Silvia Pedone

Il volume guarda al tema del ‘colore’ secondo un ampio ventaglio di punti di vista, valutando le modalità di approccio da parte di diverse metodologie, e dunque nell’ambito della elaborazione teorica. Valendosi di una buona preparazione storico-filosofica, l’autrice affronta le questioni legate alla policromia nell’ambito del dibattito pertinente al linguaggio visivo, affrontando gli aspetti legati alla considerazione critica, alla filologia, alla psicologia.
L’attenzione per gli studi pertinenti all’evoluzionismo l’hanno condotta a ri- levare aspetti determinanti della soggettività della visione e al variare della visione nel tempo. L’esame diretto di numerosi monumenti rappresentativi della civiltà bizantina le hanno consentito una serie di puntuali osservazioni sul rapporto fra architettura e decorazione parietale, scultura, mosaico, stucco, niello.
Una seconda parte è dedicata ai materiali e alle tecniche della policromia, accompagnata da un’attenta descrizione dei procedimenti di lavorazione e delle modalità di recupero, producendo anche interessanti forme di ricostruzione grafica nell’ambito delle decorazioni in cavo.
Di particolare rilievo risultano le indagini su contesti di grande importanza per l’architettura e la decorazione nel mondo bizantino, in particolare a Costanti- nopoli, dove Silvia Pedone ha lavorato nell’impegnativo progetto sviluppato nella Santa Sofia da un’equipe italiana; la permanenza ad Istanbul ha permesso all’au- trice una approfondita conoscenza dei monumenti della Capitale bizantina.
Tra i casi di studio Silvia Pedone presenta tre contesti di grande rilievo dell’A- natolia interna, in particolare della Frigia (Hierapolis, Sebaste ed Amorium); dalla sua partecipazione alle attività della Missione Archeologica Italiana a Hiera- polis deriva lo studio dello straordinario complesso santuariale sorto sulla tomba dell’Apostolo Filippo, del quale ella presenta, con un’analisi delle componenti tecniche e stilistiche, l’apparato decorativo in gran parte inedito.
In questi capitoli conclusivi l’autrice giunge a riconoscere, attraverso l’analisi dei materiali, singole tradizioni locali nel quadro di una più generale evoluzione della decorazione architettonica nelle province bizantine.

According to Plato, “God is always bringing like to like, and makes them acquainted.” And yet, the same philosopher also warned us that this is only “half” the truth. Plato’s ambiguity about resemblance carried into modern critical thinking, in which it probably is an even more controversial category. In fact, the very definition of modernity – for instance, in Michel Foucault’s famous account – depends on the opening-up of an epistemological divide, in which resemblance and likeness are “relegated” to a Renaissance episteme in order to neutralize it as an “archaeological” and thus outdated form of knowledge. It is telling, however, that not even Foucault was able to initiate his reconstruction work without acknowledging at least the possibility of there being some kind of recursiveness or similarities, a series of analogies and resemblances within a setting, a time period, or episteme of some kind. At the same time, however, what would the alternative scenario look like of those who remain unconvinced by Foucault’s relegating resemblance into a distant past, other than simply acknowledging the empirical evidence of these “correspondences”? What is the theoretical basis for the historical evidence of the continuing prevalence of the episteme “resemblance” in the visual arts? , which, instead, stubbornly resists those desperate to turn it into a thing of the past.
This (often unacknowledged) conflict between the lasting influence of mimesis and its critics underlies much of 20th-century history and art theory, but not only. Thus, it already can be found in the writings of, say, Saint Augustine or Lessing before, in the 20th century, it will be picked up by a group of very different authors ranging from Riegl and Fiedler to Goodman and Greenberg, up to the protagonists of the Iconic Turn. All of them reject figuration and mimesis because it puts at risk the supposed “epistemic” autonomy and purity of the visual arts. For that reason, the refusal of mimesis was hailed as a historical accomplishment, as emancipation and deliverance of the visual from its sister arts and any natural foundation that could not be reduced to cultural or historical relativism. Moreover, this celebration of the purity of the medium went along with the simultaneous discovery of the “power of images” and the “agency of art,” which freed images from their mimetic limitations and, instead, attributed to them the ability to create rather than re-produce reality.
The antimimetic attitude, thus, turns into an ideological position built on a shaky theoretical foundation. This monographic edition of Elephant and Castle will focus on the origins, reasons, and
   
