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’Acqua (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.
Charlie Barber, Professor, Princeton University
Beatrice Kitzinger, Associate Professor, Princeton University
Weitzmann Lecture: Friday, Dec. 5, 2025 at 5 pm
Francesca Dell’Acqua, Associate Professor, Università di Salerno, “Art as Proof. Statues and High Relief as Ideological Statements at the Time of the Image controversy, c.750–850?”
Conference Speakers: Saturday, Dec. 6, detailed schedule TBA
Erik Thunø, Professor, Rutgers University, “Between Iconoclasm and Islam: Monumental Church Decoration in Early Medieval Georgia.”
Anouk Busset, Lecturer, Université de Lausanne, “Connecting Places in Early Christian Northwestern Europe: The Example of the Aberlemno Battle Scene.”
Rachel Saunders, Assistant Professor, Princeton University, “Star Mandalas and Buddhist Temporality in Medieval Japan.”
Nourane Ben Azzouna, Lecturer, Université de Strasbourg, “The Mihna, the Inquisition of the Second Quarter of the 9th century, and Its Role in the Definition of the Status of the Image in Sunni Islam.”
Alexei Sivertsev, Professor, DePaul University, “Image as a Witness: A Theme in Jewish Liturgical Poetry on the Eve of Iconoclasm.”
Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Professor, Northern Arizona University, “Manichaean/Silk Road Art and Proof from the Silk Roads: Identifying a 9th-century Chinese Manichaean silk Painting of Jesus Preserved in a Buddhist ‘Library’ Cave” near Dunhuang from the Collection of the British Museum
Andrea Achi, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Proof in the Margins: Visual and Textual Authority in Coptic Manuscripts from The Monastery of St. Michael, Egypt.”
Anca Vasiliu, Director of Research, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Respondent.
