The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) presents:

“Herzschmerz – Love and Pain: Representing the Heart in Early Modern Art”, Prof. Dagmar Eichberger (University of Trier; Heidelberg University)

Date: Thursday 17 September
Time: 6:15pm
Venue: Singapore Theatre, Basement, Melbourne School of Design (Architecture), The University of Melbourne, Parkville
Registration: http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/s/1182/index.aspx?sid=1182&pgid=6541&gid=1&cid=10065&ecid=10065&post_id=0

This paper investigates the contexts in which the image of a heart-shaped object could be used in order to evoke a range of different meanings. Human love and magic, divine love and faith, the passion of Christ and the sorrows of the Virgin Mary are some of the most prominent associations invoked by the heart in the early modern period and beyond. The heart can also be used in a more allegorical context to signify wrath and envy. Thus the heart is often employed as a symbol for compassion (or lack of compassion), a tradition that continued well into the modern period as Wilhelm Hauff’s novel The Cold Heart and other literary texts convey.

Dagmar Eichberger is part of an EU-funded research project, Artifex, at the University of Trier and is Professor in the Department of Fine Arts in Heidelberg. With Charles Zika she edited Dürer and his Culture (1998). She wrote Leben mit Kunst – Wirken durch Kunst (2002), and edited several books on women and the arts in early modern Europe: Women of Distinction. Margaret of York and Margaret of Austria (2005) and Women at the Burgundian Court (with Anne-Marie Legaré). Her next publication will be Visual Typology in Early Modern Europe: Continuity and Expansion (edited with Shelley Perlove).

Dagmar will also be speaking in the same week as part of the Kerry Stokes collection Lecture Series:

“Women who Read are Dangerous’ Illuminated Manuscripts and female book collections in the early Renaissance”

Date: Tuesday 15 September
Time: 6:15pm
Venue: Theatre A, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne, Parkville
More info on the Kerry Stokes Collection Lecture Series: http://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/5408-women-who-read-are-dangerous-illuminated-manuscripts-and-female-book