This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Submitted June 2023, accepted February 2024.
In early April 1516, five friends from Urbino and V... more Submitted June 2023, accepted February 2024. In early April 1516, five friends from Urbino and Venice --- Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Andrea Navagero, Agostino Beazzano, and Raphael -- visited the ancient town of Tivoli together to see "the old, the new, and whatever may be beautiful there." As writers and a painter then all living in Rome, their field trip would have been enlivened by discussions of poems and portraits, including perhaps plans to have Raphael paint the double portrait now in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. The sitters in this portrait, which Bembo owned and gave to Beazzano in 1538, are widely accepted to be two of the visitors to Tivoli, Navagero and Beazzano. Moving beyond these compelling identifications, I probe the Doria Pamphilj portrait's painted forms in terms of poetic practices emerging in early-sixteenth-century Italy. By looking closely at Raphael's own drafts of sonnets written on sheets of drawings he made around 1510 for the Stanza della Segnatura in terms of their composition, mise-en-page, placements on recto and verso, and relationships with the drawn images, I argue that the portrait of Navagero and Beazzano was Raphael's well-considered visual response to Renaissance prosody as it was then being developed by his friends, notably Bembo, who in those years was writing Le Prose della volgar lingua, his influential literary treatise set in 1502 and published in print in 1525. The first English translation of a poem addressed to Raphael by Agostino Beazzano appears in the appendix.
The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Sai... more The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Saints Peter and Paul that were commissioned in 1515 by Leo X, designed by Raphael in Rome, and woven in the Brussels workshop of Pieter van Aelst. The contribution these tapestries made to papal majesty has long been acknowledged, and various schemes for their hanging within the chapel have been proposed. Their effect not only on the preexisting paintings but also on the spoken and sung rituals that took place in the Sistine Chapel is significant as well.
A solicited essay accepted for publication in Habent Sua Fata Libelli: Studies in Book History an... more A solicited essay accepted for publication in Habent Sua Fata Libelli: Studies in Book History and the Classical Tradition in Honor of Craig Kallendorf, edited by Steven Oberhelman, to be published by Brill, as part of the series, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History.
The John Rylands Library's recently rediscovered Spencer Album 8050 contains a proof state of... more The John Rylands Library's recently rediscovered Spencer Album 8050 contains a proof state of the Battle of the Romans and the Sabines, an engraving pivotal in the short-lived but ambitious collaboration between Jacopo Caraglio (1500–65) and Rosso Fiorentino (1495–1540) in Rome. This proof impression was first printed in black ink, and then densely covered with hand-drawn ink. A comparison between the new proof state and previously identified states of the engraving using a novel technical approach involving long-wave infrared light to isolate the printed lines optically indicates that the Spencer proof state precedes any other known state of the engraving. The use of penwork and printing on this early proof and subsequent proof states demonstrates how Caraglio and Rosso saw drawing and printing as intimately connected, iterative steps in the print's production.
This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prin... more This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prints, long considered to be lost. By examining its composition and tracing its provenance from the Spencer collection at Althorp House to the John Rylands Library, Manchester, we offer new insight into how attitudes toward Marcantonio Raimondi‘s work evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Great Britain. Our article also explores Victorian collecting practices and the importance of the graphic arts for Mrs Rylands‘s vision for the Library to be dedicated to her late husband‘s memory.
The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Sai... more The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Saints Peter and Paul that were commissioned in 1515 by Leo X, designed by Raphael in Rome, and woven in the Brussels workshop of Pieter van Aelst. The contribution these tapestries made to papal majesty has long been acknowledged, and various schemes for their hanging within the chapel have been proposed. Their effect not only on the preexisting paintings but also on the spoken and sung rituals that took place in the Sistine Chapel is significant as well.
Page 1. Raphael, Durer, and Marcantonio Raimondi Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print Lisa P... more Page 1. Raphael, Durer, and Marcantonio Raimondi Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print Lisa Pon Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Raphael, Diirer, and Marcantonio Raimondi Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print Lisa Pon ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2018
Tapestries represent an important and valuable cultural heritage. In the past they played a signi... more Tapestries represent an important and valuable cultural heritage. In the past they played a significant role in enriching indoor environments, as well as contributing to change the indoor characteristics of the space. Considering typical mounting conditions, acoustics was likely to be strongly affected by hung tapestries. Even though their acoustic properties could be ideally inferred from their physical features, a proper characterization would be preferable to understand how they could modify sound propagation. However, given their dimensions and their delicacy, on-site measurements are often the only option. In the present paper, absorption coefficients of the Barberini tapestries were measured during a temporary exhibition held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Measurements were carried out in a large chapel with and without the tapestries installed. The effect of acoustical coupling with the adjacent cathedral volume was investigated using Bayesian metho...
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1998
... prophets and sibyls immediately above them, where a single name is indeed associated with a s... more ... prophets and sibyls immediately above them, where a single name is indeed associated with a single figure: the name Isaiah, for example ... by art historians, naturally divorces the painted words from the painted fig-ures beside them.' For example, in Esther Dotson's reading, the ...
