Slade Lectures 2025

How has life begun, how was the world created, and what lied at the origin of the creation? Human procreation, especially the origin of life, was frequently the subject of speculation and analysis in medieval thought. Drawings of the uterus accompanied and supported these reflections about the development of life in female bodies. These were made by anonymous draughtsmen and illustrators of medieval manuscripts as well as known scholars and artists like Hildegard von Bingen, Opicinus di Canistris, Jerome Bosch, and Leonardo da Vinci. Analysing the thoughts embedded into these images illuminates the creativity of such connections between divine creation, human procreation and artistic creativity ignited through an exploration of the unknown and the unseen.

 

 

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).