In the ambit of the Minerva Research Group
Roma communis patria
The National Churches in Rome from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era
the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History,
announces a one-year postdoctoral fellowship, beginning 1 January 2015.
Candidates must be in possession of an upper level university degree
(Ph.D.), good working knowledge of German, Italian, and English, and a
research project proposal consistent with the aims and objectives of
the Minerva research group. The recipients of these fellowships are
also expected to participate with constancy in the activities of both
the group and the Institute.
Applications must include the following documentation:
– Curriculum vitae
– Photocopies of university diploma
– Description of the research project (max 2 pages)
– Summary of Doctoral dissertation (max 2 pages)
– List of publications (if any)
– Letter of recommendation from a prominent academic in the field
The Max Planck Society seeks to increase the number of women in those
areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly
encourages women to apply. The Max Planck Society is committed to
increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce
and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals.
Applications may be submitted via post or email and must be received by
23 November, 2014 at the following address:
Dr. Susanne Kubersky-Piredda
Minerva Research Group
Bibliotheca Hertziana
Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte
Via Gregoriana, 28
I-00187 Roma
E-mail: kubersky@biblhertz.it
For further information please consult the following internet website:
http://www.biblhertz.it/en/research/research-projects-of-the-institute/minerva-research-group/
Project description
Capital of the Empire, residence of the Papacy, destination of
pilgrims, and metropolis of art, Rome since Antiquity maintained
political, religious, and economic contacts with every region of the
known world, and was a hub for foreigners from all over the globe. From
the Middle Ages on, groups of compatriots met in the Eternal City and
founded confraternities, churches, and hospices that mirrored
linguistic, ethnic, and cultural groupings. These groups maintained
fluctuating relations with each other, with the Curia, the
municipality, and with their own home regions, appearing as
representative bodies of real nationes even before the idea of a nation
state had established itself on a continental scale. Dependencies,
alliances, and conflicts between these small groups often reflect in a
nutshell the power games being played contemporaneously in Europe, and
for this reason they appear particularly appropriate for an inquiry
into the historic presuppositions behind modern processes of
globalization. Essential to the representation strategies of the
nationes was the siting of their institutional headquarters within the
topography of the city as well as the architectural and urbanistic
operations they promoted, but also their appropria¬tion of urban space
for religious and charitable activities and the relative political
implications.
Up to now research has focused on the national churches of Rome,
offering mainly monographic contributions dedicated to the building
phenomena and their impact on the urban fabric. The objective of the
Minerva research group, in the ambit of a five-year project, is a
comprehensive analysis of the historical-artistic phenomena related to
these foreign communities as an expression of their cultural identity.
A large and multi-faceted field of inquiry is thus revealed, one that
includes within the spectrum of artistic production not only painting,
sculpture, and architecture, but also prints, commodities, and the vast
world of ephemera for religious festivals and processions. The
objective is to emphasize the unifying elements of the individual
nations and to show how these elements – for example, language,
religion, values, and customs – found expression in the visual culture,
or in other words, how a sense of belonging to a specific cultural
community could arise through the use of recog¬nizable semantic
formulae. The study will also seek to verify to what degree the art
patronage of foreigners resident in Rome was on the one hand the
product of “self” presentation as distinct from the “other”, or on the
other, of the penetration and cross-fertilization between imported
artistic phenomena and local working procedures consolidated over the
course of centuries.