consequences of what it calls mimetophobia. Our goal is not only to discuss the history and modes of iconoclasm; anthropological anxiety, ancient and modern, of images, above all of those ones which resemble “too much”. In addition, we are also interested in analyzing the more elusive anxiety of acknowledging the gnoseologic and cognitive presuppositions that are the condition of any kind of both iconoclasm and iconophilia. In the wake of important discussions of the fear of the Other and otherness, it seems as if the time has come to look at the “other half” of the problem, the anxiety of Like and likeness.

The topic which the present paper discusses concerns the art historical (and historiographic) problem of the transmission and reception of ancient models and spoliae during the reign of Theophilos, in a particularly difficult moment, between the Iconoclastic age and the Macedonian one. In the millenary history of Byzantium, the Macedonian period has been seen as the most favourable to a rebirth of Classical antiquity, as it was shown and ideologically attested by artistic display. However, the preceding phase of the affirmation of the Macedonian dynasty has been rather underestimated, and specially the very attitudes of the emperor Theophilos toward art, which are somewhat more complex from an art-historical point of view. Indeed, in the Byzantine art of the period, at least in Constantinople, it is possible to discern a transition from an experimentation and appropriation of exotic features, as some stylistic elements of Islamic art, to a programmatic rebirth of a kind of “classici...

How, between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, does one move from the relentless looting of antiquities, carried out mainly by Western countries, to the emergence of a heritage consciousness in Greece and the Ottoman Empire? Strange as it may seem, these aspects are two sides of the same coin that need to be studied in parallel to grasp the full scope of the phenomenon. Bringing together contributions from specialists from several countries – France, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the United States – this volume traces some of the key elements of the period from the rediscovery of Olympia in the eighteenth century to the donation of antiquities by Greece to the University of Paris in 1919. This is a period of about 150 years, during which there was a slow evolution in the way the local population and the Western world viewed the ancient heritage of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The initial inertia of the Ottoman authorities allowed and encouraged several centuries of spoliations by Europeans, whose aim – unofficial or official – was to enrich public or private collections. The new Greek state tried, from its foundation in 1830, to put an end to plunder of antiquities, while the Ottoman Empire was slower to grasp the importance of protecting its ancient heritage. Despite the adoption by both countries of laws regulating or prohibiting the export of antiquities, the great European powers continued throughout the 19th century to acquire ancient monuments on both sides of the Aegean, without regard for local legislation and under the pretext of scientific research. The volume also shows how Westerners – and in particular the French – contributed by their acquisitions or by their reactions to the looting of other Westerners, to awaken a heritage awareness among Greeks and Ottomans, accelerating in some cases the enforcement of protection measures. Ο συλλογικός αυτός τόμος που συνεπιμελήθηκαν η Ειρήνη Αποστόλου (ΕΚΠΑ) και η Alessia Zambon (Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) με θέμα « Από τη λεηλασία στη συνείδηση της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς στην Ελλάδα και στην Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία : ο ρόλος των Γάλλων και των άλλων Δυτικών 18ος-19ος αι », αποτελεί τον 23ο τόμο της συλλογής Scripta Receptoria του εκδοτικού οίκου Ausonius. Στην εισαγωγή του, οι επιμελήτριες προβαίνουν σε μια αναδρομή της σχέσης και της προσωπικής επαφής των Γάλλων και άλλων Δυτικοευρωπαίων με την Αρχαιότητα και μελετούν την έκφραση της πολιτιστικής συνείδησης των Ελλήνων και των Οθωμανών σε μια περίοδο που χαρακτηρίζεται από την πολιτιστική ιμπεριαλιστική πολιτική των μεγάλων δυνάμεων. Ο συγκεκριμένος τόμος, που καλύπτει την περίοδο από την σταδιακή ανακάλυψη της Ολυμπίας τον 18ο αι. έως τη δωρεά αρχαιοτήτων από την Ελλάδα στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Παρισιού το 1919, αρθρώνεται σε τρεις ενότητες : A. Οι πρόδρομοι : ταξιδιώτες, αρχαιοδίφες, διπλωμάτες, B. Επιστημονικές αποστολές και αρχαιολογικά ταξίδια στην Ελλάδα και στην Μικρά Ασία και Γ. Ανάδειξη και προστασία της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς. Ειδικότερα, περιλαμβάνει δεκαεπτά επιστημονικά άρθρα, στα γαλλικά, αγγλικά και ισπανικά, ερευνητών και πανεπιστημιακών από την Ελλάδα, την Γαλλία, την Ιταλία, το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, την Τουρκία και τις ΗΠΑ. Μέσα από συγκεκριμένες περιπτώσεις αρπαγής των αρχαιοτήτων στην Ελλάδα και την Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία από Γάλλους και άλλους Ευρωπαίους, κυρίως Βρετανούς, αρχαιοδίφες και αρχαιολόγους διερευνώνται άγνωστες πτυχές της δράσης και των πρακτικών τους που είχαν συχνά ως στόχο τον εμπλουτισμό δημόσιων και ιδιωτικών ευρωπαϊκών συλλογών. Επιπλέον, οι συγγραφείς μελετούν τον ρόλο που διαδραμάτισε η λεηλασία της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς των Ελλήνων και των Οθωμανών στην αφύπνιση της πολιτιστικής συνείδησής τους και στη λήψη μέτρων προστασίας της.

