During the 9th Biennial Conference of the European Architectural History Network from 17-21 June 2026 at Aarhus University, VISU director Pieter Martens and VISU member Caterina Cardamone will each chair a session and VISU member Alicia Rojas Costa will present a paper.
Saturday 20 June 2026
10:00-12:00
Session "Materials and Techniques on the Move"
Together with Marie Curie Fellow Lorenzo Vigotti (Università di Bologna), Caterina Cardamone will co-chair the session "Materials and Techniques on the Move".
In his 1645 French edition of Palladio, Pierre le Muet eliminated the chapters on building materials because of the differences between local practices in Italy and in France (“beaucoup de choses sont extremement differentes de celles qu’on pratique aujourd’huy en France”). Materials and techniques do not circulate well on paper. A stucco recipe may easily be disseminated with Italian architectural treatises, but North of the Alpes its composition might change, leaving out marble powder. Building materials and the associated techniques are thus closely linked to their region of origin, even more so in a period in which the costs and difficulties of travel and long-distance transport added to their prestige.
This session asks how exactly building materials and related techniques circulated across late medieval and early modern Europe, and how their travels affected their meanings.
A first issue concerns the actual transport of materials, the routes they follow, the movement of specific techniques and instruments, the migration of specialized craftsmen. How do foreign materials and people adapt to the local context and its traditional building practices? Well-known examples such as the use of Istrian stone along the Italian Adriatic coast or the export of black marble from ‘Flanders’ to other parts of Europe (Northern Europe but also Florence) show that these materials mainly travelled over water and along established trade routes. But what other routes did materials follow? Did the difficulties of transportation add value and meaning to these materials?
Another more literary issue concerns the circulation and perception of materials and techniques as documented in treatises, ekphrastic descriptions and other writings highlighting the materiality of architecture. In this case the distance bridged might not only be geographical but also temporal, as materials and techniques from Antiquity such as stucco, concrete, and porphyry were being rediscovered. What ancient or modern narratives and iconologies on building materials circulated in Europe? How did these impact the perception, use and imagery of these materials?
Not only marbles but also other natural stones and ceramic tiles were evidently vehicles of iconological meanings (Barry 2020, Dressen 2008, Butters 1996), because of their colors and texture, the difficulty of their fashioning, or the associated narratives on their history and provenance. How did these layered meanings contribute to the self-representation of patrons? What role did the imitation of materials, through painting or other media, play in this regard?
We invite papers that address any of these issues to illuminate how materials and their meanings travelled across Europe, and beyond, in the late medieval and early modern period.
13:00-15:00
Session "The Reception of Gothic Architecture in Italy, 1300−1700: Disapproval, Indifference, Appreciation?"
Together with Gianluca Belli (Università di Firenze), Pieter Martens will be chairing the session "The Reception of Gothic Architecture in Italy, 1300−1700: Disapproval, Indifference, Appreciation?". During this session, Alicia Rojas Costa will present her paper, "Between Bruges and Florence: Architectural Dialogues in Hans Memling’s Last Judgment Triptych".
While much has been written about the negative reception of gothic architecture in Renaissance Italy, the positive appreciation there of the architectural culture of northern Europe has scarcely been investigated. Yet there are manifold indications that the first-hand experience of the architecture, cities and ways of living in northern Europe elicited appreciative responses from Italian travellers, merchants, architects and patrons. This is particularly evident for regions such as Flanders that were intensely travelled by Italian merchants fascinated by the fine artworks and luxury objects produced there. This session aims to explore to what extent not only the arts from the north (Belozerskaya 2002, Nuttall 2004) but also its architecture was positively appreciated south of the Alps.
We are not only interested in the favourable appraisal of the formal vocabulary associated with the gothic style, but more broadly in the reception of a foreign architectural culture, as expressed in writings, interior decorations and manners of dwelling, or in fictitious architectures imagined in paintings and prints. For example, many interiors in Renaissance Florence were decorated with Flemish objects, including tapestries or paintings depicting northern, gothic buildings, as in Hans Memling’s Last Judgement triptych for Angelo Tani’s chapel in the Badia Fiesolana.
The adherence to gothic architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy has already been studied for specific contexts, such as Venice, Milan, and Southern Italy, nuancing the opposition of “Gothic vs. Classic” (Wittkower 1974). Yet the well-known criticisms by Filarete, Vasari, Raphael and others of the so-called maniera tedesca still overshadow the more appreciative comments on the architettura oltremontana by writers such the humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, even though studies on the phenomenon of “Renaissance Gothic” (Chatenet & De Jonge 2011, Kavaler 2012) have convincingly challenged the conventional view inherited from Vasari in which the late gothic in northern Europe is seen as inferior or retrograde in comparison with the new Italianate all’antica style.
Building on this historiography, we invite papers that shed new light on the appreciation and possible impact in Italy of gothic architecture from northern Europe or elsewhere. How was this region’s architectural culture understood, or misunderstood? Which qualities, positive or negative, were associated with its manners of building and dwelling? Was the northern gothic perceived as inherently different from the local gothic which persisted in projects such as Ghiberti’s sacristy in Santa Trinita in Florence or Filarete’s Ospedale in Milan? Papers may focus on all aspects of architectural culture, including formal and constructional aspects, interior decorations and manners of living, and the fortuna critica of northern treatises in Italy. They may consider travelling patrons, architects, and engineers, as well as other vehicles for the import of foreign architectural ideas, such as texts, drawings, building materials, and paintings depicting architecture.