En un ejemplar de la edicion de 1568 de las "Vite de'piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e ... more En un ejemplar de la edicion de 1568 de las "Vite de'piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e archittetori" de Vasari que pertenece a la Bridwell Library (Southern Methodist University) figuran anotaciones manuscritas de Lazaro Diaz del Valle y de la Puerta, cantor de la Capilla Real con Felipe IV, despues capellan de Carlos II y autor de "Origen e Yllustracion del Nobilissimo y Real Arte de la Pintura y Dibuxo". Una de esas anotaciones al margen confirma que el "Pasmo de Sicilia" de Rafael, encargado originalmente para el altar de la iglesia palermitana de Santa Maria dello Spasimo y hoy en el Museo del Prado, se instalo en la Capilla Real del Alcazar de Madrid en noviembre de 1661.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Submitted June 2023, accepted February 2024.
In early April 1516, five friends from Urbino and V... more Submitted June 2023, accepted February 2024. In early April 1516, five friends from Urbino and Venice --- Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Andrea Navagero, Agostino Beazzano, and Raphael -- visited the ancient town of Tivoli together to see "the old, the new, and whatever may be beautiful there." As writers and a painter then all living in Rome, their field trip would have been enlivened by discussions of poems and portraits, including perhaps plans to have Raphael paint the double portrait now in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. The sitters in this portrait, which Bembo owned and gave to Beazzano in 1538, are widely accepted to be two of the visitors to Tivoli, Navagero and Beazzano. Moving beyond these compelling identifications, I probe the Doria Pamphilj portrait's painted forms in terms of poetic practices emerging in early-sixteenth-century Italy. By looking closely at Raphael's own drafts of sonnets written on sheets of drawings he made around 1510 for the Stanza della Segnatura in terms of their composition, mise-en-page, placements on recto and verso, and relationships with the drawn images, I argue that the portrait of Navagero and Beazzano was Raphael's well-considered visual response to Renaissance prosody as it was then being developed by his friends, notably Bembo, who in those years was writing Le Prose della volgar lingua, his influential literary treatise set in 1502 and published in print in 1525. The first English translation of a poem addressed to Raphael by Agostino Beazzano appears in the appendix.
The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Sai... more The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Saints Peter and Paul that were commissioned in 1515 by Leo X, designed by Raphael in Rome, and woven in the Brussels workshop of Pieter van Aelst. The contribution these tapestries made to papal majesty has long been acknowledged, and various schemes for their hanging within the chapel have been proposed. Their effect not only on the preexisting paintings but also on the spoken and sung rituals that took place in the Sistine Chapel is significant as well.
A solicited essay accepted for publication in Habent Sua Fata Libelli: Studies in Book History an... more A solicited essay accepted for publication in Habent Sua Fata Libelli: Studies in Book History and the Classical Tradition in Honor of Craig Kallendorf, edited by Steven Oberhelman, to be published by Brill, as part of the series, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History.
The John Rylands Library's recently rediscovered Spencer Album 8050 contains a proof state of... more The John Rylands Library's recently rediscovered Spencer Album 8050 contains a proof state of the Battle of the Romans and the Sabines, an engraving pivotal in the short-lived but ambitious collaboration between Jacopo Caraglio (1500–65) and Rosso Fiorentino (1495–1540) in Rome. This proof impression was first printed in black ink, and then densely covered with hand-drawn ink. A comparison between the new proof state and previously identified states of the engraving using a novel technical approach involving long-wave infrared light to isolate the printed lines optically indicates that the Spencer proof state precedes any other known state of the engraving. The use of penwork and printing on this early proof and subsequent proof states demonstrates how Caraglio and Rosso saw drawing and printing as intimately connected, iterative steps in the print's production.
This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prin... more This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prints, long considered to be lost. By examining its composition and tracing its provenance from the Spencer collection at Althorp House to the John Rylands Library, Manchester, we offer new insight into how attitudes toward Marcantonio Raimondi‘s work evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Great Britain. Our article also explores Victorian collecting practices and the importance of the graphic arts for Mrs Rylands‘s vision for the Library to be dedicated to her late husband‘s memory.
The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Sai... more The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Saints Peter and Paul that were commissioned in 1515 by Leo X, designed by Raphael in Rome, and woven in the Brussels workshop of Pieter van Aelst. The contribution these tapestries made to papal majesty has long been acknowledged, and various schemes for their hanging within the chapel have been proposed. Their effect not only on the preexisting paintings but also on the spoken and sung rituals that took place in the Sistine Chapel is significant as well.
Page 1. Raphael, Durer, and Marcantonio Raimondi Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print Lisa P... more Page 1. Raphael, Durer, and Marcantonio Raimondi Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print Lisa Pon Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Raphael, Diirer, and Marcantonio Raimondi Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print Lisa Pon ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2018
Tapestries represent an important and valuable cultural heritage. In the past they played a signi... more Tapestries represent an important and valuable cultural heritage. In the past they played a significant role in enriching indoor environments, as well as contributing to change the indoor characteristics of the space. Considering typical mounting conditions, acoustics was likely to be strongly affected by hung tapestries. Even though their acoustic properties could be ideally inferred from their physical features, a proper characterization would be preferable to understand how they could modify sound propagation. However, given their dimensions and their delicacy, on-site measurements are often the only option. In the present paper, absorption coefficients of the Barberini tapestries were measured during a temporary exhibition held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Measurements were carried out in a large chapel with and without the tapestries installed. The effect of acoustical coupling with the adjacent cathedral volume was investigated using Bayesian metho...