Nell’ambito della vasta panoramica effettuata nel corso di numerosi convegni promossi dell’AISCOM, rimane forse meno indagata la tradizione musiva dello specifico momento di passaggio tra medioevo maturo e primo Rinascimento. Sebbene la storiografia artistica abbia esaustivamente analizzato alcuni aspetti di questo delicato momento di passaggio, mai sono state partitamente osservate e rilevate sia da un punto di vista tecnico sia teorico, le scelte riguardo la trasformazione d’uso e di impiego del mosaico. Caso emblematico rimane quello di Donatello. Colpisce infatti l’inserimento delle tessere musive dorate sullo sfondo della famosa Cantoria scolpita dall’artista fiorentino per il Duomo di Firenze, sicuramente l’esempio più famoso nel Quattrocento di recupero della tecnica tradizionale del mosaico, che apparentemente non conosce soluzioni di continuità dall’età romana al Rinascimento. Tuttavia gli aspetti concernenti lo snodo tra l’epoca medievale e primo Umanesimo meritano di esse...

The paper aims at investigating the role of those aesthetic theories that are at the origin of the historical studies on Byzantine art and architecture at the beginning of 19th century. Particularly, through the analysis of textual and graphic sources dating from the first decades of 19th century – when the opening of ottoman frontiers favored an international and more scientific-minded exploration of the byzantine artistic remains – it will be discussed the rising of a new critical interest, springing from the convergence of different disciplines: archeology, history, art history, literary history and philology. A critical attitude that progressively resulted in the birth of the modern Byzantine studies during the 19th century. The paper will concentrate above all on the site of Constantinople, a symbolic place often evoked in the journey reports of a lot of modern voyagers, though yet scarcely known from a scientific and archaeological point of view at the beginning of the century...

