About the event

Speakers: Dr-Ing. Dipl. Holzwirt Thomas Eißing and Dr Nathalie-Josephine von Möllendorff

Image credit: Rogier van der Weyden’s Nativity in Berlin, © Gemäldegalerie Berlin (SMB).

Abstract

As early as 1953, Erwin Panofsky stated that the painted architecture in ‘Early Netherlandish Paintings’ is of great importance and complexity. Yet it has never been analysed and half of the research today does not even mention any painted buildings. Bringing together methods of historical building research and art history, this seminar will highlight not only Rogier van der Weyden’s great knowledge of the building techniques of his time but also emphasise architecture as an iconographical subject in its own right. By introducing construction errors well placed in his Nativities, van der Weyden had been integrating meaning that so far remained  undiscovered.

Biographies

Thomas Eißing is director of the laboratory of Dendrochronology and Timber Construction at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. Formerly trained as a carpenter, he studied Forestry and Heritage Conservation in Hamburg and Berlin. After receiving his PhD from the TU Berlin, he has been establishing the laboratory of Dendrochronology in Bamberg, participating in numerous research projects, as well as serving as the chairman of the International Research Committee for Building Research (AHF).

Nathalie-Josephine von Möllendorff is an art historian at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg and specialises in the arts of the Middle Ages as well as its reception in the nineteenth century. After studying Art History and Musicology in Berlin and Edinburgh, she received her PhD from the University of Bern and is currently working on the reinterpretation and restoration of French Gothic cathedrals in the longue durée of the nineteenth century.

Image credit: Rogier van der Weyden’s Nativity in Berlin, © Gemäldegalerie Berlin (SMB)