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1998
... prophets and sibyls immediately above them, where a single name is indeed associated with a s... more ... prophets and sibyls immediately above them, where a single name is indeed associated with a single figure: the name Isaiah, for example ... by art historians, naturally divorces the painted words from the painted fig-ures beside them.' For example, in Esther Dotson's reading, the ...
En un ejemplar de la edicion de 1568 de las "Vite de'piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e ... more En un ejemplar de la edicion de 1568 de las "Vite de'piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e archittetori" de Vasari que pertenece a la Bridwell Library (Southern Methodist University) figuran anotaciones manuscritas de Lazaro Diaz del Valle y de la Puerta, cantor de la Capilla Real con Felipe IV, despues capellan de Carlos II y autor de "Origen e Yllustracion del Nobilissimo y Real Arte de la Pintura y Dibuxo". Una de esas anotaciones al margen confirma que el "Pasmo de Sicilia" de Rafael, encargado originalmente para el altar de la iglesia palermitana de Santa Maria dello Spasimo y hoy en el Museo del Prado, se instalo en la Capilla Real del Alcazar de Madrid en noviembre de 1661.
Bank, Katie. 2023. “Amphions Harp gaue sence vnto stone Walles”: The Five Senses and Musical-Visual Affect. Arts 12: 219. Cannady, Lauren. 2023. On the Persistence of the Organic: The Material Lives of the Robinia pseudoacacia. Arts 12: 253. Chan, Eleanor. 2023. Notation: The In/Visible Visual Cultures of Musical Legibility in the English Renaissance. Arts 12: 75. Hara, Mari Yoko. 2023. Petrified Beholders: The Interactive Materiality of Baldassarre Peruzzi’s Perseus and Medusa. Arts 12: 246. Refini, Eugenio. 2023. Echo’s Fluid (Im)materiality Across Text and Performance. Arts 12: 249.
In 1428, a devastating fire destroyed a schoolhouse in the Northern Italian city of Forlì, leavin... more In 1428, a devastating fire destroyed a schoolhouse in the Northern Italian city of Forlì, leaving only a woodcut of the Madonna and Child that had been tacked to the classroom wall. The people of Forlì carried that print --now known as the Madonna of the Fire-- into their cathedral, where two centuries later a new chapel was built to enshrine it. In this book, Lisa Pon considers a cascade of moments in the Madonna of the Fire's cultural biography: when ink was impressed onto paper at a now-unknown date; when that sheet was recognized by Forlì's people as miraculous; when it was enshrined in various tabernacles and chapels in the cathedral; when it or one of its copies was –and still is -- carried in procession. In doing so, Pon offers an experiment in art historical inquiry that spans more than three centuries of making, remaking, and renewal.
Endorsements:
“Lisa Pon, one of the most distinguished historians of early prints, has given us a biography of the several ‘lives’ of a single image – a lone surviving impression of an anonymous early woodcut. Pon’s exemplary case study deftly combines modern critical theory with deep historical sleuthing to elucidate the significance across the centuries of both Madonna of the Fire and its replications for Forlì’s religious and civic community alike.”
– Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania
“With imagination and wit, Lisa Pon tells the story of an unremarkable artifact’s illustrious career. It is a telling tale about the complex relation of persons to things.”
– Joseph Leo Koerner, Harvard University
“In A Printed Icon in Early Modern Italy, Lisa Pon excavates the cultural life of a singular and extraordinary object. Anchoring her study in a fifteenth-century Italian print that miraculously survived a fire, she expertly guides the reader through its placements and displacements over time and space.”
– Michael Gaudio, University of Minnesota
Collaborations in History, Art, Religion and Music (CHARM) began in 2022 with a seed grant from t... more Collaborations in History, Art, Religion and Music (CHARM) began in 2022 with a seed grant from the University of Southern California's Office of Research and Office of the Provost, to convene an interdisciplinary group of forty-six humanities scholars, artists, and community leaders who are interested in the spiritual, creative, civic and historical insights that emerge from the intersection of diverse fields of thought, research, and practice. These perspectives are diverse, but they draw from shared concerns about religion, history, and the visual and performing arts that are increasingly pressing not only to academics but to public communities around the globe. CHARM has grown to more than sixty members across and beyond the USC campus, with vibrant partnerships with the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies at USC; the Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies; YMF Young Musicians Foundation; The Civic Imagination Project; Unusual Suspects Theatre Company; Homeboy Art Academy; and the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. CHARM seeks to increase public participation in the humanities through projects that are based in Los Angeles’ many multicultural communities.
