DigitalCommons@RISD

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  Performing Collective Identity: Bodies and Objects of Early-Modern Processions

  Pascale Rihouet and Theory & History of Art & Design Department

  "At the intersection of art and ritual, processional paraphernalia endorse crucial roles for collective identity: creating and maintaining group unity, building solidarity in the face of crises, and possibly offering disruptions of law and order or signaling outcasts. The aesthetic appeal of carefully-crafted artefacts (from candles to flags, canopies, reliquaries, etc) is essential but must be studied together with performativity, objects being the material essence of ritual.

  The conditions of their display, the precise modes of their manipulation, and their staged fixity or mobility enable them to turn into symbolic, powerful agents. External signs of identity like uniforms, badges, banners, or statues belong to this phenomenon. In this seminar, I will present how consensual behavior and shared body language affect the power of objects and images for collective identity, with examples from Perugia, Venice, and Rome. I will address questions on research methods for a cross-disciplinary approach to (art) history and discuss visual representations while critically evaluating different types of evidence." Pascale Rihouet

  Speaker: Pascale Rihouet (Rhode Island School of Design) Respondents: Lilla Mátyók-Engel, Carlotta Paltrinieri (Bibliotheca Hertziana). Pascale Rihouet (PhD Brown University / EHESS) is senior lecturer in art history at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has widely published on Renaissance art and ritual, early-modern material culture and group identity in English, French and Italian. Her first book, Art Moves: The Material Culture of Processions in Renaissance Perugia (Brepols, 2019) was followed by Eternal Ephemera: The Papal Possesso and its Legacies in Early Modern Rome (Toronto University Press, 2020) that she co-edited and co-authored. She is currently working on the whole production of possesso prints (1589–1846), images of the newly-elected pope’s parade through Rome.

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  Veronese’s Goblets: Glass Design and the Civilizing Process

  Pascale Rihouet and Theory & History of Art & Design Department

  Taking its cue from Veronese’s lavish Wedding at Cana (1563), this article explores the meanings of fine and ordinary glassware, focusing on the performative value of Renaissance goblets. Drinking vessels are analyzed here as tools for the gradual transformation of human behavior, or the ‘Civilizing Process’ that sociologist Norbert Elias expounded. In the mid-sixteenth century, new designs for fine glasses supported and shaped the proper conduct expected of guests and servants in banquets. Iconographic sources such as the exquisite wine cups depicted by Veronese, didactic literature and the objects themselves document the kind of challenges and expectations that handling glass in public induced. By the end of the sixteenth century, the affordability of simple but elegant goblets allowed common people to adopt the drinking manners of the elite, thus furthering the association between glassware and the concept of civility.