School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (RANEPA) presents an international Colloquium

Figures of Speech and Visual Figurations in Early Modern Culture: Transpositions and Permutations.

24 February 2020 (Gazetny per. 3/5, room 511)

In his famous Il Cannocchiale Aristotelico (1654) Emmanule Tesauro presented the mastery of “le Argutezze di Parole, & di Figure” (p.24) as an art that does not differentiate between the verbal and the visual part. It is based on the same principles as “linguaggio di Dio” (p.92), and thus is open to tropological, allegorical and anagogical interpretations. Through the emblems and their legends – but also through other “Sistemi Pittagorici” (p.92) — it translates moral, mystical and metaphysical truths that need to be developed and understood correctly.

The emblematic art that had an outmost importance for the understanding of the (early) modern culture should serve as a starting point for our explorations of correspondences that exist between the verbal and the visual figurations. We are proposing to limit it to the cases than both systems are trying to convey the same message: it can be a topos that has a verbal and a pictorial equivalent (memento mori, etin Arcadia ego, etc.), a particular genre (a pastoral or bucolic scene), interpretation of mythological or historical motif, or just a single detail – the use of certain color, the ‘staging’ of particular scene, etc.

11.00 – 13.00

Section 1: Strange, capricious and bizarre. Moderator Anna Seregina (Russian Academy of Science).

Richard Scholar (Durham University, UK) “Caprice: A French Keyword that Turned English”.

Liubava Chistova (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg) “Metaphor Described and Realized: Tesauro’s Aristotelian telescope and Oddities of various figures by Giovanni Battista Bracelli”.

Maria Neklyudova (School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, RANEPA) “‘Le Chien d’Hercule’ or Political Implications of a Non-existent Image”.

13.00 – 14.00 – Lunch break

14.00 – 16.00

Section 2: Interpretations and appropriations. Moderator Natalia Mazur (European University at Saint-Petersburg)

Andrey Golubkov (The Gorky Institute of World Literature / Higher School of Economics). “Emblemata amatoria and les précieuses: Emblems as Paraphrases”.

Anna Stogova (Russian Academy of Science / Russian State University for the Humanities). “Shaping Fashion in the late 17th century French engravings”.

Ksenia Gusarova (Russian State University for the Humanities / School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, RANEPA) “Shadows on the Screen: Class Difference and the (Dis)embodied Spectator in the late 19th century”.