Please save the date for the next Index of Medieval Art conference, “Art and Proof in the Ninth Century.” Organized by Professors Beatrice Kitzinger and Charlie Barber in collaboration with the Index and co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Archaeology, the conference will follow on the department’s 2025 Kurt Weitzmann Memorial Lecture by Francesca dell’Aqua (Università di Salerno) on December 5, which will double as the conference keynote.
The springing point of the conference is December 825, when the city of Paris witnessed a synod devoted to the discussion of the status of images in the Carolingian world. This meeting, convened in response to flare-ups of the “image question” in Constantinople and Rome, set forth a Latin Christian understanding of images that would remain dominant in early and high Medieval Europe. The dossier affirmed the value of images as mnemonics and devotional aids but ultimately re-asserted the primacy of verbal media in the religious sphere. However, as the conference speakers will show, artistic evidence itself suggests that ninth-century approaches to the role of images complicated and exceeded those prescribed for them by the bishops at Paris.
Prof. dell’ Acqua’s lecture will directly address the Roman–Frankish context in which the Paris synod unfolded. The papers that follow will dramatically expand the lens through which we view the central questions by considering the notion of proof in the ninth century through a much wider lens, reaching from the British Isles to Japan and from Georgia to Egypt and representing a wide range of languages and religious communities. Key themes include: the terminology surrounding images and their uses; questions of representation, semiotics, authenticity and truth; propositions that need proving and their modes of proof; the functions and status of images in society, and how these are secured; how occasions for image discussion reflect on local circumstances and priorities; ways in which discussing the validity of images intersects with politics, diplomacy, or self-fashioning; whether the notion of proof in relation to images, which emerged from a specific Christian and European moment, resonates in other contexts; and whether a more global perspective provides different valences for the concept of “proof” through artwork.
Francesca Dell’Aqua [Weitzmann Lecture, Dec. 5, 2025] Associate Professor, Università di Salerno
Andrea Achi, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Nourane Ben Azzouna, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Anouk Busset, Lecturer, Université de Lausanne
Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Professor, Northern Arizona University
Rachel Saunders, Assistant Professor, Princeton University
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Associate Professor, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Erik Thunø, Professor, Rutgers University
Anca Vasiliu, [Respondent] Director of Research, CNRS, Sorbonne Université