For their post on Art Journal Open, “The Quarantine Question,” guest editors Dana E. Katz and Lis... more For their post on Art Journal Open, “The Quarantine Question,” guest editors Dana E. Katz and Lisa Pon asked colleagues—historians of art, architecture, landscape, and culture; visual artists and musician-musicologists; curators and museum educators—to answer the following question as of summer 2021: “How has the past year’s quarantine affected your professional life?”
An introductory essay frames the twenty-one responses received by the editors. It draws on the plague hospitals and ghetto of early modern Venice to provide historical context for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, especially for the social-distancing measures taken to mitigate its effects. The contributions that follow afford a mosaic of perspectives on what one of the contributors refers to as l’époque covidienne. They range from discussions of art projects sparked by the pandemic to rich descriptions of COVID’s personal and professional impacts—and the difficulty of disentangling them. Read the article here: http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=16055
A pop-up project of the USC Levan Institute of the Humanities working group, "Books, Writing and ... more A pop-up project of the USC Levan Institute of the Humanities working group, "Books, Writing and Community," March-June 2020.
Contributors: Lisa Pon, Samantha Robinson, Sam Ratcliffe, Beth Andresen, Tyeson Seale, Sara Outh... more Contributors: Lisa Pon, Samantha Robinson, Sam Ratcliffe, Beth Andresen, Tyeson Seale, Sara Outhier, Michelle Hahn
Year of the Library
2013 is the Year of the Library at SMU. To celebrate, SMU Libraries are highlighting collections, resources, and places that are unique to our campus. As part of this, the Year of the Library Committee has put together a meta-exhibition examining the creation of the Post Chiaroscuro: Prints in Color after the Renaissance exhibition in the Hawn Gallery at the Hamon Arts Library.
Post Chiaroscuro
The Post Chiaroscuro: Prints in Color after the Renaissance exhibition features objects from Bywaters Special Collections at Hamon as well as a few on loan from the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston. Samantha Robinson, M.A. student in Art History, is curating the exhibition with the help of Dr. Lisa Pon's undergraduate course, History of Western Printmaking, 1400-1750 (ARHS 3364). Together with the curator and their professor, the students are working to create descriptive content for the exhibition using library resources.
Are You Close Enough?
This meta-exhibition also utilizes advances in mobile technology to enhance the visitor experience. Using a tablet or smartphone with a barcode/QR code scanning app, visitors may scan the QR codes to access additional content such as videos, images, and SMU's digital collections. A screen at the event will show a sequence of images and video capturing the installation of the exhibition and the work of the students in preparing their portion of the content.
Take some time to look around this site and immerse yourself in the experience! See below for profiles of the key players in this project, and check out the FAQs. Use the navigation at the top of the page to get a journalistic view of the development and implementation from the perspective of the observers, and to move through the guided tour. Visitors can see an interview with the curator, hear class discussions about the objects in the exhibition, view the objects close up, and read actual responses from the students. We hope you enjoy!
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Annual Conference, 2025
BIG PAPER: Large Design in the Renaissance
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute
January... more BIG PAPER: Large Design in the Renaissance USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute January 24-25, 2025, Huntington Library, Stewart R. Smith Board Room
BIG PAPER is a play on the Italian word cartone, the art historical term for a preparatory drawing made on a one-to-one scale to the final work: carta = paper and -one = big. In the Renaissance, these cartoons were made during the production of wall-sized expanses of frescoes, tapestries and stained glass. They could be massive paper structures, each made by joining hundreds of individual small pieces to form a support sometimes as large as eleven feet high and seventeen feet long. Their construction were feats of precision engineering, involving scissors and pastepot as well as charcoal, ink and gouache; their use often required implements for hanging, cutting, perforating, and tracing. In the early sixteenth century, such cartoons evolved from preparatory materials to be discarded to ben finiti cartoni, or cartoons so well finished that they could be presented to favored patrons and displayed as artworks in their own right. At the same time, cartoons were made for small, hand-held works as well, for instance, the pricked design for needlework in the Huntington Library’s copy of John Taylor’s 1634 The Needles Excellency. This public conference explores paper in early modern Europe in terms of its use as sheets, pieces joined together or bound codices; relationships between books, bodies, and architectural space; period notions of "scale" and design; and the ties between drawing, monument, and myth. Thus, we take “big” to mean large in material size, but also in terms of intellectual and artistic possibilities, as well as geographic and imaginative scope.
Speakers: Juliana Barone, Warburg Institute Shira Brisman, University of Pennsylvania Tracy Cosgriff, The College of Wooster Mari Yoko Hara, University of Notre Dame Heather MacDonald, Getty Paper Project Maurizio Michelozzi, Uffizi Gallery Morgan Ng, Yale University Michael Waters, Columbia University
Chairs: Fred Clark, USC Claire Farago, University of Boulder Lisa Pon, USC
Our presentation brings together considerations of the paperwork required for travel and for reco... more Our presentation brings together considerations of the paperwork required for travel and for recording deaths during the outbreaks of plague across early modern Europe; Raphael's simultaneous drafting of pictorial and poetic work; the role played by paper in the making of New St. Peter’s; collaborative practices in the exploration of Rome’s ruins. Thus we will consider both drawings as works of art and architecture by the likes of Bramante and Raphael as well as functional documents meant to be drawn upon and used by many individuals, in order to discern common practices that marked paper's work across cultural spheres.
