Books by Sean Roberts
The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture (Yale University Press, 2023), 2023
Early Modern Court Culture, 2022
Through a thematic overview of court culture that connects the cultural with the political, confe... more Through a thematic overview of court culture that connects the cultural with the political, confessional, spatial, material and performative, this volume introduces the dynamics of power and culture in the early modern European court. Exploring the period from 1500 to 1750, Early Modern Court Culture is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, providing insights into aspects of both community and continuity at courts as well as individual identity, change and difference. Culture is presented as not merely a vehicle for court propaganda in promoting the monarch and the dynasty, but as a site for a complex range of meanings that conferred status and virtue on the patron, maker, court and the wider community of elites. The essays show that the court provided an arena for virtue and virtuosity, intellectual and social play, demonstration of moral authority and performance of social, gendered, confessional and dynastic identity.
Early Modern Court Culture moves from political structures and political players to architectural forms and spatial geographies; ceremonial and ritual observances; visual and material culture; entertainment and knowledge. With 35 contributions on subjects including gardens, dress, scent, dance and tapestries, this volume is a necessary resource for all students and scholars interested in the court in early modern Europe.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Erin Griffey
Part I: People and political structures: Connecting power
1. Monarchs: Kings and queens regnant, sovereign princes and popes
Ronald G. Asch
2. Consorts and court ladies
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly
3. Wider kinship networks
Jonathan Spangler
4. Courtiers, ministers and favourites
R. Malcolm Smuts
5. Confessors
Nicole Reinhardt
6. Aristocrats and nobles
Hamish Scott
7. Diplomats
Tracey A. Sowerby
Part II: Place and space: Negotiating the court
8. Access
Dries Raeymaekers
9. Princely residences
Elisabeth Narkin
10. Gardens
Paula Henderson
Part III: Ceremonial and ritual: Observing tradition
11. Religious rituals and the liturgical calendar
Paolo Cozzo
12. Childbirth
Erin Griffey
13. Marriages
Joan-Lluís Palos
14. Coronations
Paul Monod
15. Receptions: Triumphal entries, ambassadorial receptions and banquets
R.L.M. Morris
16. Funerals
Jill Bepler
Part IV: Visual and material culture: Furnishing the palace
17. Metalwork
Sean Roberts
18. Tapestries
Guy Delmarcel
19. Upholstered furnishings, cabinet work and gilt furniture
Olivia Fryman
20. Portraiture
Lisa Mansfield
21. Display
Andrea Bubenik
22. Porcelain rooms
Meredith Martin
Part 5: Material culture: Dressing the body
23. Jewellery
Natasha Awais-Dean
24. Male dress
Timothy McCall
25. Female dress
Jemma Field
26. Beauty
Erin Griffey
27. Scent
Holly Dugan
Part VI: Entertainment and knowledge: Performing authority
28. Science
Alisha Rankin
29. Theatre and opera
Sophie Tomlinson
30. Dance
Jennifer Nevile
31. Literature
Tom Bishop
32. Music
Andrew H. Weaver
33. Tournaments and hunting
Glenn Richardson
34. Food and dining
Ken Albala
35. Games and jokes
Johan Verberckmoes
The Seas and the Mobility of Islamic Art (Yale University Press, 2021), 2021
A Cultural History of Peace, R. Edsforth gen. edr., 2020
The rich polysemy of the word peace was widely known in the Renaissance, and its nuances construc... more The rich polysemy of the word peace was widely known in the Renaissance, and its nuances constructed a family of discourse that came from many diverse traditions. In the Renaissance and the Reformation, the term ‘peace’ referred at the same time to a state and a notion; the first derived from events and treaties, while the second participated in a system of representations, that is an image that a specific society constructs about itself. In this second acceptation, the notion of peace crossed the path of some other crucial concepts like justice, freedom, the common good. Such political keywords not only played a pivotal role in daily social and political life but also represented the building blocks of the theoretical analysis of reality outlined by intellectuals such as Machiavelli, Erasmus, Vives, Vitoria, Montaigne, Gentili, Bodin, Grotius, who worked extensively on peace and its opposite – war – and on their crossings and reciprocal interferences. Although their distinctively political and European character, the two hundred years between c.1450 and c.1650 represent a culturally
recognizable framework: while they allow the historian to take a comprehensive look at a cultural history of peace from a Western perspective, they also offer him/her a chance to throw more than casual glances at the world beyond.
