Slade Lectures 2025

The final lecture is dedicated to missing parts in works of art (Sano di Pietro/Osservanza Master, 1435), a reliquary from Augsburg (mid-15th c), and altarpieces (Bern/Allerseelenaltar, 1505). These gaps in artefacts are not only signs of use but also demonstrate how such gaps can become the subject of artistic creation itself. How do we write the histories related to these gaps created by missing elements? The layers of the past inscribed through the traces of use into the object itself may contribute to writing a history of the object which differs from that of the cultural context for which it was produced.

 

Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).