Please join Henry Jenkins and a range of interesting guests for what we hope will be a lively dis... more Please join Henry Jenkins and a range of interesting guests for what we hope will be a lively discussion of his book, Comics and Stuff, and, more broadly, of comics, comic studies, and living with our stuff. Each session will feature voices from multiple disciplinary backgrounds whose work as scholars and artists helped to shape this book. Those attending any given Zoom session will get the most out of the experience if they have read the relevant passage from the book, but, of course, we welcome people who are encountering these ideas for the first time.
What’s the Big idea?: For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable―you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels―clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre.
Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. Contemporary graphic novels give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation, and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff. In this book, stuff refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express―or hold at bay―through our relationships with stuff.
Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California, is the author or editor of 20 books on various aspects of media and popular culture. Among them are Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change, and Comics and Stuff.
Wednesday,. June 17 10-11:30 a.m. (Pacific) How to Look at Stuff (Introduction, Chapter One) In this session, we will discuss, among other things, how the features of comics as a medium create particular relationships to the objects that are being depicted; what comics scholars can learn from earlier moments of art history about the relationship between material culture and visual representation; how new configurations of knowledge and expertise are forming online as collectors come together to discuss meaningful “stuff.” Nick Sousanis Lisa Pon Will Straw
Tuesday, June 23 10 a.m. (Pacific) Collecting Stories (Chapters 2-5) In this session, we will discuss how contemporary graphic novels have explored themes of collecting and accumulation; how collecting comics has been a central aspect of how comics artists orient themselves to their medium’s history; why artists are motivated to pay special attention to the material objects with which they populate their worlds; and how shared experiences of collecting helps to bridge between writers and readers of comics. Bryan and Mary Talbot Lincoln Geraghty Jared Gardner Bart Beaty
Tuesday June 30 10 a.m. (Pacific) Object Lessons (Chapters 6-8, Epilogue) In this session, we will discuss how scrapbooks helped to inform the aesthetics of women’s graphic storytelling practices; the ways the depiction of “stuff” in graphic stories has been tied to family history and, more generally, aspects of the past that sit uneasily in the present; and the different kinds of stories women and artists of color have told about their relationships to the material world. Rebecca Wanzo Hillary Chute Joyce Farmer (Tent.)
To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, art historians Tracy Cosgriff and Lisa P... more To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, art historians Tracy Cosgriff and Lisa Pon discuss the artist’s life, practice and paintings. Exploring themes connected to the Norton Simon Museum’s elegant Madonna and Child with Book—the only painting by the artist on the West Coast—the conversation delves into how Raphael’s relationships with poets, scholars and erudite patrons, such as Pope Julius II later in his career, shaped the artist’s approach to religious painting.
An invited paper at the international conference, "Marcantonio Raimondi il primo incisore di Raff... more An invited paper at the international conference, "Marcantonio Raimondi il primo incisore di Raffaello"
A paper at the conference, "Music and Culture in Renaissance Italy," at the Humanities Research I... more A paper at the conference, "Music and Culture in Renaissance Italy," at the Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, UK. June 2019.
A paper for an exploratory seminar, "Collaboration in the Renaissance Architect's Workshop," at I... more A paper for an exploratory seminar, "Collaboration in the Renaissance Architect's Workshop," at I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
Keynote lecture at the Inaugural Annual Conference of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in ... more Keynote lecture at the Inaugural Annual Conference of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, Rare Books School, University of Virginia.
A paper in the symposium, "Technologies of Segregation," organized by Saundra Weddle and Daniel ... more A paper in the symposium, "Technologies of Segregation," organized by Saundra Weddle and Daniel Bornstein as part of The Divided City: An Urban Humanities Initiative, Washington University in Saint Louis.
A paper for the workshop, Empty Spaces in the Graphic Arts – The Function, Aesthetics, and Meanin... more A paper for the workshop, Empty Spaces in the Graphic Arts – The Function, Aesthetics, and Meaning of the Unmarked Surface, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz/Max Planck Institut. January 2018.
Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Lecture Series, “Re-Use Reconsidered," Brown Arts Initiati... more Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Lecture Series, “Re-Use Reconsidered," Brown Arts Initiative. Brown University, Providence RI. November 2017.