Secrets in all their variety permeated early modern Europe, from the whispers of ambassadors at c... more Secrets in all their variety permeated early modern Europe, from the whispers of ambassadors at court to the emphatically publicized books of home remedies that flew from presses and booksellers' shops. This interdisciplinary volume draws on approaches from art history and cultural studies to investigate the manifestations of secrecy in printed books and drawings, staircases and narrative paintings, ecclesiastical furnishings and engravers' tools. Topics include how patrons of art and architecture deployed secrets to construct meanings and distinguish audiences, and how artists and patrons manipulated the content and display of the subject matter of artworks to create an aura of exclusive access and privilege. Essays examine the ways in which popes and princes skillfully deployed secrets in works of art to maximize social control, and how artists, printers, and folk healers promoted their wares through the impression of valuable, mysterious knowledge.
Diplomacy has never been a politically neutral field of historical research, even when it was con... more Diplomacy has never been a politically neutral field of historical research, even when it was confined to merely reconstructing the context of wars and revolutions. Since the nineteenth century, Renaissance Italy has been at the forefront of scholarship on diplomacy; today, with increasing awareness of the long history of the subject as well as a broader spectrum of case studies, the study of Italian diplomacy has become sophisticated and highly articulated, offering scholars many new directions for further exploration.
During the period ca. 1350–ca. 1520 covered by the present volume, diplomatic sources became extremely rich and abundant. This sourcebook presents a selection of primary materials, both published and unpublished, which are mostly unavailable to English readers: a broad range of diplomatic sources, thematically organized, are introduced, translated, and annotated by an international team of leading scholars of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this volume is to illustrate the richness of diplomatic documents both for the study of diplomacy itself as well as for other areas of historical investigation, such as gender and sexuality, crime and justice, art and leisure, and medicine.
Conferences Organized by Sean Roberts
As for the earth, We spread it out… and caused everything to grow there in perfect balance.-Surah... more As for the earth, We spread it out… and caused everything to grow there in perfect balance.-Surah 15:19
The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture
An eco-conscious ethos is intrinsic to Islamic scripture and culture. This sensitivity profoundly influences the relationship between human beings, deputized as stewards of nature by Allah, and the environment they inhabit. Historical and contemporary Islamic visual traditions have demonstrated this consciousness in urban planning, landscape architecture, water management, and many other art forms. Despite this awareness, in the present epoch of the Anthropocene, human intervention has caused irreparable damage to the planet's biodiversity and ecosystems. As art history shifts its disciplinary attention to the unfolding global crisis, this symposium considers how an ecological art history can examine objects, materials, and the built environment through the lens of Islamic culture. It also seeks to push beyond binaries of human/non-human and culture/nature in which the human and the cultural are privileged over other species and the natural world. Humans, within this ontological framework, are part of the environment and in possession of unique capacities necessary to address climate change, sustainability, and environmental conservation. How might the study of the visual, rooted in disciplines such as art history, anthropology, and archaeology of the larger Islamic world, engage with these concerns on practical, philosophical, and methodological grounds? The co-chairs of the Ninth Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, scheduled for November 7 and 8, 2021 in Doha, Qatar, invite papers from established and emerging scholars whose research explores these themes through geological time across the arts of the core Islamic lands and the broader Muslim diaspora. Topics to consider might include but are not limited to:
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Sean Roberts
The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture, 2023
Museum of Islamic Art (Doha) - The Catalog, 2022
Material Culture Review, 2022
The Cambridge Companion to Constantinople, Sarah Bassett ed. , 2022
Early Modern Court Culture, Erin Griffey ed. , 2021
The Seas and the Mobility of Islamic Art, 2021
A Cultural History of Peace: The Renaissance, 2020
Source: Notes in the History of Art, 2020
For Renaissance writers on art, few tropes enjoyed the prominence of comparison between contempor... more For Renaissance writers on art, few tropes enjoyed the prominence of comparison between contemporary and ancient practitioners. Among a select group of comparanda, the most common were surely Apelles for painters and Praxiteles for sculptors, though Myron, Lysippus, Phidias, and others made sporadic appearances. To modern readers, such analogies vary widely in their appropriateness and utility, responding to regional and momentary tastes, friendships, networks, and rivalries. Battista Spagnoli's claim that the art of the ancients "is tarnished and loses all luster" when seen alongside that of Andrea Mantegna accords, in spirit, with art historical estimations of the significance of his source: notes in the history of art. summer 2020.
