ICMA at The Courtauld Lecture 2020
Series made possible through the generosity of William M. Voelkle
Scripture Transformed in Late Medieval England: The Religious, Artistic, and Social Worlds of the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, BnF fr. 1)
Kathryn A. Smith
Professor, New York University
Initial for Ecclesiasticus, Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, BnF fr. 1, fol. 205v)
Wednesday 18 March 2020
5:30pm - 6:30 pm
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square
Lecture Theatre 2, second floor
Penton Rise, King’s Cross
London, WC1X 9EW
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Advance booking required
Open to all, free admission
Lecture followed by a reception sponsored by Sam Fogg
About the talk:
My talk brings together my early and more recent research on the manuscript that I call the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France fr. 1) — the most complete surviving witness and sole extant illuminated copy of the Anglo-Norman Bible, the “earliest full prose vernacular Bible produced in England” (Russell). Building on the work of biblical and literary scholars, I argue that this grand multilingual manuscript and the revised translation that it contains were produced in the later fourteenth century on the order of one or more matriarchs of the baronial Welles family of Lincolnshire. I discuss the circumstances of the commission and the volume’s functions and intended audience; and show how the Bible’s rich pictorial and heraldic program reframes Christian salvation history as Welles family history. Moreover, the manuscript’s main artist clearly read the scriptural text assiduously, adapting or even rejecting his wide-ranging, trans-regional models in order to visualize for his noble clients both the sense of the vernacular translation and its very words. My talk sheds new light on lay literate and religious aspiration and pedagogy; women’s cultural patronage; artists’ literacy and working methods; the history of bible translation and reception; medieval ideas about gender, sexuality, health, memory, and the emotions; and English art, society, and culture after the Black Death.
This lecture is presented by The Courtauld Institute of Art in association with the International Center of Medieval Art and with the support of The Courtauld Institute of Art's Research Forum.
The annual lecture is delivered at The Courtauld by a scholar based in North America, strengthening transatlantic contacts among medievalists from the university and museum worlds.
Organized by Jessica Barker - Lecturer, The Courtauld Institute of Art
A generous benefaction secured the continuation of the lecture series. Dr. William M. Voelkle, Curator Emeritus of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, supports the travel and accommodation costs of the speaker.