Fall 2018 Workshop in the History of Material Texts: Nicholas Herman, “The Book-Shaped Object in Renaissance Europe”

Fall 2018 Workshop in the History of Material Texts

Nicholas Herman, “The Book-Shaped Object in Renaissance Europe”

"On January 1st, 1411, the young brothers Paul, Jean, and Herman de Limbourg presented their eminent patron, the Duke of Berry, with a singular gift: “a ‘counterfeit’ book made of wood, painted to resemble a book.” Though long vanished, this intriguing New Year’s gift has frequently been cited by scholars as evidence of the status and estimation of its makers. It has not, however, been considered in relation to a whole range of other deceptively book-like things that were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, across Europe. In this talk I aim to explore the material valence and cultural specificity of the Limbourgs’ supposedly flippant gag gift by comparing it both to other objects described in household inventories and to a plethora of surviving items, ranging from drinking vessels, flower pots and handwarmers, to portrait diptychs, devotional pendants, musical instruments and cyphering gadgets, each of which was cleverly designed to resemble a book in some way. Such items have never before been discussed as a coherent class of objects, and considering them allows insights into the symbolic status of the book (which can alternately disguise, contain, reveal, protect...) on the cusp of its transformation from a luxury to a commonplace."
 
Nicholas Herman is Curator of Manuscripts at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries. His teaching and research focus on manuscript illumination and its intersection with other media in fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Europe. Nicholas received his doctorate in 2014 from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with a dissertation focusing on the French Renaissance court painter, Jean Bourdichon. Prior to arriving at Penn in 2016, he held fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Université de Montreal. From 2007 to 2010, he worked in the department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. He has contributed to numerous catalog and exhibition projects in Europe and North America, and has published articles in Word and Image, Burlington Magazine, and Manuscripta. He serves as co-editor of the journal Manuscript Studies.

This event is open to the public and all are welcome. Those who do not hold University of Pennsylvania ID cards should bring another form of photo identification in order to enter the library building.