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DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force

Photo: Creative Commons/YaYapas

Prof. Dr. Daniela Bohde

 

Photo: Thomas Meier

Curriculum

Daniela Bohde has been Professor of Pre-Modern Art History at the University of Stuttgart since 2015 and heads the art history institute there. After completing her doctorate at the University of Hamburg, she worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Frankfurt. Various scholarships have taken her to Venice (Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani), Florence (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Max-Planck-Institute) and Washington (CASVA). She worked as a professor in Basel, Marburg and Munich. She was awarded a Heisenberg fellowship which she had to decline due to her appointment in Stuttgart.

In her research on early modern art, Daniela Bohde often looks for the cultural-historic contexts of artistic media. In her dissertation on Titian, for example, she analyzed the relationship between oil painting, Venetian body politics and contemporary art theory. And when examining landscape drawings by Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber, she studied the period's exploitation of forests. Another focus area is art historical methodology, which she has pursued especially in the National Socialist era. Linked to this is a thematization of physiognomics as an important form of visual hermeneutics for the formation of art history. Daniela Bohde is currently completing a DFG project on “German Drawings in Light and Dark on Papers with a Colored Ground, circa 1500”.

Publications (selection)

  • Kunstgeschichte als physiognomische Wissenschaft. Kritik einer Denkfigur der 1920er bis 1940er Jahre, Berlin 2012.
  • Haut, Fleisch und Farbe. Körperlichkeit und Materialität in den Gemälden Tizians, Emsdetten/Berlin 2002.
  • Zwischen Beobachtung und Imagination. Wälder und Bäume in der Graphik Albrecht Altdorfers und Wolf Hubers, in: Daniela Bohde and Astrid Zenkert (eds.): Der Wald in der Frühen Neuzeit zwischen Erfahrung und Erfindung. Naturästhetik und Naturnutzung in transdisziplinärer Perspektive, Köln 2023, pp. 85–119.
  • Körper im Helldunkel: Baldungs Imaginationen von Frauenleibern (with Anna Schütz and Irene Brückle), in: Holger Jacob-Friesen and Oliver Jehle (eds.): Hans Baldung Grien. Neue Perspektiven auf sein Werk, Berlin/München 2019, pp. 204–217.
  • Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross: Iconography and the Semantics of Place, in: Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz LXI (2019:1), pp. 2–43.
  • Blickräume. Der Raum des Betrachters in Passionsdarstellungen von Schongauer, Baldung und Altdorfer, in: Daniela Bohde and Hans Aurenhammer (eds.): Räume der Passion. Raumvisionen, Erinnerungsorte und Topographien des Leidens Christi in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Vestigia Bibliae – Jahrbuch des Deutschen Bibel-Archivs Hamburg, 32/33), Bern et al. 2015, pp. 377–411.

Research project: The Dynamics of Time and Space in late Medieval and Early Modern Depictions of the Passion 

In late medieval and early modern painting and graphic art, the Passion of Christ is understood as a constellation of forces. The manifestations of power, weakness, violence and resistance are obvious: Christ is bound, beaten, dragged, mocked, nailed to the cross, killed and buried – at the same time his ultimate victory is to be revealed.

In their visualizations, artists draw in particular on the dynamics of space: spatial structures with their high semantic potential are used to depict power structures, serve as carriers of narration and create a relationship with the space of the viewer. The project focuses especially on those depictions of the Passion which concurrently develop a concept of pictorial space.

The second line of inquiry concerns temporality. Through his incarnation, Christ is subjected to the power of time and thus of death in order to finally conquer the latter. The life of Christ determines the Christian perception of time, in the calculation of time, in the liturgical year or in the Liturgy of the Hours. Representations of the Passion therefore not only depict the dramatic events of a few days, but also reflect time. They thus become a paradigm of medieval pictorial narrative.

The dynamics of time and space can be examined particularly well in Books of Hours. The book structure and page design provide a specific spatial dispositive for the pictorial narrative. And when looking at their illuminations, the time dimension of the users overlaps with that of the life of Christ. At the same time, despite the meditative structure of the prayers, the illuminations reveal an almost excessive power of sequential narration.

Research results: The Dynamics of Time and Space in late Medieval and Early Modern Depictions of the Passion 

My stay at the CAS was a unique opportunity to read in peace, review material, reflect, conceptualize, and write. At the beginning of the Hamburg work phase, I realized that the extensive material would be best suited to two books: a smaller book devoted to the visualization of time in Franco-Flemish books of hours, and a larger one that traces the dynamics of space and time in depictions of the Passion.

I worked on several chapters for the book on the visualization of time. First, inspired by discussions at the centre, I immersed myself more intensively in the extensive literature on the cultural history of time, with the aim of better understanding and categorizing Christian concepts of time and calendars. 

I was able to invest then a lot of time in reviewing and cataloguing books of hours. My focus was particularly on French books of hours from the 14th and early 15th centuries. My findings reinforced my thesis that the book of hours is a place of early artistic engagement with the passage of time, even if this is often not supported by the texts of the prayers. Well before panel painting or frescoes, the book of hours illustrates times of day and seasons, not only in calendar images, but also in depictions of the Vita Christi. Important solutions for how spatial and temporal structures can be used for storytelling are developed in the book of hours. These form the basis for painterly innovations for which Jan van Eyck, for example, is famous.

For the Passion Book, I was able to visit various museums and churches from Hamburg. A visit to Lübeck proved particularly fruitful, not only because of Memling's Greveraden Altarpiece, but also because of the little-known Altar of the Canonical Hours in Lübeck Cathedral.

Hans Holbein the Younger was another major focus of my research, as his work intertwines temporal and spatial structures in a unique way. I was able to present my preliminary findings in my lecture Holbein the Younger – The Space of Christ at the University of Augsburg. Holbein's sensitivity to time is evident not least in the Berlin chiaroscuro drawing Christ at Rest – an iconography that on the one hand freezes the Passion narrative, but on the other hand dynamizes it through analeptic and proleptic references.