Casting the Real in Petrarch's Time, York, 4-5 May 2017

Luca PalozziEmanuele LugliLaura JacobusGiulia Perucchi

Casting the Real: Reproduction, Translation and Interpretation in Petrach's Time The History of Art department of the University of York is pleased to sponsor 'Casting the Real: Reproduction, Translation, and Interpretation in Petrarch's Time', an international workshop that explores the ways fourteenth-century poets, intellectuals, doctors, and artists engaged with issues of casting, embalming, and quantification. In keeping with Dominic Olariu’s 'La genèse de la représentation ressemblante de l’homme. Reconsidérations du portrait à partir du XIIIe siècle' (Bern 2014), this symposium discusses contaminations between ideas of measuring, judging, and representation while considering the similarities between concepts of truth, virtue, and likeness. The goal of the workshop is threefold. First it re-examines drawing as a practice that served to understand the real and construct a sense of truth. Second, it looks at medieval doctors' engagement with embalming, casting, and sculpting techniques. Finally, it intends to break away with the idea of rhetoric as an arid, formalistic ritual, but rather a practice that often drew from practical experiences and changed their significance in return. This is why 'Casting the Real' is framed around the figure of Petrarch, composer of funerary inscriptions, poet of inner realities, master of the art of memory, and avid commentator of scientific texts.