Fanoon Center for Printmedia Research: Projects 2012-2018 (VCUArts), 2019
Book Parts, Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth eds. (Oxford), 2019
Mediterranean Cartographic Stories: Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Masterpieces from the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation Collection, ed. Pangiotis N. Doukellis, 2019
Long privileged as a disciplinary and historiographic locus of early modern Italian art and liter... more Long privileged as a disciplinary and historiographic locus of early modern Italian art and literature, Florence has more recently been shaken -though hardly dislodged -from its pedestal. For many art historians, in particular, the recalibration of relationships between centres and peripheries has gone hand-in-hand with the field's 'global turn', to challenge the received wisdom of this cultural hegemony. 1 Far from consigning the city to the margins, however, scholars have tended to focus on Florentine episodes of economic, diplomatic and artistic interchange within an early modern world reaching far beyond the peninsula to embrace Ottoman lands, the Atlantic world and China. 2
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Books by Sean Roberts
Early Modern Court Culture moves from political structures and political players to architectural forms and spatial geographies; ceremonial and ritual observances; visual and material culture; entertainment and knowledge. With 35 contributions on subjects including gardens, dress, scent, dance and tapestries, this volume is a necessary resource for all students and scholars interested in the court in early modern Europe.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Erin Griffey
Part I: People and political structures: Connecting power
1. Monarchs: Kings and queens regnant, sovereign princes and popes
Ronald G. Asch
2. Consorts and court ladies
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly
3. Wider kinship networks
Jonathan Spangler
4. Courtiers, ministers and favourites
R. Malcolm Smuts
5. Confessors
Nicole Reinhardt
6. Aristocrats and nobles
Hamish Scott
7. Diplomats
Tracey A. Sowerby
Part II: Place and space: Negotiating the court
8. Access
Dries Raeymaekers
9. Princely residences
Elisabeth Narkin
10. Gardens
Paula Henderson
Part III: Ceremonial and ritual: Observing tradition
11. Religious rituals and the liturgical calendar
Paolo Cozzo
12. Childbirth
Erin Griffey
13. Marriages
Joan-Lluís Palos
14. Coronations
Paul Monod
15. Receptions: Triumphal entries, ambassadorial receptions and banquets
R.L.M. Morris
16. Funerals
Jill Bepler
Part IV: Visual and material culture: Furnishing the palace
17. Metalwork
Sean Roberts
18. Tapestries
Guy Delmarcel
19. Upholstered furnishings, cabinet work and gilt furniture
Olivia Fryman
20. Portraiture
Lisa Mansfield
21. Display
Andrea Bubenik
22. Porcelain rooms
Meredith Martin
Part 5: Material culture: Dressing the body
23. Jewellery
Natasha Awais-Dean
24. Male dress
Timothy McCall
25. Female dress
Jemma Field
26. Beauty
Erin Griffey
27. Scent
Holly Dugan
Part VI: Entertainment and knowledge: Performing authority
28. Science
Alisha Rankin
29. Theatre and opera
Sophie Tomlinson
30. Dance
Jennifer Nevile
31. Literature
Tom Bishop
32. Music
Andrew H. Weaver
33. Tournaments and hunting
Glenn Richardson
34. Food and dining
Ken Albala
35. Games and jokes
Johan Verberckmoes
recognizable framework: while they allow the historian to take a comprehensive look at a cultural history of peace from a Western perspective, they also offer him/her a chance to throw more than casual glances at the world beyond.
During the period ca. 1350–ca. 1520 covered by the present volume, diplomatic sources became extremely rich and abundant. This sourcebook presents a selection of primary materials, both published and unpublished, which are mostly unavailable to English readers: a broad range of diplomatic sources, thematically organized, are introduced, translated, and annotated by an international team of leading scholars of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this volume is to illustrate the richness of diplomatic documents both for the study of diplomacy itself as well as for other areas of historical investigation, such as gender and sexuality, crime and justice, art and leisure, and medicine.