Several well-known mosaics from Antioch give us the opportunity to address some problems in representation of women in Late Antiquity and Byzantine arts. Starting from the analysis of this female figures we will assess the documentary relevance of Antioch mosaics with respect to some objects of conspicuous consumption, as we know them specially thanks to the coeval goldsmith’s production

Oggetto della comunicazione è un singolare aspetto della pavimentazione marmorea della chiesa di Santa Sofia di Costantinopoli: si tratta pannello in opus sectile ed in opera nell’angolo sud-est del naos, nei pressi del grande pilastro meridionale alla base della cupola. Quest’area evidentemente non congrua alla pavimentazione di VI secolo di età giustinianea – diversamente caratterizzata da grandi lastre di marmo proconnesio – è stata fino ad oggi poco indagata, benché ben visibile a chi percorra ancora adesso l’edificio: si tratta di una superficie quadrata, ampia m 5,65 circa di lato, con un grande disco centrale in parte annodato a rotae più piccole di differenti dimensioni poste tutt’intorno al perimetro; negli spazi di risulta sono inoltre visibili sezioni geometriche a piccoli elementi, probabilmente pertinenti a successivi interventi di restauro. Scopo di questo studio sarà l’esame analitico e l’identificazione dei materiali che compongono il singolare “inserto” pavimentale....

Publicación no académica de la Sociedad Española de Bizantinística. Nº 36, diciembre de 2020. Versión 2 con correcciones menores. Non-academic journal of the Spanish Society of Byzantine Studies. Issue 36, December 2020. 2nd version with minor corrections.

Corsini Gallery in Rome, through an analysis of its conservation conditions (result of a restoration dating back to eighteenth century). A particular concern of the paper is also the discussion of the puzzling iconography of the subject, that seems to have no close comparison with similar classic works. A reconstruction of the documentary history of the piece, as detailed as possible, is also outlined through the inventories and archival records of the Corsini family

The aim of the paper is to analyze pseudo-kufic ornament in Byzantine art and the reception of the topic in Byzantine Studies. The pseudo-kufic ornamental motifs seem to occupy a middle position between the purely formal abstractness and freedom of arabesque and the purely symbolic form of a semantic and referential mean, borrowed from an alien language, moreover. This double nature (that is also a double negation) makes of pseudo-kufic decoration a very interesting liminal object, an object of “transition”, as it were, at the crossroad of different domains. Starting from an assessment of the theoretical questions raised by the aesthetic peculiarities of this kind of ornament, we consider, from this specific point of view, the problem of the cross-cultural impact of Islamic and islamicizing formal repertory on Byzantine ornament, focusing in particular on a hitherto unpublished illuminated manuscript dated to the tenth century and held by the Marciana Library in Venic

The presence of the same or very similar decorative motifs and techniques in diff erent artistic traditions is currently a much-debated topic in art historical studies, particularly in Byzantine studies. Usually the phenomenon is explained through “contacts” or “contagions” connecting different cultures and making possible artistic exchanges, within the wider context of cultural migrations and expansions. Th e Mediterranean area off ers a still vivid witness of such contagion process, and the present paper aims at exploring it through the analysis of a particular artistic technique, the champleve sculpture, spread out both in Islamic and Byzantine world.

Upon the background of the study of Byzantine sculpture of the Justinian age (6th century), the present survey focuses on a group of sculptures, partly unpublished, which came to light in recent archaeological campaigns carried out on the basilica complex dedicated to Apostle Philip in Hierapolis Such materials reveal stylistic features similar to those of some fragments coming from the neighboring areas and from the city of Sardis. An exceptional element of comparison is represented here by the large crosses carved on the columns of the Basilica of San Giovanni in Ephesus. This homogeneous group of marble artifacts and their iconographic and executive characteristics are an indicator of the stylistic originality of a workshop mainly active in Hierapolis, but also testify to the mobility of masons and materials in some of the main Christian places of worship of the 6th century.

