Call for Papers: Beguiling Structures

Posted on 4 June 2014

This conference complements The National Gallery’s exhibition Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting, and will look afresh at architecture’s place within European painting, reassessing established interpretations.

Why were buildings included in pictorial representations? What is their purpose and what do they do for the picture?

Students and scholars working in the visual arts of the late-Mediaeval and Renaissance periods are warmly invited to submit ‌‌proposals for twenty-minute papers. Interdisciplinary approaches to these subjects and discoveries of current research are particularly welcome.

Potential topics for consideration may include:

The use of architecture to demonstrate perspectival devices and to structure pictorial composition.
The adoption of elaboration, ornamentation and the ‘fantastic’ in depicted architecture.
The use of architectural forms to visualise historical time and specific topographies within narratives.
The theoretical discourse of perspective and its terminology within contemporaneous accounts.
The creation of dialogues between the architecture of the painting and that of its original location.
The use and significance of architectural frames both within paintings and surrounding them.

Whilst papers on these themes are encouraged, submissions for proposals on topics across the broader spectrum of artistic media, chronological periods and geographical locations are also welcome. Proposed papers’ titles and abstracts of 250 words, and any additional enquiries, should be forwarded to beguiling.structures@gmail.com by Monday 16th June 2014.

Download the conference poster: Beguiling Structures (PDF , 659kb)