A paper solicited for the symposium on Baroque tapestries at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, ... more A paper solicited for the symposium on Baroque tapestries at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene Oregon. November 2017
In his classic 1919 study, Joseph Meder described drawing as an intensely personal form of artist... more In his classic 1919 study, Joseph Meder described drawing as an intensely personal form of artistic expression, the equivalent of a poet's notes, letters, and intimate writings. For Meder, drawing revealed " not only [the artist's] soul, but also … his capacity for seeing and creating form. " Drawing, in Meder's conception, is thus the material trace emanating from a single draftsman. Recent scholarship has broadened how we understand drawing. Alain Badiou named as drawing's very essence the oscillation of paper as pre-existing material support and as open surface called into being through the act of marking. Furthermore, that act of marking can be communal as well as individual: as Leonard Barkan has noted, sheets of paper are " objects in active social commerce " —sites where communities can be made through joint acts of looking and drawing as a group. This session presents three case studies of drawing as active collaborations on paper. Dario Donetti explores the tensions between competition, emulation, and collaboration made visible in the sixteenth-century drawings (now in the Uffizi) for the early development of new Saint Peter's basilica in Rome. Basile Baudez considers French eighteenth-century exhibition drawings that combined the expertise of architectural and landscape artists, with the ambition of becoming " tableaux d'architecture " suitable for display in venues such as the annual Paris Salon. Michael Kubo studies the diagrams, perspectival renderings and other works made collectively by The Architects Collaborative for the design of the University of Baghdad after 1957, in the context of Frank Lloyd Wright's competing proposal.
Lecture at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz/Max Planck Institut
2 November 2016
http://... more Lecture at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz/Max Planck Institut 2 November 2016
Panel at the 2017 Renaissance Society of America Conference
Co-organized by Adam Jasienski and L... more Panel at the 2017 Renaissance Society of America Conference Co-organized by Adam Jasienski and Lisa Pon Chaired by Adam Jasienski
Papers by Lisa Pon, Emily Anderson, Maria Lumbreras, and Stephan Wolohojian
8/15-19/2022. Faculty: Craig Kallendorf and Lisa Pon.
This course will serve as a comprehensive... more 8/15-19/2022. Faculty: Craig Kallendorf and Lisa Pon.
This course will serve as a comprehensive introduction to the history of the book in early modern Europe, from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth. Our goal will be to use the holdings of the UCLA Research Library, with a focus on its Aldine collection, the Getty Research Institute Research Library, and the Huntington Library to learn to 'read' a Renaissance book, both as a physical object and as a carrier of cultural values. We will examine in turn how these books were produced, how they were distributed, and how they were used by those who bought and read them. Topics include the transition from manuscript to printed book, the mechanics of early printing, famous scholar-printers, editing and correcting, woodcuts and engravings, typeface and its meaning, the popular print, bindings, the Renaissance book trade, censorship, the formation of libraries, both individual and institutional, marginalia as clues to reading practices and information management, and researching a Renaissance book, using both print and online sources. The course is intended for special collections librarians, collectors, booksellers, and scholars and graduate students in any field of Renaissance studies and library science. Scholarship aid is available.
For more information and how to apply please visit: http://www.calrbs.org/admissions/
The “RASC/a Double” graduate seminar brings together faculty and graduate students from SMU’s Dep... more The “RASC/a Double” graduate seminar brings together faculty and graduate students from SMU’s Department of Art History --and beyond-- to explore in innovative ways issues raised by the curricular initiative, Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture. RASC/a challenges us to consider how visual images, material objects, and the spaces around them can be studied from new perspectives within and beyond categories often first defined by geography and chronology.
Print, Identity, and the Im/material Image (Spring 2016) This inaugural RASC/a Double seminar considers early modern and modern print technologies in relationship to personal and communal identities, mobilized mass images, and communications and surveillance. Using transhistorical and interdisciplinary approaches, this course has as its main objective an understanding of some past, present, and emerging communications technologies (including but not limited to print, photographic, and digital platforms) and the publics they can reach, form, and inform.
Uploads
Papers by Lisa Pon
In early April 1516, five friends from Urbino and Venice --- Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Andrea Navagero, Agostino Beazzano, and Raphael -- visited the ancient town of Tivoli together to see "the old, the new, and whatever may be beautiful there." As writers and a painter then all living in Rome, their field trip would have been enlivened by discussions of poems and portraits, including perhaps plans to have Raphael paint the double portrait now in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. The sitters in this portrait, which Bembo owned and gave to Beazzano in 1538, are widely accepted to be two of the visitors to Tivoli, Navagero and Beazzano. Moving beyond these compelling identifications, I probe the Doria Pamphilj portrait's painted forms in terms of poetic practices emerging in early-sixteenth-century Italy. By looking closely at Raphael's own drafts of sonnets written on sheets of drawings he made around 1510 for the Stanza della Segnatura in terms of their composition, mise-en-page, placements on recto and verso, and relationships with the drawn images, I argue that the portrait of Navagero and Beazzano was Raphael's well-considered visual response to Renaissance prosody as it was then being developed by his friends, notably Bembo, who in those years was writing Le Prose della volgar lingua, his influential literary treatise set in 1502 and published in print in 1525. The first English translation of a poem addressed to Raphael by Agostino Beazzano appears in the appendix.