Taking as reference point the figure of John Ruskin, we intend to explore in this paper the relationship between two interesting personalities of the European artistic world at the end of the 19thcentury, Philip Webb and Giacomo Boni. Through the correspondence of these scholars held in Italian and British Archives, we consider here a variety of topics concerning the political heritage, literary and art-historical debates in modern Europe. In particular the epistolary reports and archival documentation, relating to the inspections upon monuments carried out by Boni throughout the Italian territory, reveal a sympathetic reception of the Ruskinian theories and indications concerning restoration, albeit with an application ‘tempered’ by the need to realize concrete and effective solutions respecting and safeguarding a monument.

The Istanbul Archaeological Museum conserves several marble sculpted fragments identifiable, because of their shape and type of decoration, as pieces of some Christian liturgical tables, or mensae, probably used for ritual libation and offering. Two of such mensae come from the ancient city of Laodicea in Phrygia. The fragments are currently not on display in the museum, due to restoration works, but in the recent past they have drawn some interest among scholars. Indeed, a few years ago the former arrangement of the pieces on the wall of the museum room was dismantled and most of the best preserved fragments pertaining to one and the same table were put on display horizontally in their presumable original position, in order to allow visitors to easily understand the function of the object (fig. 1). 1 The special interest of the Istanbul fragments depends on many factors. First of all, their relatively good state of preservation, and their rich decoration which allows identifying the iconographical motifs of the scenes represented. Furthermore, it is possible to suppose that some of such fragments come from Lao dicea, where the recent excavation campaigns carried on by the 1. Up to 2013 the fragments were exhibited in the Byzantine section of the museum, at the first floor of the main building, together with the materials from Bythinia. However, only the larger pieces were on display. In the more recent layout , the congruent fragments from one single table were arranged according to the hypothetical reconstruction of the original sequence of the scenes, and two lesser pieces previously stored in the warehouse were added to the reconstruction.-A list of abbreviations is given at the end of the article.

a sezionamenti aurei, prova-questa-che direbbe di un raffi nato intento progettuale, non casuale, manifesto sia attraverso regole canoniche che tramite libere ma armoniche soluzioni di controllo spaziale (70). Un dato, l'ultimo, che collima peraltro con le rifl essioni di Pensabene sul ricercato reimpiego monumentale di elementi antichi ad alto livello, a proposito della sapiente corrispondenza simmetrica fra colonne, di granito o di diversa manifattura, e capitelli antichi o paleocristiani di riuso (71). Ma con Orsi si era ancora solo agli esordi, sia nell'indagine sia nella rappresentazione grafi ca dell'edifi cio. Si spera dunque che il rinvenimento di questo disegno, elaborato durante quelle straordinarie scoperte, com-piute poco più di cent'anni fa, possa oggi divenire propizia occasione per incoraggiare nuovi studi intorno a quel sorprendente monumento, quasi un unicum, e per implementarne la sua conoscenza. Riannodare il filo: un tessuto bizantino a Palazzo Barberini (Silvia Pedone) Al gruppo di sete di epoca bizantina fi nora conosciuto (72) si deve aggiungere un ulteriore esemplare, decisamente poco noto, conservato presso le Gallerie Nazionali d'Arte Antica di Roma, a Palazzo Barberini, e proveniente dal fondo del Museo Artistico Industriale (MAI) di Roma, che occupa attualmente gli ambienti settecenteschi al terzo piano dell'ala sud del palazzo (73). Il frammento di seta (Fig. 1), registrato negli inventari come «sciamito di seta a tre lati» (74), fu genericamente riferito all'ambito bizantino (75) fi n nei (70) Si veda in ultima istanza Lopetrone 2015. (71) Cfr. Pensabene 2003, p. 87. (72) Non è qui possibile dar conto, neppure in sintesi, della vasta bibliografi a sull'ar-gomento. Per un inquadramento generale si possono vedere i saggi di Martiniani-Reber 1992; de' Maffei 1994; nonché gli studi approfonditi di Muthesius 1995; Ead. 1997; Ead. 2004 e Ead. 2013. Anche le numerosissime mostre temporanee dedicate negli ultimi anni a Bisanzio hanno spesso incluso alcuni signifi cativi frammenti serici bizantini conser-vati nelle maggiori collezioni museali mondiali. Mi limito qui a segnalare i titoli da cui è possibile ricavare la bibliografi a più aggiornata: Byzance 1992; La seta e la sua via 1994; Th e Glory of Byzantium 1997; Byzanz 2010; Byzantium and Islam 2012 e Byzance en Suisse 2015. (73) Il MAI. non è attualmente visitabile per il pubblico, sebbene i pezzi più signifi cativi siano allestiti in bacheche suddivise per tipologie di materiali coerentemente organizzate. Per le vicende storiche e una generale presentazione dei pezzi vd. il fondamentale testo di Serra 1934 e, più recentemente, il catalogo di Zaccagnini 2011. (74) La seta è oggi registrata con il numero di inv. 3894. Nel primo catalogo mano-scritto del MAI, redatto nel 1876 da Raff aele Erculei, sono inclusi oltre ai tessuti donati

