Masters’ School Seminar 29.03.2023 3 p.m
The Masters’ School Seminar will be held on March, 29, at 3 p.m.
Our guest is Prof. Ulrich Pfisterer.
Ulrich Pfisterer has taught art history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich chair for Early Modern European art) since 2006. Since 2015 he is also the director of the Central Institute for Art History Munich. Most recently (since 2021) he acts as one of the three principal investigators of the long-term project THESAURUS ANTIQUITATUM at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science – a project, which will publish a comprehensive corpus of drawings and prints after antique monuments in the 17th and 18th centuries. Pfisterer received his PhD from the University of Göttingen (1997) and undertook his ‘Habilitation’ at the University of Hamburg (2006). Fellowships allowed him to work at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, the Getty Research Center in LA at CASVA/National Gallery of Art in Washington, at Freie Universität Berlin, at the University of Hamburg and at the Center for Advanced Study of Freiburg University. His interests encompass the fields of early modern art in Europe and beyond, the reception and transformation of antiquity, the methodology and historiography of art history as well as interdisciplinary approaches. Since 2015 he is a member of the Academia Europaea, since 2017 of the Bavarian Academy of Science.
Pfisterer has published books on Kunstgeschichte zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius 2020), Raffael. Glaube – Liebe – Ruhm (Munich: Beck 2019); Kunst-Geburten. Kreativität, Erotik, Körper (Berlin: Wagenbach 2014, trad. it. L’artista procreatore. L’amore e le arti nella prima età moderna, Rome: Campisano 2018); Die Sixtinische Kapelle (Munich: Beck 2013, trad. engl. Sistine Chapel – Paradise in Rome, Los Angeles: Getty Publications 2018, trad. it. La Cappella Sistina, Roma: Campisano 2014), Pierre II Woeiriot de Bouzey, Antiquarum statuarum Vrbis Romae liber primus (um 1575) (Heidelberg: Manutius 2012); Lysippus und seine Freunde. Liebesgaben und Gedächtnis im Rom der Renaissance oder: Das erste Jahrhundert der Medaille (Berlin: Akademie 2008); Die Kunstliteratur der italienischen Renaissance: Eine Geschichte in Quellen (Stuttgart: Reclam 2002); and Donatello und die Entdeckung der Stile, 1430-1445 (Munich: Hirmer 2002). He is also the general editor of the collected writings of Aby Warburg, for which he has co-edited the volume on Fragmente zur Ausdruckskunde (Berlin: De Gruyter 2015).
Title and abstract:
Loving Art: Models of Creativity in Early Modern Europe
This lecture explores a major question that is hopefully not only of interest to art history, but concerns a wide variety of disciplines and contexts from antiquity to the present day. The question is: How could artistic creativity be understood and thematized in the early modern period? How could it be explained that certain people produced outstanding art – and others did not? It is about the historical metaphors, models and theories with which artistic creativity was attempted to be described in early modern Europe. A central thematic field for this was love, eroticism, and procreativity: the artist as lover, art as seductress, the viewer in love with the works. It will be shown that these ideas provide a crucial approach to understanding early modern art in Europe.