reformation. key note lectures are held by Mia Mochizuki (Berkeley), Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge), Lee Palmer Wandel (Wisconsin), Walter Melion (Emory) and Ralph Dekoninck and Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé (Louvain-la-Neuve).

It is the primary goal of the conference to discuss the developments in the production, diffusion and reception of illustrated religious texts within various religious denominations. We hope to (begin to) chart the delta constituted by crosscurrents of exchange within and beyond confessional and national borders, arguing that illustrated religious texts were the products not only of authors, engravers and publishers, who worked in a field combining the textual and visual arts, but were also formed and shaped by theological debates and confessional traditions and acted as instruments of change.

We present papers that explore the issue of changing literacies on a conceptual level, exploring how textual and visual media were used in new ways to shape the relationship between individual citizens and cultural practices and to demarcate social, generational and cultural differences. Some of the questions we address are: how have workshops and small presses contributed to the spread of illustrated religious texts? What do the surviving copies of illustrated religious texts say about the experiences and aspirations of their makers and readers? How were illustrated religious texts designed to convey information and confessional orientation? What problems arose for those who produced and distributed these texts? In short, how can we understand early modern religious culture from the perspective of the production of illustrated religious texts, in which people were able to cross confessional boundaries and to mingle the literary and artistic traditions which constituted these boundaries?

It is now possible to register for the conference at: http://emblems.let.uu.nl/crosscurrents
or by emailing Lars Kloet at l.l.p.kloet@uu.nl

Programme

Thursday, January 12
Crosscurrents of Actors – Authors, Engravers, Publishers and Public

10.00 Registration and Coffee (Aula)

10.30 Opening Welcome: Wiljan van den Akker (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities,
Utrecht University) (Aula)

10.45 Plenary Sessions (Aula)
Chair: Marc Van Vaeck (Leuven)
Mia Mochizuki (Berkeley): The Diaspora of the Religious Print
Lee Palmer Wandel (Wisconsin): Reading Catechisms – Teaching Religion

12.45 Lunch (Maskeradezaal)

14.00 Parallel Sessions

Session 1: Publishers, Sponsors and the Market
Room: Kanunnikenzaal
Chair: Lien Roggen (Leuven)

Dirk Imhof (Museum Plantin-Moretus), The Jesuit Thomas Sailly and the
Illustrations for his Prayer Books Published by the Antwerp Plantin
Press between 1590 and 1609
Karen Bowen (Art Historian), A Royal Book of Hours with International
Appeal: an Examination of Jan Moretus’s 1600-1601 Officium Beatae
Mariae Virginis
Feike Dietz (Utrecht), Linking the Dutch Market to its German Counterpart:
The Case of Joannes Boekholt

Session 2: Media Matter: Strategies of Visuality and the Beholder
Room: Aula
Chair: Ralph Dekoninck (Louvain-la-Neuve)

Dominique Bauer (St. Lucas, Brussels/ Ghent), Beyond the Frame(s).
Narrative and Representation in Jerome Nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae
Imagines (Antwerp, 1593)
Alison C. Fleming (Winston-Salem), Illustrated Vitae of the Society of
Jesus: Differentiated Strategies of the Use of Prints
Esther Meier (Dortmund), The Devotional Books and Picture Theology of
the Spiritualist Christian Hoburg

15.30 Coffee/ Tea Break (Maskeradezaal)

16.00 Parallel Sessions

Session 3: Publishing Biblical Illustrations
Room: Kanunnikenzaal
Chair: Feike Dietz (Utrecht)

Nelly de Hommel-Steenbakkers (Amsterdam), Sharing and Copying: the
Extent of the Circulation of Bible Illustrations of Miracles in the
Sixteenth Century
Els Stronks (Utrecht), No Home Grown Products: Illustrated Biblical
Poems in the Dutch Republic
Peter van der Coelen (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), No Scandalous
Images? The Illustration of the Dutch States Bible

Session 4: Engravers Taking the Lead
Room: Aula
Chair: Walter Melion (Emory)

Amanda K. Herrin (Leiden), Reforming Adam and Eve: Marten de Vos,
Crispin van den Broeck, and the Interchangeability of Picture-Bibles
Trudelien van ’t Hof (Utrecht), Using and Adapting Religious Images: De
Hooghe’s Presentation of the Reformation in his Hieroglyphica

Friday, January 13
Crosscurrents of Motifs, Ideas and Confessional Ideologies

10.00 Registration and Coffee (Aula)

10.15 Plenary Session (Aula)
Chair: Maarten Prak (Utrecht)

Walter Melion (Emory): ‘From Jesuit Mariology to Inter-Confessional
Christology: Federico Zuccaro and Cornelis Cort’s Annunciation Broadcast by
Prophets of the Incarnation of 1571 and Karel van Mander and Jacob Matham’s
Nativity Broadcast by Prophets of the Incarnation of 1588
Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge): Idols in the Frontispiece? Illustrating
Religious Books in the Age of Iconoclasm

12.15 Lunch (Maskeradezaal)

13.30 Parallel Sessions

Session 1: Transgressing Confessions and Borders in Literature
Room: Kanunnikenzaal
Chair: Arie Gelderblom (Utrecht)

Alison Adams (Glasgow), Georgette de Montenay’s Emblemes ou devises
chrestiennes: across Time and Languages
Marc Van Vaeck (Leuven): Integrating Jacob Cats’s Emblems in Religious
Emblem Books from the Spanish Netherlands
Lydia Janssen (Leuven), The Reception of Hieremias Drexel’s Orbis
Phaëthon among Catholics and Protestants: Success across Religious
Boundaries

Session 2: Shifting Motives and Transgressing Confessional Ideas
Room: Aula
Chair: Els Stronks (Utrecht)

Erin Lambert (Wisconsin), Singing Together and Seeing Differently:
Confessional Boundaries in the Illustrated Hymnal
Tony Maan (Alberta), Sensored Religiosity: the Marriage Metaphor as
Image of Religious Vitality in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Protestant
Popular Piety.
David Frankel (Melbourne), Romulus and Moses: Transformation of
Images of the Past in the Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695

15.00 Coffee/ Tea Break (Maskeradezaal)

15.30 Plenary Session (Aula)
Chair: Toon Van Houdt (Leuven)
Ralph Dekoninck and Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé (Louvain-la-Neuve): Framing
Devices and Strategies in Northern Illustrated Spiritual Literature

16. 30 Round Table Discussion (Aula)
Moderator: Alison Adams (Glasgow)

17.00 Closing (Aula) and Reception