Marco Polo, whose seven centuries since his death (1254 - 1324) will be celebrated in 2024, can be considered, in his own right, a privileged witness of fruitful intercultural relations between the Western and Eastern worlds. According to St. Augustine, the world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page of it. The Venetian traveller was undoubtedly an extraordinary reader of the book of the world: a man of wonder and curiosity....
His voyage, very long in time and space (three and a half years, between 1271 and 1275, and a distance of some 12,000 kilometres), crosses mythical lands, of different cultures and religions, from Venice to Xanadu (China): through Armenia, the Iranian plateau and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, passing by the territories of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea; between fertile lands, steppes and the inhospitable deserts of the Taklamakan and the Gobi. If the outward journey was almost entirely by land, the return to Venice (24 years after departure) will be mainly by sea: through the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, the Bay of Bengal, Ceylon, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf.
Marco Polo with his accounts arouses curiosity, great wonder. Although he is a typical western man and Christian educated, he observes facts and situations without too many prejudices and cultural blocks, even if there is a certain hostility towards Muslims, probably to be found in a historical-political context characterised by the Crusades.
Marco's voyage, with his father Niccolò and his uncle Matteo Polo, becomes much more than a simple and never-ending commercial voyage: it is an epic in which various actors join in, often by small strokes, including religious and ecclesiastical figures, an expression of the Pope of Rome's desire to understand the real extent of those 'borders of the world', towards which the missionary mandate of evangelical memory was oriented.
Undoubtedly, members of the Order of the Black Friars (Dominican Preachers), already well present in Marco Polo’s Venice, were among these ecclesiastical avant-garde wished by the pontiff. However, Fra Francesco Pipino, a Dominican friar who translated Marco Polo’s Il Milione into Latin between 1302 and 1315, partly condensing it and providing it with a new prologue, was not Venetian. Pippin, for this translation, perhaps the best known of all, did not however use the original text, but had recourse to a Venetian vulgarization. There was probably another Dominican Latin version of Il Milione, as can be deduced from archive documents showing links between the Venetian traveller and the Dominicans of the Serenissima. Members of the Order of Preachers, they advocated the spreading of the text in their preaching and teaching, not only in Italy, but also in France and England, combining approaches based on codicology, diplomatics, history, philology, religion and art history.