Conferences Organized by Sean Roberts
The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture
An eco-conscious ethos is intrinsic to Islamic scripture and culture. This sensitivity profoundly influences the relationship between human beings, deputized as stewards of nature by Allah, and the environment they inhabit. Historical and contemporary Islamic visual traditions have demonstrated this consciousness in urban planning, landscape architecture, water management, and many other art forms. Despite this awareness, in the present epoch of the Anthropocene, human intervention has caused irreparable damage to the planet's biodiversity and ecosystems. As art history shifts its disciplinary attention to the unfolding global crisis, this symposium considers how an ecological art history can examine objects, materials, and the built environment through the lens of Islamic culture. It also seeks to push beyond binaries of human/non-human and culture/nature in which the human and the cultural are privileged over other species and the natural world. Humans, within this ontological framework, are part of the environment and in possession of unique capacities necessary to address climate change, sustainability, and environmental conservation. How might the study of the visual, rooted in disciplines such as art history, anthropology, and archaeology of the larger Islamic world, engage with these concerns on practical, philosophical, and methodological grounds? The co-chairs of the Ninth Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, scheduled for November 7 and 8, 2021 in Doha, Qatar, invite papers from established and emerging scholars whose research explores these themes through geological time across the arts of the core Islamic lands and the broader Muslim diaspora. Topics to consider might include but are not limited to:
Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Sean Roberts
Early Modern Court Culture moves from political structures and political players to architectural forms and spatial geographies; ceremonial and ritual observances; visual and material culture; entertainment and knowledge. With 35 contributions on subjects including gardens, dress, scent, dance and tapestries, this volume is a necessary resource for all students and scholars interested in the court in early modern Europe.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Erin Griffey
Part I: People and political structures: Connecting power
1. Monarchs: Kings and queens regnant, sovereign princes and popes
Ronald G. Asch
2. Consorts and court ladies
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly
3. Wider kinship networks
Jonathan Spangler
4. Courtiers, ministers and favourites
R. Malcolm Smuts
5. Confessors
Nicole Reinhardt
6. Aristocrats and nobles
Hamish Scott
7. Diplomats
Tracey A. Sowerby
Part II: Place and space: Negotiating the court
8. Access
Dries Raeymaekers
9. Princely residences
Elisabeth Narkin
10. Gardens
Paula Henderson
Part III: Ceremonial and ritual: Observing tradition
11. Religious rituals and the liturgical calendar
Paolo Cozzo
12. Childbirth
Erin Griffey
13. Marriages
Joan-Lluís Palos
14. Coronations
Paul Monod
15. Receptions: Triumphal entries, ambassadorial receptions and banquets
R.L.M. Morris
16. Funerals
Jill Bepler
Part IV: Visual and material culture: Furnishing the palace
17. Metalwork
Sean Roberts
18. Tapestries
Guy Delmarcel
19. Upholstered furnishings, cabinet work and gilt furniture
Olivia Fryman
20. Portraiture
Lisa Mansfield
21. Display
Andrea Bubenik
22. Porcelain rooms
Meredith Martin
Part 5: Material culture: Dressing the body
23. Jewellery
Natasha Awais-Dean
24. Male dress
Timothy McCall
25. Female dress
Jemma Field
26. Beauty
Erin Griffey
27. Scent
Holly Dugan
Part VI: Entertainment and knowledge: Performing authority
28. Science
Alisha Rankin
29. Theatre and opera
Sophie Tomlinson
30. Dance
Jennifer Nevile
31. Literature
Tom Bishop
32. Music
Andrew H. Weaver
33. Tournaments and hunting
Glenn Richardson
34. Food and dining
Ken Albala
35. Games and jokes
Johan Verberckmoes
recognizable framework: while they allow the historian to take a comprehensive look at a cultural history of peace from a Western perspective, they also offer him/her a chance to throw more than casual glances at the world beyond.
During the period ca. 1350–ca. 1520 covered by the present volume, diplomatic sources became extremely rich and abundant. This sourcebook presents a selection of primary materials, both published and unpublished, which are mostly unavailable to English readers: a broad range of diplomatic sources, thematically organized, are introduced, translated, and annotated by an international team of leading scholars of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this volume is to illustrate the richness of diplomatic documents both for the study of diplomacy itself as well as for other areas of historical investigation, such as gender and sexuality, crime and justice, art and leisure, and medicine.
The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture
An eco-conscious ethos is intrinsic to Islamic scripture and culture. This sensitivity profoundly influences the relationship between human beings, deputized as stewards of nature by Allah, and the environment they inhabit. Historical and contemporary Islamic visual traditions have demonstrated this consciousness in urban planning, landscape architecture, water management, and many other art forms. Despite this awareness, in the present epoch of the Anthropocene, human intervention has caused irreparable damage to the planet's biodiversity and ecosystems. As art history shifts its disciplinary attention to the unfolding global crisis, this symposium considers how an ecological art history can examine objects, materials, and the built environment through the lens of Islamic culture. It also seeks to push beyond binaries of human/non-human and culture/nature in which the human and the cultural are privileged over other species and the natural world. Humans, within this ontological framework, are part of the environment and in possession of unique capacities necessary to address climate change, sustainability, and environmental conservation. How might the study of the visual, rooted in disciplines such as art history, anthropology, and archaeology of the larger Islamic world, engage with these concerns on practical, philosophical, and methodological grounds? The co-chairs of the Ninth Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, scheduled for November 7 and 8, 2021 in Doha, Qatar, invite papers from established and emerging scholars whose research explores these themes through geological time across the arts of the core Islamic lands and the broader Muslim diaspora. Topics to consider might include but are not limited to:
After defining luxury and greed in their historical contexts, the volume’s chapters elucidate new consumptive goods, from chocolate to official robes of state; they examine how ideas about, and objects of, luxury and greed were disseminated through print, diplomacy, and gift-giving; and they reveal how even the most elite of consumers could fake their luxury objects. A group of international scholars from a range of disciplines thereby provide a new appraisal and vision of luxury and the ethics of greed in early modern Italy.