In early April 1516, five friends from Urbino and Venice --- Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Andrea Navagero, Agostino Beazzano, and Raphael -- visited the ancient town of Tivoli together to see "the old, the new, and whatever may be beautiful there." As writers and a painter then all living in Rome, their field trip would have been enlivened by discussions of poems and portraits, including perhaps plans to have Raphael paint the double portrait now in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj. The sitters in this portrait, which Bembo owned and gave to Beazzano in 1538, are widely accepted to be two of the visitors to Tivoli, Navagero and Beazzano. Moving beyond these compelling identifications, I probe the Doria Pamphilj portrait's painted forms in terms of poetic practices emerging in early-sixteenth-century Italy. By looking closely at Raphael's own drafts of sonnets written on sheets of drawings he made around 1510 for the Stanza della Segnatura in terms of their composition, mise-en-page, placements on recto and verso, and relationships with the drawn images, I argue that the portrait of Navagero and Beazzano was Raphael's well-considered visual response to Renaissance prosody as it was then being developed by his friends, notably Bembo, who in those years was writing Le Prose della volgar lingua, his influential literary treatise set in 1502 and published in print in 1525. The first English translation of a poem addressed to Raphael by Agostino Beazzano appears in the appendix.
Introduction, by Kate van Orden and Lisa Pon
Arts 2024, 13(1), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13010039
Bank, Katie. 2023. “Amphions Harp gaue sence vnto stone Walles”: The Five Senses and Musical-Visual Affect. Arts 12: 219.
Cannady, Lauren. 2023. On the Persistence of the Organic: The Material Lives of the Robinia pseudoacacia. Arts 12: 253.
Chan, Eleanor. 2023. Notation: The In/Visible Visual Cultures of Musical Legibility in the English Renaissance. Arts 12: 75.
Hara, Mari Yoko. 2023. Petrified Beholders: The Interactive Materiality of Baldassarre Peruzzi’s Perseus and Medusa. Arts 12: 246.
Refini, Eugenio. 2023. Echo’s Fluid (Im)materiality Across Text and Performance. Arts 12: 249.
Endorsements:
“Lisa Pon, one of the most distinguished historians of early prints, has given us a biography of the several ‘lives’ of a single image – a lone surviving impression of an anonymous early woodcut. Pon’s exemplary case study deftly combines modern critical theory with deep historical sleuthing to elucidate the significance across the centuries of both Madonna of the Fire and its replications for Forlì’s religious and civic community alike.”
– Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania
“With imagination and wit, Lisa Pon tells the story of an unremarkable artifact’s illustrious career. It is a telling tale about the complex relation of persons to things.”
– Joseph Leo Koerner, Harvard University
“In A Printed Icon in Early Modern Italy, Lisa Pon excavates the cultural life of a singular and extraordinary object. Anchoring her study in a fifteenth-century Italian print that miraculously survived a fire, she expertly guides the reader through its placements and displacements over time and space.”
– Michael Gaudio, University of Minnesota
An introductory essay frames the twenty-one responses received by the editors. It draws on the plague hospitals and ghetto of early modern Venice to provide historical context for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, especially for the social-distancing measures taken to mitigate its effects. The contributions that follow afford a mosaic of perspectives on what one of the contributors refers to as l’époque covidienne. They range from discussions of art projects sparked by the pandemic to rich descriptions of COVID’s personal and professional impacts—and the difficulty of disentangling them. Read the article here: http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=16055
Year of the Library
2013 is the Year of the Library at SMU. To celebrate, SMU Libraries are highlighting collections, resources, and places that are unique to our campus. As part of this, the Year of the Library Committee has put together a meta-exhibition examining the creation of the Post Chiaroscuro: Prints in Color after the Renaissance exhibition in the Hawn Gallery at the Hamon Arts Library.
Post Chiaroscuro
The Post Chiaroscuro: Prints in Color after the Renaissance exhibition features objects from Bywaters Special Collections at Hamon as well as a few on loan from the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston. Samantha Robinson, M.A. student in Art History, is curating the exhibition with the help of Dr. Lisa Pon's undergraduate course, History of Western Printmaking, 1400-1750 (ARHS 3364). Together with the curator and their professor, the students are working to create descriptive content for the exhibition using library resources.
Are You Close Enough?
This meta-exhibition also utilizes advances in mobile technology to enhance the visitor experience. Using a tablet or smartphone with a barcode/QR code scanning app, visitors may scan the QR codes to access additional content such as videos, images, and SMU's digital collections. A screen at the event will show a sequence of images and video capturing the installation of the exhibition and the work of the students in preparing their portion of the content.
Take some time to look around this site and immerse yourself in the experience! See below for profiles of the key players in this project, and check out the FAQs. Use the navigation at the top of the page to get a journalistic view of the development and implementation from the perspective of the observers, and to move through the guided tour. Visitors can see an interview with the curator, hear class discussions about the objects in the exhibition, view the objects close up, and read actual responses from the students. We hope you enjoy!
