forschungsbericht november 2008 – juli 2012 - Kunsthistorisches ...

116 | FORSCHUNGEN DES WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN NACHWUCHSES
vor Augen, sondern auch eine jeweils andersartige Offenbarung Gottes vor und nach der
Inkarnation. Für eine genauere Bestimmung der sich in den Elfenbeinen manifestierenden
Unterscheidung zwischen Altem und Neuem Bund, Juden und Christen führt die Studie
einzelne Stimmen aus dem Kreis der kirchenreformatorisch engagierten Theologen an. Eine
in dieser Hinsicht weiterführende systematische Untersuchung könnte nicht nur weitere
Indizien für eine genauere Datierung wie Lokalisierung der Salerno-Elfenbeine liefern, sondern
auch unsere Kenntnis der verschiedenen theologischen Zielrichtungen einer kirchenreformatorisch
motivierten Kunst erweitern.
Constructing the Heavens: Drawings of the Nebulae in the 19 th Century
Omar W. Nasim | Wissen im Entwurf
The vital role played by all kinds of notebooks and thousands of hand drawings made
of the nebulae and star clusters was normally eclipsed by the development of large and
lumbering telescopes in the nineteenth century. These sketches were one of the chief entry
points for astronomers in coming to terms with these mysterious, faint, and numerically resistant
objects. The central argument of the project was the proposition – evinced by a close
study of the observing books of six different nineteenth-century observational programmes
dedicated to the nebulae – that the stylus and paper employed were just as central to the
astronomical observation of the nebulae as the large telescopes. Furthermore, rather than
a mere aide memoire, preliminary sketches operated as tools for seeing better, directing
observation, selection and judgement, stabilizing the image of the phenomena, and making
out details that were otherwise barely visible. The project reached a first conclusion with
the completion of a book, which has recently been submitted as a Habilitationsschrift to the
Chair for Science Studies, ETH Zurich. The book, which is tentatively entitled Observing by
Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the 19 th Century, is also currently under review at an academic
publishing house.
Canvas, Veil, and Sailcloth. On the Textile Poetics of Venetian Painting
Stefan Neuner | Max Planck Minerva Research Group
Sometimes in Venetian painting depicted textiles not
only have a space-structuring quality, but in many
cases also seem to be instances of pictorial self-reflection.
The aesthetic potential of this kind of pictorial
poetics can be as varied as the nature of the textiles
themselves – whether they are standards, ceremonial
cloths, garments or awnings. In perhaps the most important,
and certainly the most original, attempt to
describe the distinctiveness of this painting tradition,
Marco Boschini's dialogue La carta del navegar pitoresco
(1660), tela and vela are used as a recurring rhyming
motifs. Following up Boschini's metaphorics an attempt
is made to exploit the Latin noun velum as a
critical concept. For the two kinds of cloth implied by
it's double meaning can serve as excellent examples
of the extreme poles of the textile poetics of Venetian
painting: On the one hand the veil, with all its metaphysical and theological implications;
on the other hand the sail, with its secular associations in everyday culture. Silk and coarse
linen, ideology and manufacture: Two spheres of the material culture of Venice, each with
very different orders of knowledge and practice, and each bound up with different levels
in the social hierarchy of the Republic. And yet both point to the twofold genealogy of
Venetian canvas-based painting. The project is part of a more wide-ranging study of the
relationship between image and space in early modern Venice.
Carpaccio, Ankunft der Gesandten,
1494–1495, Venedig, Galleria
dell‘Accademia