Biography

Cornelia Logemann was Visiting Professor at the Institute for Art History of the 15th-17th Centuries at the University of Graz. She studied art history, cultural anthropology and French literature at
the University of Hamburg, where she received her PhD in 2005. After her habilitation at the University of Heidelberg in 2018, she held interim professorships in art history at the Universities of Bielefeld, Munich, and Heidelberg (2019 – 2022). From 2008 to 2013, she led the junior research group "Prinzip Personifikation. Visuelle Intelligenz und epistemische Tradition 1300 – 1800" at the University of Heidelberg. Since 2021 she is co-organizer of the DFG network "Zeitfugen. Mittelalterliche Artefakte in ihren Konstellationen".

Project Abstract

Time at the banquet table – Table objects of the late Middle Ages in their temporal entanglements

Only a faint hint of past splendor is reflected in the surviving secular table objects of the late Middle Ages. A few table vessels, drinking goblets and other luxury objects have survived. However, courtly inventories of the time reveal that the original wealth and the pictorial themes presented at the festive table must have been far more varied. The objects made from valuable materials often served as investments that could be reworked, modernized, or melted down if necessary. The differentiation between the value of old and new objects was significant: Inventories more often emphasized the antiquity of certain tableware to point to a diffuse distant past or draw attention to previous owners in dynastic chains. When A. Assmann states that time emanates from artifacts, this becomes particularly tangible in the case of objects on display at the courtly table. The duration of use of the objects correlates with the public's ability to locate what is on display.

This applies in particular to secular iconography, which is highly subject to fashions and literary trends. One need only refer to the variants of Tristan and Isolde, stories about ancient heroes such as Hercules and Achilles, or satirical motifs such as Phyllis on Aristotle. The objects that become collector's items can be described as 'semiophores' (K. Pomian), as signs that carry meaning – in the process of collecting and preserving, the meaning of the objects is reinvested, often independently of their material value. The figurative representations conveyed on precious enamel and goldsmith's work also open up further layers of time: Literary contexts from the present and past meet a successively changing pictorial audience. J. Assmann once described such a structure between an object and recipient as a resonance space.

Selected Publications

2023. Prinzip Personifikation. Frankreichs Bilderwelten im europäischen Kontext von 1300 bis 1600. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1221.

2021. "Das große Fresse: Tapisserien und Texte der Condamnation de Banquet." In: Quellen zur Kunst 36 (1), Baden-Baden: Rombach Wissenschaft. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783968217994.

2021. "Doppelte Evidenz? Allegorische Tableaus in Text und Bild." In: Jenseits der Dichotomie von Text und Bild, edited by Franziska Wenzel, 223-239. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.mial.2023.1.24798.

2020. "Das Turnier als Bildereignis." In: Vergangenheit visualisieren. Geschichtskonzepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, edited by Wolfgang Augustyn und Andrea Worm, 409-434. München.

2019. "Reenactment. Tournaments, chronicles and visual history." Iran. Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 57 (1): 31-48. https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2019.1578536.