This panel aims to place at the center of its analysis artifacts made between 1500 and 1900 – be they paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, monuments, or architectural ensembles – that carry in their very materiality or in the devices of their display (frame, support, pedestal, etc.) a theoretical reflection on their own medium. It will be important here to understand how the materials inherent to the artwork can become the vectors of a reflexive posture developed by their creators, or their receivers. The attention turned specifically on objects created between the 16th and 19th centuries will allow to decompartmentalize the field of the history of early modern art, concentrated for a long time on the image of the work to the detriment of its material dimensions, while widening a thought lately initiated in the scientific literature focusing especially on the 19th and 20th centuries (among others Kuhn 2020, Peselmann 2020, Rhatz 2021). This will involve building on research that has addressed the materiality of the art object as a signifier (Raff 2008 [1994], Wagner 2001, Lehmann 2013) and as a mediator requiring both a theory (Lehmann 2015) and a circumstantial study of its stratified narratives (Biro/Étienne 2022). The questions that will interest us will touch on, but not be limited to, the following: What are the various modalities that govern the material translation of a theoretical position with a reflexive component ? What link can be established between the geographical context of creation and the selected materials ? What sources can we rely on to reconstruct these processes ? How were these reflexive objects theorized in their time and how are they theorized today ?

In addition to examining the conception, reception and categorization of the objects considered, this panel will question their ability to put our approach to the discipline into perspective by proposing an alternative history of art through its object of study.

Talks :

• Sirin DATLI - Reflections of Art Theory. Painted Mirrors in 17th Century Rome
• Sandra HINDRIKS - Oil Paintings as Translucent and Reflexive Objects. Window and Mirror in Hans Memling’s Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhov
• Camilla PIETRABISSA - Landscape experiments. Canaletto’s liquid painting and the lagoon environment.