Diceva Platone che "sempre un dio porta il simile verso il simile e glielo fa conoscere". Può darsi, eppure lo stesso filosofo avvertiva che forse ciò è ben detto solo "per metà". Più radicalmente che ai tempi di Platone, in effetti, questa ambiguità, o duplicità, segna la controversa presenza della categoria di somiglianza nella riflessione critica contemporanea, a cominciare dalla delimitazione stessa della nozione di modernità-ad esempio e tipicamente nella fin troppo celebre diagnosi di Michel Foucault-attraverso il divaricarsi di una frattura epistemologica che mira in fondo a "relegare" l'ordine della somiglianza nell'episteme rinascimentale, con ciò neutralizzandolo nella distanza di un sapere "archeologico" e dunque inevitabilmente inattuale. Tuttavia, dovrebbe essere sintomatico che lo stesso Foucault non avrebbe potuto neppure cominciare il suo lavoro di ricostruzione senza cogliere una serie di ricorsività, di convergenze, di analogie, di somiglianze appunto, all'interno di un ambito, di un'epoca o di un'episteme qualunque. E a chi contestasse la pretesa di credibilità (per non scomodare l'oggettività) di una simile lettura archeologica, cos'altro si potrebbe infine obiettare se non l'evidenza empirica di quella serie di "coincidenze"? La presunta inattualità della somiglianza sfugge al controllo della storicizzazione e mette in imbarazzo proprio coloro che verrebbero farne un articolo antiquariale. È la contraddizione che si aggira, spesso inavvertita, nella storia e nella teoria dell'arte del XX secolo, ma non solo. Il problema si affaccia già in autori antichi e diversi come Agostino o Lessing, e riemerge con gli studiosi moderni, da Riegl e Fiedler a Greenberg e Goodman, fino all'Iconic Turn, tutti assillati dall'urgenza di purgare le arti visive da ogni residuo mimetico, da ogni dipendenza riproduttiva che possa minacciarne la presunta autonomia "epistemica". Sul piano storico, la rinuncia alla somiglianza viene salutata come una conquista, una liberazione, un'emancipazione; simmetricamente, sul piano teorico, si cerca di privare la figurazione di ogni fondamento mimetico naturale, di esorcizzare ogni forma di iconismo che non sia riducibile a relativismo culturale o storico. E questo nello stesso momento in cui si chiede al potere delle immagini e all'efficacia attiva dell'arte di restituire una più "vera", più "adeguata" immagine della realtà, che non sia però meramente riproduttiva. Il pregiudizio antimimetico si trasforma allora, più propriamente, in mimetofobia, che diventa così oggetto di un occultamento, se non proprio di una rimozione, epistemologica. Ed è su questo oggetto, sulle sue ragioni, sulle sue forme e sui suoi esiti che il numero monografico della rivista Elephant and Castle intende far luce. Non si tratta solo e tanto, dunque, di ridiscutere la storia o i modi dell'iconoclastia, della paura antropologica, atavica o moderna, delle immagini, soprattutto di quelle che somigliano "troppo", ma di mettere a fuoco la paura o le resistenze, più recondite, a dover ammettere i presupposti conoscitivi e cognitivi che di ogni forma di iconoclastia o iconofilia sono la condizione stessa. Dopo tante riflessioni sul tema della paura dell'Altro e dell'alterità, forse è arrivato il momento di riflettere meglio anche sull'"altra metà" del problema, sul timore del simile e della somiglianza.
La nostra call è quindi aperta a quei contributi che vogliano affrontare il tema da punti di vista diversi, e che siano interessati a trattarne gli aspetti teorici, critici e metodologici più generali o anche una casistica più specificamente circoscritta, nell’ambito degli studi storico-artistici e dei visual studies, ma pure in una prospettiva largamente multidisciplinare.
Le proposte di contributo dovranno essere inviate dagli interessati entro il 15 giugno 2020 ai seguenti indirizzi e-mail: michele.dimonte@beniculturali.it, bpaul@rci.rutgers.edu, silvia.pedone@lincei.it corredate da titolo e abstract (max 1000 battute), e breve bio-bibliografia dell’autore (max 500 battute). Sono ammessi testi in lingua italiana, inglese, francese e tedesca. I risultati della selezione verrano comunicati entro il mese successivo, con il contestuale invio delle norme per la redazione dei testi.
La pubblicazione del numero monografico è prevista per 21 settembre 2020.

