The Muses and their Afterlife in Post-Classical Europe,
The Warburg Institute, 23 - 24 October 2009

Organized by: Claudia Wedepohl (The Warburg Institute), Kathleen  Christian
(University of Pittsburgh), Clare Guest (University of Agder)

With the support of: The Kress Foundation, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the
University of Agder and Sørlandets Kompetansefond.
As personifications of the arts from Antiquity to the present, the  muses
have long been self-evident subjects of study in a wide variety  of academic
fields. Yet this colloquium is the first to map out  changes in their
reception from Antiquity to the sixteenth century,  tracing how the
afterlife of the muses sheds light on cultural notions  of creativity and on
the changing organization of artistic  disciplines. A broad look at the
muses opens up fundamental questions  about the place of the arts in
European societies and how the  competition between the creative disciplines
played out at particular  moments in time. The topic of the muses provides
an ideal point of  departure for a cross-disciplinary dialogue between
historians of art,  literature, and music.

Program:
Friday, 23 October
The Warburg Institute, Lecture Room

9:45 Doors open

10:10 Welcome
Charles Hope, Director of The Warburg Institute

Session I: Pagan to Christian
Chair: Charles Burnett, The Warburg Institute

10:15
John Dillon, Trinity College, Dublin, 'The Muses in the Platonic  Academy'.

11:00
Penelope Murray, University of Warwick, 'The Muses in Classical  Antiquity'.

11:45 Coffee

12:15
Karin Schlapbach, University of Ottawa, 'The Muses and Culture in Late
Antiquity'.

13:00 Lunch (for invited guests)

14:15
Bissera Pentcheva, Stanford University, 'Inspiration in Byzantium: The
Muses, Sophia, and the Theotokos'.

Session II: Italian Renaissance Art
Chair: Eckart Marchand, The Warburg Institute

15:00
Kathleen Christian, University of Pittsburgh, 'Strani Parnasi. The
Reception of Antique Images of Muses in Renaissance Italy'.

15:45: Tea

16:15
Stanko Kokole, University of Primorska, Koper, 'The "Chapel of the  Muses"
in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini'.

17:00
Ulrich Pfisterer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, '"Seductress  and
Lover" ­ the Erotization of the Muses in the Renaissance'.

18:00 Wine Reception
19:00 Supper (for invited guests)

Saturday, 24 October
The Warburg Institute, Lecture Room

10:00 Doors open

Session III: The Arts and Musical Humanism
Chair: Christian Leitmeir, Bangor University

10:15
Monika Schmitter, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Anne  Stone
Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York,  'The Cycle
of the Muses from the Casa Maffi in the Victoria and Albert  Museum'.

11:15
Reinhard Strohm, University of Oxford, 'The "Quattrocento Muses"  between
Musical Theory and  Practice'.

11:45 Coffee

12:15
Brigitte van Wymeersch, Université Catholique de Louvain, 'The Muses  and
Musical Inspiration in the Early Modern Period'.

13:00 Lunch (for invited guests)

Session IV: Furor and Poetics
Chair: Elizabeth McGrath, The Warburg Institute

14:15
Jan Söffner, Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin,  'Furor
Musarum in Ficino and Bruno'.

15:00
Clare Guest, University of Agder, Kristiansand, 'The Growth of the  Pygmy
Muses: the Muses in Italian Renaissance Poetics'.

15:45: Tea

16:15
Claudia Wedepohl, The Warburg Institute, 'Muses as Epistemological  Figures
in Aby Warburg¹s Theory of Culture'.