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DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force

Photo: Creative Commons/YaYapas

Dr. Katharina Bedenbender

Photo: Coming soon

Curriculum

Katharina Bedenbender is a Research assistant at the Chair of Early Modern Art History at the Institute for Art and Visual History at Humboldt University, Berlin. After holding research fellowships at the Biblioteca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institute for Art History in Rome, and the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, she earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on Venetian threshold spaces in early modern architecture and imagery.

She worked as Research assistant at the Institute of Art History at Goethe University in Frankfurt and at the Biblioteca Hertziana. From 2023 to 2024, she coordinated the Census of the Reception of Antique Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance (IKB, HU Berlin).

Her postdoctoral project's working title is “Before Ecology – Looking at Plants and Non-Human Animals in Early Modern Italy.” She is one of the co-initiators of the “Netzwerk Italienforschung” and co-organizes the working group “Ecologies of Premodern Art” at Ulmer Verein für Kunstgeschichte.

Publications (selection)

  • „An Antiquity of Plants and Animals? Reframing a Wild Boar in 17th Century Florence“, in: Adriano Aymonino, Kathleen Christian (ed.): The Future of the Antique. Interpreting the Sculptural Canon. Conference proceedings (forthcoming).
  • Treppe und Zeremoniell in Venedig: Schwellenräume der Frühen Neuzeit im Dogenpalast und den Scuole Grandi, in: Hertziana Studies in Art History (forthcoming).
  • „Dattelpalmen in Verona: Girolamo dai Libris ‘Christus und die Samariterin am Brunnen’“ Dramaturgien von Bild und Raum, co-edited with Julia Saviello. Berlin 2024.
  • „Ascendendo et descendendo aequaliter“: stairs and ceremonies in Early Modern Venice“, in: Mulryne, J. R. (ed.): Architectures of Festival in early modern Europe. London, New York 2018, pp. 237–256.
  • „Michelangelo Buonarotti, Bartolomeo Ammanati: Vestibül und Treppe der Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florenz“, in: Maniera (Exhibition catalogue, Städel-Museum), Frankfurt/Main 2016, pp. 94–96.

Research project: Viriditas in Early Modernity – Imaginaries of “Green Power” between 1450 and 1650

The color green is regarded as having special significance in the present, both metaphorically and biochemically, since chlorophyll can be described as a green pigment that serves as the most important agent of photosynthesis. In addition to the importance of green plants as creators of the biosphere and climate, the psychological and psychosomatic significance of green for human animals is considered to be proven. However, the spectrum of significance of the color green in (art) history is more complex: green could represent chaos, the devil, or the Christian virtue of hope. Nevertheless, from the mid-15th century onward—following Aristotelian theories of visual perception, the writings of the church fathers as well as Hildegard von Bingen’s treatises on medicine and natural philosophy—a predominantly positive connotation of the color green can be observed, one linked to the concept of viriditas, a “green power” or life force that is believed to be inherent not only in green leaves, but also, more generally, in all living beings. Viriditas can transgress, for example, the borders between the realm of plants and the human-animal kingdom.

The focus of study during the fellowship will be on the decades around 1600 and the artistic, philosophical, and scientific milieu of Federico Borromeo in Milan, founder of Biblioteca, Pinacoteca as well as Accademia Ambrosiana. With Borromeo, the Catholic Reform entered a new phase of positive spirituality with neo-Stoic tendencies. His correspondence, theoretical writings, and his activities as a collector and designer of works of art embody a new perspective on the plant world and its “green power,” merging spiritual and scientific optimism.