Sitoweb: https://cav.unibg.it/elephant_castle/web/it_IT/call_for_papers
Norme editoriali: https://cav.unibg.it/elephant_castle/web/uploads/newsletter/e&c_norme.pdf
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Mimetophobia. Who’s afraid of resemblance?
a cura di Michele Di Monte, Benjamin Paul, Silvia Pedone

According to Plato, “God is always bringing like to like, and makes them acquainted.” And yet, the same philosopher also warned us that this is only “half” the truth. Plato’s ambiguity about resemblance carried into modern critical thinking, in which it probably is an even more controversial category. In fact, the very definition of modernity – for instance, in Michel Foucault’s famous account – depends on the opening-up of an epistemological divide, in which resemblance and likeness are “relegated” to a Renaissance episteme in order to neutralize it as an “archaeological” and thus outdated form of knowledge. It is telling, however, that not even Foucault was able to initiate his reconstruction work without acknowledging at least the possibility of there being some kind of recursiveness or similarities, a series of analogies and resemblances within a setting, a time period, or episteme of some kind. At the same time, however, what would the alternative scenario look like of those who remain unconvinced by Foucault’s relegating resemblance into a distant past, other than simply acknowledging the empirical evidence of these “correspondences”? What is the theoretical basis for the historical evidence of the continuing prevalence of the episteme “resemblance” in the visual arts? , which, instead, stubbornly resists those desperate to turn it into a thing of the past.
This (often unacknowledged) conflict between the lasting influence of mimesis and its critics underlies much of 20th-century history and art theory, but not only. Thus, it already can be found in the writings of, say, Saint Augustine or Lessing before, in the 20th century, it will be picked up by a group of very different authors ranging from Riegl and Fiedler to Goodman and Greenberg, up to the protagonists of the Iconic Turn. All of them reject figuration and mimesis because it puts at risk the supposed “epistemic” autonomy and purity of the visual arts. For that reason, the refusal of mimesis was hailed as a historical accomplishment, as emancipation and deliverance of the visual from its sister arts and any natural foundation that could not be reduced to cultural or historical relativism. Moreover, this celebration of the purity of the medium went along with the simultaneous discovery of the “power of images” and the “agency of art,” which freed images from their mimetic limitations and, instead, attributed to them the ability to create rather than re-produce reality.
The antimimetic attitude, thus, turns into an ideological position built on a shaky theoretical foundation. This monographic edition of Elephant and Castle will focus on the origins, reasons, and consequences of what it calls mimetophobia. Our goal is not only to discuss the history and modes of iconoclasm; anthropological anxiety, ancient and modern, of images, above all of those ones which resemble “too much”. In addition, we are also interested in analyzing the more elusive anxiety of acknowledging the gnoseologic and cognitive presuppositions that are the condition of any kind of both iconoclasm and iconophilia. In the wake of important discussions of the fear of the Other and otherness, it seems as if the time has come to look at the “other half” of the problem, the anxiety of Like and likeness.
Our call for papers, therefore, welcomes a variety of takes on the subject, including theoretical, critical, and methodological approaches in addition to focused case studies. It is not limited to any period or culture and invites interdisciplinary studies.
We ask for abstracts that do not exceed 1000 letters and a short biography (max 5000 letters), both of which have to be submitted by June 15th, 2020 to the following e-mail addresses: michele.dimonte@beniculturali.it, bpaul@rci.rutgers.edu, silvia.pedone@lincei.it.
You can expect a response from the editors within a month or so as the publication of the monographic edition of Elephant and Castle is scheduled for September 21st, 2020. Contributions may be in Italian, English, French, and German.

Sitoweb: https://cav.unibg.it/elephant_castle/web/it_IT/call_for_papers
Editorial Guidelines: https://cav.unibg.it/elephant_castle/web/uploads/newsletter/e&c_norme.pdf