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute
January 24-25, 2025, Huntington Library, Stewart R. Smith Board Room
BIG PAPER is a play on the Italian word cartone, the art historical term for a preparatory drawing made on a one-to-one scale to the final work: carta = paper and -one = big. In the Renaissance, these cartoons were made during the production of wall-sized expanses of frescoes, tapestries and stained glass. They could be massive paper structures, each made by joining hundreds of individual small pieces to form a support sometimes as large as eleven feet high and seventeen feet long. Their construction were feats of precision engineering, involving scissors and pastepot as well as charcoal, ink and gouache; their use often required implements for hanging, cutting, perforating, and tracing. In the early sixteenth century, such cartoons evolved from preparatory materials to be discarded to ben finiti cartoni, or cartoons so well finished that they could be presented to favored patrons and displayed as artworks in their own right. At the same time, cartoons were made for small, hand-held works as well, for instance, the pricked design for needlework in the Huntington Library’s copy of John Taylor’s 1634 The Needles Excellency. This public conference explores paper in early modern Europe in terms of its use as sheets, pieces joined together or bound codices; relationships between books, bodies, and architectural space; period notions of "scale" and design; and the ties between drawing, monument, and myth. Thus, we take “big” to mean large in material size, but also in terms of intellectual and artistic possibilities, as well as geographic and imaginative scope.
Speakers:
Juliana Barone, Warburg Institute
Shira Brisman, University of Pennsylvania
Tracy Cosgriff, The College of Wooster
Mari Yoko Hara, University of Notre Dame
Heather MacDonald, Getty Paper Project
Maurizio Michelozzi, Uffizi Gallery
Morgan Ng, Yale University
Michael Waters, Columbia University
Chairs:
Fred Clark, USC
Claire Farago, University of Boulder
Lisa Pon, USC
Organizer:
Lisa Pon
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute
In cultural partnership with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Los Angeles
https://dornsife.usc.edu/emsi/seminar-series/emsi-annual-conference/
What’s the Big idea?: For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable―you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels―clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre.
Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. Contemporary graphic novels give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation, and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff. In this book, stuff refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express―or hold at bay―through our relationships with stuff.
Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California, is the author or editor of 20 books on various aspects of media and popular culture. Among them are Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change, and Comics and Stuff.
Wednesday,. June 17 10-11:30 a.m. (Pacific)
How to Look at Stuff
(Introduction, Chapter One)
In this session, we will discuss, among other things, how the features of comics as a medium create particular relationships to the objects that are being depicted; what comics scholars can learn from earlier moments of art history about the relationship between material culture and visual representation; how new configurations of knowledge and expertise are forming online as collectors come together to discuss meaningful “stuff.”
Nick Sousanis
Lisa Pon
Will Straw
Tuesday, June 23 10 a.m. (Pacific)
Collecting Stories
(Chapters 2-5)
In this session, we will discuss how contemporary graphic novels have explored themes of collecting and accumulation; how collecting comics has been a central aspect of how comics artists orient themselves to their medium’s history; why artists are motivated to pay special attention to the material objects with which they populate their worlds; and how shared experiences of collecting helps to bridge between writers and readers of comics.
Bryan and Mary Talbot
Lincoln Geraghty
Jared Gardner
Bart Beaty
Tuesday June 30 10 a.m. (Pacific)
Object Lessons
(Chapters 6-8, Epilogue)
In this session, we will discuss how scrapbooks helped to inform the aesthetics of women’s graphic storytelling practices; the ways the depiction of “stuff” in graphic stories has been tied to family history and, more generally, aspects of the past that sit uneasily in the present; and the different kinds of stories women and artists of color have told about their relationships to the material world.
Rebecca Wanzo
Hillary Chute
Joyce Farmer (Tent.)
June, 2020
2 November 2016
http://www.khi.fi.it/5480754/20161102-pon
Co-organized by Adam Jasienski and Lisa Pon
Chaired by Adam Jasienski
Papers by Lisa Pon, Emily Anderson, Maria Lumbreras, and Stephan Wolohojian
This course will serve as a comprehensive introduction to the history of the book in early modern Europe, from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth. Our goal will be to use the holdings of the UCLA Research Library, with a focus on its Aldine collection, the Getty Research Institute Research Library, and the Huntington Library to learn to 'read' a Renaissance book, both as a physical object and as a carrier of cultural values. We will examine in turn how these books were produced, how they were distributed, and how they were used by those who bought and read them. Topics include the transition from manuscript to printed book, the mechanics of early printing, famous scholar-printers, editing and correcting, woodcuts and engravings, typeface and its meaning, the popular print, bindings, the Renaissance book trade, censorship, the formation of libraries, both individual and institutional, marginalia as clues to reading practices and information management, and researching a Renaissance book, using both print and online sources. The course is intended for special collections librarians, collectors, booksellers, and scholars and graduate students in any field of Renaissance studies and library science. Scholarship aid is available.
For more information and how to apply please visit: http://www.calrbs.org/admissions/
Print, Identity, and the Im/material Image (Spring 2016)
This inaugural RASC/a Double seminar considers early modern and modern print technologies in relationship to personal and communal identities, mobilized mass images, and communications and surveillance. Using transhistorical and interdisciplinary approaches, this course has as its main objective an understanding of some past, present, and emerging communications technologies (including but not limited to print, photographic, and digital platforms) and the publics they can reach, form, and inform.