WORKSHOP

Pull, draw, attract, and captivate. The question of »tractive forces« in fourteenth-century Italian art has so far received only limited scholarly attention. Yet these forces illuminate qualities that allow us to examine production processes, materiality, and mediality, as well as motifs and their beholders, in their physical, metaphysical, technical, and aesthetic dimensions. It is not by chance, we hypothesise, that Francesco Petrarca speaks of a “force” (vis) in his Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul (De remediis utriusque fortunae, 1350–1366) to warn his readers of the power of art – its capacity to make beholders “cling” (inhaere) to paintings and even to “capture” (capere) their intellect.

The workshop takes such »tractive forces« in an expanded sense as its point of departure, bringing art-historical analyses into dialogue with approaches from the history of science, literature, and philosophy. How are »tractive forces« modelled in Trecento works of art? Are they primarily derived from iconographic sources, or do they reveal a particular interest in tracing visible and invisible chains of effect? To what extent does this perspective allow us to consider works of art in relation to their reception? What visual strategies and technical procedures are adopted, refined, or developed to depict and generate pull and attraction? What roles do architectures, frames, and other devices (such as curtains, parapets, and grilles) play in the dynamics of attraction and distancing? Which literary, rhetorical, natural-philosophical, or moral-theological considerations underlie these dynamics?

Programme

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Venue: Warburg-Haus, Heilwigstraße 116, 20249 Hamburg

Public.

19:00

Welcome and Introduction Robert Brennan (London): Trecento Seascape: Navigating the Tractive Sphere

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Venue: CAS, Gorch-Fock-Wall 3, 20354 Hamburg

Non public.

8:30	Welcome
9:15	Introduction Wolf-Dietrich Löhr, Gerd Micheluzzi
	Section 1 (Moderation: Hanna Wimmer)
9:30	Yael Kedar (Tel Hai): Why Motion Has a Direction: Attraction and Celestial Power in Medieval Physics
10:05	Danielle Omesi Moisa (Tel Aviv): Bidirectional Traction: The Form of Dionysian Metaphysics in Giotto’s Scrovegni Angels
10:40	Frank Fehrenbach (Hamburg): Giotto als Magnet
11:15	Coffee break
	Section 2 (Moderation: Antonina Tetzlaff)
11:35	Laurine Heerema (Radboud / Florenz): Breaching the Threshold: Intersections of Frames in Trecento Florentine Frescoes
12:10	Tanja Hinterholz (Wien): Herausragende Charaktere. Raumillusionismus in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon und Florenz
12:45	Lunch break
14:00	Exkursion Bibliotheca Christianei Keynote presentations by Friederike Wille & Rebecca Bowen (End of the Tour c. 18:00)

Friday, May 8, 2026

Venue: CAS, Gorch-Fock-Wall 3, 20354 Hamburg

Non public.

9:15	Discussion / Reading / Small groups
	Section 3 (Moderation: Caroline Stobbe)
10:05	Annette Hojer (Stuttgart): Die Kraft der Vision. Sinnliche Überwältigung, technisches Geschick und intellektuelle Rezeption in den Stuttgarter Apokalypse-Tafeln
10:40	Dominic Ferrante (New York): Concealing and Revealing in Duccio’s Triptych in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
11:15	Coffee break
	Section 4 (Moderation: Ivo Raband)
11:35	Llane Fragoso-Maldonado (Berlin): Blick in Bewegung. Sequenzielle Zugkräfte und visuelles Erzählen im Santa-Chiara-Altar Paolo Venezianos
12:10	Katharina Weiger (Florenz): Zerren, Ziehen, Zerschlagen: Diabolische Kräfte in der Malerei des Trecento
12:45	Lunch break
	Section 5 (Moderation: Julia Soytek)
14:00	Sara Cimpanelli (Mailand): Horror and Luxury: Attraction and Repulsion in 14th-Century Depictions of the Death of John the Baptist
14:35	Dieter Blume (Jena): Inganno visconteo – Die Kraft der Illusion im Castello di Pandino
15:10	Wrap-up / Closing discussion (Ends at approx. 16:00)

>> Download Workshop-Programme (PDF, in German language)